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Expensive Watches.

Top pic, new watch in its nice box. Bottom pic, left new watch, centre Garmin sports watch, right Citizen Eco Drive watch.

Surprisingly the new one is the most ordinary of the three, being techically just a bog standard battery operated quartz analogue watch. It is however at the high end of the quartz sector, the really expensive watches being mechanical. The more expensive quartz watches are much more carefully calibrated than the cheap ones and hence more accurate.

The Garmin is a type of smart watch and contains a mind boggling amount of technology. It does all kinds of stuff in addition to telling the time, mainly to do with monitoring my sporting activities and fitness levels. This includes GPS positioning and it takes time signals from the satellite network. Each satellite has its own atomic clock and the time signal is based on an average of these in order to minimise even the miniscule inaccuracies of atomic clocks. In short it's accuracy is as near perfect as it is possible to be. This one has an after market strap, the plastic strap that comes as standard isn't very durable.

The Citizen watch is accurate to <5 seconds a week and would possibly be better if I wore it all the time, quartz watches are designed to be accurate at body temperature. The Eco Drive watches are special in that they are solar powered and don't need batteries, you just need to put them on your windowsill from time to time.
 
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1000000104.jpgWhat size is it?
Sorry I missed that. Does this help? On the chunky watch scale it is in between the Garmin and the Citizen. The Citizen is very slim and light and could serve as a ladies' watch.
 
I listened to a programme on Radio 4 this week about ‘Expensive watches’ (£1000s) and a collector had over 100 of these!!!! It puts your new watch into a very different perspective. Enjoy wearing it.
 
you like it you wear it good luck to you if you have the money its up to you
gail
ps like the pics
 
Since this thread has gone cold now I may possibly be talking to myself now but I have started down the watch rabbit hole, watching lots of very informative You Tube videos. Many of these are made by enthusiasts who assure me that I need more watches. I've never really been a collector of things but I do like watches and so I'm thinking that I could start collecting them maybe just a little bit.

Anyway, apparently I need a dress watch to wear on the odd occasion that I go out wearing jacket and tie. If I'm dressing smartly, it seems that a functional military style watch or a sports watch isn't suitable. Having explored this particular genre, my absolute favourites are the tourbillon watches. These used to be horrifically expensive but you can now get more reasonably priced ones from China which look very nice and seem to be getting excellent reviews.

Throughout the history of watchmaking there has been a constant search for anything that might cause variations in accuracy and to find ways of eliminating them. British watchmaker and inventor John Arnold felt that the escapement on a pocket watch would run ever so slightly faster or slower depending on which way up your watch was. So his friend the Swiss-French watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet invented the tourbillon movement and patented it in June 1801. The whole escapement mechanism is mounted in a sub assembly which rotates, usually one revolution per minute, and effectively irons out any variations that could be caused by the orientation of the watch. Whether this really did improve the accuracy of the watch is open to question but the mechanism looks really cool. So, the modern tourbillon watch comes either in skeleton style or with a little window so that you can admire your revolving escapement while wearing your watch. There are some watches with an ordinary movement in the tourbillon style with the window showing the escapement so you need to take care that you are getting the real thing.

 
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A quick google search tells me that they are well out of my price range 😱
 
Actually I thought that the one in the link was pretty reasonable. Having been browsing and being bombarded with targeted ads I've seen some astronomically priced watches, tourbillons are usually very pricey.
 
Talking of French watches. At my beekeepers meeting last month I saw a very nice 18thC solid silver pocket watch. It was made in France but I can't recall the makers name. Beautiful piece of engineering and not overly decorated. It belonged to one of our older members who received it as part of an inheritance. It would certainly be worth a lot of money. Still working and he uses it every day as he is a confirmed tweed waistcoat wearer.
 
As I've been doing lots of researching of all matters relating to wrist mounted time pieces, I also came across the amazing story of the G Shock watch.

The G-Shock was the brainchild of Casio engineer Kikuo Ibe. He was walking down the street when he bumped into another pedestrian, and his watch popped off of his wrist and smashed on the pavement. The watch had been a gift from his father and he was pretty upset about it. He then had the idea to create a watch which would have "triple 10" resistance, meaning it would have 10 year battery life, 10 bar water resistance and be able to survive a fall of 10 metres.

