Latest from the journal.
Reviews, wrist checks, strap combinations, buying guides, and the occasional argument for buying less but better.
The Transitional Reference
A vintage watch made in the months when a factory was changing something, carrying a bit of both. Why collectors pay the premium, and the question to ask before you join in.
Your Watch and the Airport Scanner
Airport scanners do not magnetise a watch. The things on your desk do. What actually goes wrong when you travel with something valuable, and the customs question most people have never thought about.
Running Fast Is Better Than Running Slow
Two watches, both four seconds a day out, and one of them is clearly better to live with. Why watchmakers regulate slightly fast, and why the accuracy standards are not centred on zero.
How Long a Leather Strap Actually Lasts
Eighteen months to three years for a leather strap in regular rotation, and the three things that decide which end you land on. None of them is the price you paid.
The Paperwork You Want Before Anything Happens
If a watch is stolen, the claim is decided by filing you did months earlier. Serial numbers, photographs, and the line in an insurance schedule that nobody reads until the theft has already happened.
When the Indices Do Not Line Up
Chapter ring, bezel pearl, date window, seconds hand. Every watch is assembled to an alignment tolerance and most visible imperfection sits inside it. What to check at the counter, and what is worth sending back.
The Case You Should Not Polish
Every polish removes metal that is never coming back. What refinishing does to a case, what it does to the price, and the narrow set of occasions when it is still the right call.
Timing Your Own Watch Without a Timegrapher
You can measure a watch’s accuracy with a phone and seven days of patience, and the rate you get is more useful than the number a timegrapher reads off in twenty seconds.
What a Hammer Price Is Not
The hammer price at an auction is the smallest number in the transaction. The buyer’ premium, the tax and the shipping sit on top of it, and the condition report is written by the people taking a cut.
What a Dress Watch Means Now
The rules were written for a world of daily suits and they have outlived it. What survives is one measurement and one question, and neither is about formality.
Dealer or Private Sale
A dealer pays less and pays on Tuesday. A private buyer pays more and might not exist. The gap is usually fifteen to twenty-five per cent, and what it buys you is worth pricing honestly.
Write Down What You Own
A spreadsheet that takes an hour to build and has already saved me twice. Serial numbers, service dates, and photographs taken before anything goes wrong.
Your Watch Keeps Different Time Overnight
Same watch, same week, plus six seconds a day or minus two depending on how it spent the night. Position is the variable nobody mentions, and you can use it.
Using a Chronograph, Properly
Most chronographs are never started. Here is the mechanism, the two rules that keep it alive, and the one measurement the bezel does that your phone will not.
Changing a Strap Without Marking the Lugs
Every scratch I have put on a watch myself came from a spring bar tool slipping. Three things fixed it, and none of them is a better tool.
Why the Seconds Hand Sweeps
It does not sweep. It ticks eight times a second, and the number of ticks is a design argument about accuracy, power and how long the thing lasts between services.
Nobody Chooses a Watch for the Hands
They are the part you look at every single time, and the last thing anybody mentions. Four shapes, and what each one is trading away.
The Crown Tells You More Than the Dial
Dealers hand you a watch and watch your hands. The twenty seconds you spend on the crown say more about the movement than anything on the front of it.
What to Look At Through a Display Caseback
A sapphire back gives you one view of the movement and most people glance at it twice. There are four things visible from there, and three of them tell you what the watch cost to make.
The Grey Market, Without the Panic
Not fake, not stolen, not quite authorised either. What you are actually giving up for the discount, and the two situations where it is the obvious choice.
Do You Really Need a Service Every Five Years?
The interval in the manual is a recommendation from a company that owns the service centre. Here is what actually determines when a watch needs opening, and the three signs worth acting on.
Buying a Watch for Someone Else
Four of my watches were chosen by someone else, and every one of them landed. Here is what the people who got it right had in common, and the two mistakes I see most.
What a GMT Hand Is Actually For
Most people who buy a GMT never set the fourth hand. Here is the mechanism, the two kinds, and the one thing it does that a phone genuinely cannot.
The Date Window Argument
A hole in the dial, usually in the wrong colour, that removes an index and ruins the symmetry. It is also the complication people use most. Both sides are right.
Weight Is a Design Decision, Not an Accident
The same case in titanium, steel and gold is three different watches. I own two of the three, and the one I reach for is not the one I expected.
The Hours When You Should Not Set the Date
There is a window either side of midnight where the date change is already underway. Forcing it there is the most common way people break a watch they are being careful with.
The Clasp Is the Part You Touch Most
You open and close it twice a day, every day. It is also the part most likely to put your watch on the floor, and the part nobody looks at in a photograph.
Buying a Watch Abroad: What the Saving Actually Is
The shelf price abroad is lower. By the time it is on your wrist at home, rather less of that gap survives. And the warranty stays where you bought it.
How to Read a Service Quote
Three quotes for the same watch, ranging by a factor of six. The number is the least informative thing on any of them.
One Good Watch or Four Decent Ones?
The same money, spent two ways. I have done both, and the thing that decided it was not the watches at all.
Your Wrist Is Not the Same Size All Day
It can change by several millimetres between morning and night. Almost every complaint about how a watch wears is a complaint about sizing it at the wrong hour.
The First Scratch, and What It Actually Costs
Day eleven, a door frame, and a mark I could not stop looking at. Three of the four responses available to me cost real money. The one that worked cost a week.
Seven Watches, and the One I Actually Wear
I kept a note of what went on my wrist every morning for a year. The result is not flattering to six of the seven.
The Strap Drawer: What I Actually Reach For
Seventeen straps, three in rotation. The other fourteen are a record of what I thought I wanted rather than what I wear.
Rubber Straps Have Quietly Got Very Good
If your idea of a rubber strap is a thick square-cut slab that made your wrist sweat, that idea is about fifteen years out of date.
How to Size a Bracelet Properly
Most people size a bracelet once, in a shop, in the morning, and then live for years with a fit that was never right.
The Five-Minute Check That Prevents Most Watch Damage
Four things, once a month. Nearly every expensive problem I have seen or had started as one of them being ignored.
Demagnetising a Watch at Home
A watch running two minutes fast a day is usually magnetised, not broken, and the fix costs about thirty dollars and takes ten seconds.
What to Ask Before You Buy From a Stranger
Four questions. None of them are about the watch. They are about whether the person answering has anything to hide.
Paying by Bank Transfer to Someone You Have Never Met
It is the payment method every private seller prefers, and the only one with no route back if it goes wrong. That is not a coincidence.
Reading a Dial: Printed, Applied, and What It Costs
Two dials can look identical in a photograph and feel entirely different in the hand. Most of that difference is one decision about the markers.
The Watch I Wear to Work
It is not the best watch I own and it is not the one I would show you. It is the one that suits a day spent around equipment, and that turned out to be a short list.
Selling Without Regret: A Checklist
Five things to do before a watch leaves. Every sale I regret skipped at least two of them, and the pattern only became obvious afterwards.
NATO Straps Are Not Actually NATO Straps
The name is wrong, the origin story is mostly invented, and the design is clever. All three of those things are worth knowing.
Storing Watches You Do Not Wear
A watch left still for five years is usually in worse condition than one worn every day for five years. Almost nobody expects that.
Price Against Wrist Time: The Line Does Not Go Up
Plot everything you own by what it cost and how often you wear it. The shape is the same for almost everybody, and it is worth looking at before the next purchase.
What to Do With a Watch You Did Not Choose
Inherited, gifted, or handed over. Four things you can do with it and all four are allowed, except the one most people do, which is nothing.
What a Year With One Watch Teaches You
A month tells you what you missed. A year tells you something else entirely, and most of it is not about the watch.
How a Bracelet Should Actually Fit
Most people size a bracelet in the morning, in a shop, on a cold wrist. Then they wear it at six in the evening in July and wonder why it marks.
Photographing Your Own Watches, Honestly
You can learn studio lighting and make every watch look like a catalogue. Or you can take the photograph that shows what you own, which is harder and more useful.
The Week After You Finally Get It
The spike is real. It is intense, and it is short. What is left when it fades is the part that decides whether the watch was worth it.