Kikue's team tested nearly 200 prototypes but were still not able to achieve their goal. Watching some kids bouncing a rubber ball at a playground gave him the inspiration that he needed to perfect his watch and in April 1983, the first G-Shock, the DW-5000C, was launched.

It started out as a slow seller so it was advertised in the US by showing an ice hockey player using the watch as a hockey puck and then showing that the watch was still working. They gained extra publicity when they were accused of false advertising. This of course worked in Casio's favour when they were able to prove that the watch really was as tough as claimed.

G Shocks now come in a huge range of different models, from fairly cheap digitals to expensive analogue chronograghs with an amazing amount of tech. To date more than a hundred million have been sold.

The story made me wonder how Kikue pitched the idea of his virtually indestructible watch to his bosses. How did he convince them that there was a market for it? Did he have to keep convincing them that he was onto something when his prototypes kept failing his tests?

I had a basic G Shock watch many years ago and had it for a very long time. Eventually the case cracked but after I replaced it with a Seiko Titanium watch, I still used it as a bedside alarm. So now a G Shock Mudmaster is on my shopping list as well.
 
Chris Hobson said:
As I've been doing lots of researching of all matters relating to wrist mounted time pieces, I also came across the amazing story of the G Shock watch.

The G-Shock was the brainchild of Casio engineer Kikuo Ibe. He was walking down the street when he bumped into another pedestrian, and his watch popped off of his wrist and smashed on the pavement. The watch had been a gift from his father and he was pretty upset about it. He then had the idea to create a watch which would have "triple 10" resistance, meaning it would have 10 year battery life, 10 bar water resistance and be able to survive a fall of 10 metres.

Kikue's team tested nearly 200 prototypes but were still not able to achieve their goal. Watching some kids bouncing a rubber ball at a playground gave him the inspiration that he needed to perfect his watch and in April 1983, the first G-Shock, the DW-5000C, was launched.

It started out as a slow seller so it was advertised in the US by showing an ice hockey player using the watch as a hockey puck and then showing that the watch was still working. They gained extra publicity when they were accused of false advertising. This of course worked in Casio's favour when they were able to prove that the watch really was as tough as claimed.

G Shocks now come in a huge range of different models, from fairly cheap digitals to expensive analogue chronograghs with an amazing amount of tech. To date more than a hundred million have been sold.

The story made me wonder how Kikue pitched the idea of his virtually indestructible watch to his bosses. How did he convince them that there was a market for it? Did he have to keep convincing them that he was onto something when his prototypes kept failing his tests?

I had a basic G Shock watch many years ago and had it for a very long time. Eventually the case cracked but after I replaced it with a Seiko Titanium watch, I still used it as a bedside alarm. So now a G Shock Mudmaster is on my shopping list as well.
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I had a purple G shock resin case and strap I bought for sailing holiday. Definitely stood up to constant soakings and a few minor collisions with various bits of the boat.
 
"I had a purple G shock resin case and strap I bought for sailing holiday."

Part of their marketing strategy has been to produce models targeted at people with rough demanding jobs or hobbies. Soldiers, particularly special forces, emergency services personnel, nautical types, sailing and diving, outward bound types, mountain and rock climbing. I'm going sailing in a couple of weeks time but the Norfolk Broads are pretty sedate in comparison with yatching.
 
Chris Hobson said:
"I had a purple G shock resin case and strap I bought for sailing holiday."

Part of their marketing strategy has been to produce models targeted at people with rough demanding jobs or hobbies. Soldiers, particularly special forces, emergency services personnel, nautical types, sailing and diving, outward bound types, mountain and rock climbing. I'm going sailing in a couple of weeks time but the Norfolk Broads are pretty sedate in comparison with yatching.
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It wasn't very expensive so I didn't worry about damaging it. The sailing holiday was on our 25th wedding anniversary. The boat was called Sylvia. Great fun. We have also done the Broads a few times. Lovely relaxing holiday, with plenty of pub stops en route.
 
I was in a pub a few days ago and somehow got chatting with complete strangers, and somehow - again - we got on to talking about watches
One person said 'you don't buy a Rolex to tell the time'
 
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