Choosing a Dial Colour You Will Still Like
Every dial is photographed in the light that flatters it most. You will wear it in whatever light you happen to be standing in, and those are very different things.
Which Watch to Travel With
The right travel watch is the one you would be annoyed rather than devastated to lose. That rules out more of most collections than people expect.
The Second Watch Is the Hardest One
The first is easy because anything is an improvement on nothing. The second has to do a job the first one does not, and almost nobody gets that right first time.
What Happens After You Hand It Over for Service
Three months is normal and nobody says so at the counter. Here is the route your watch takes, and the three questions worth asking before you let go of it.
Box and Papers: What the Premium Is Actually For
A cardboard box and a printed card can add a fifth to the price of a watch that is otherwise identical. Sometimes that is worth paying and often it is not.
What a Power Reserve Actually Buys You
Thirty-eight hours or seventy is not a specification contest. It is a question about whether the watch is still running when you pick it up on Monday.
Why I Stopped Reading Watch Forums, and Why I Started Again
I left for eight months. What I missed was not the information, which is mostly wrong, but something harder to replace.
Insuring a Collection: What Nobody Tells You Until It Is Too Late
Most home policies cover far less than owners assume, and the gap only reveals itself on the single day it matters. The wording is worth an evening of your life.
The Case for Buying the Boring One
The watch nobody asked me about is the one I have worn most. That was not a plan, and it took me four years and several mistakes to notice the pattern.
Does a Watch Actually Keep Better Time Than Your Phone?
No. Not remotely, not even the good ones, and not even close. Which raises a more interesting question about what we are buying.
The Watch I Wear to Fly
Not the most expensive one, and not the most appropriate one. The one that stops me doing arithmetic at four in the morning in an airport I do not recognise.
Why Watchmaking Never Left One Valley
Almost every industry has moved at least once. This one has stayed in the same handful of Alpine towns for two hundred years, and the reason is more interesting than tradition.
Lume: The Only Feature You Test at Three in the Morning
Every dive watch advertises it. Almost every one of them has gone dark by the hour you would want it.
What a Waiting List Is Actually For
It is not a queue, whatever it is called. Understanding what it is makes the whole experience considerably less maddening.
The Sound a Watch Makes
Eight ticks a second, audible only in a quiet room, produced by a mechanism that has no reason to be audible at all. It is most of why people fall for these things.
Why Every Watch Photograph Shows Ten Past Ten
Once you notice it you cannot stop. Every catalogue, every advert, every shop window, the same time, for reasons that have nothing to do with the time.
The Night I Nearly Bought a Fake
It was not cheap, the seller was not shifty, and the photographs were excellent. Three small things saved me, and only one of them was knowledge.
What “Swiss Made” on a Dial Actually Means
Two words at the bottom of a dial, protected by law, and covering considerably less than almost everyone assumes.
The Collection I Would Build Starting Over
Same budget, same years, everything I now know. It is a shorter list than what I own, and only three of the current pieces survive the exercise.
Servicing: What You Are Actually Paying For
The invoice says one number. Underneath it is roughly a day of skilled labour, a handful of parts worth almost nothing, and one decision you should have been asked about.
Why Watch Photography Lies
Not deliberately, most of the time. But every convention of the genre pushes in the same direction, and the direction is away from what the watch looks like.
Buying Your First Watch Under $1,000
The budget is not the constraint people think it is. The real constraint is that almost everything at this price is trying to look like something more expensive.
The Quiet Luxury of a Watch Nobody Recognises
There is a specific pleasure in wearing something excellent that reads as nothing at all. It is not humility, and pretending otherwise is where the idea goes wrong.
What Water Resistance Ratings Actually Mean
A 30m watch cannot go 30 metres underwater. The number is a laboratory result, not a depth, and the gap between those two things ruins watches every summer.
Do You Need a Watch Winder?
Almost certainly not. There is exactly one case where they earn their place, and it is not the one most people buy them for.
The Watches I Regret Selling
Three of them. The pattern is embarrassingly clear in hindsight, and it has nothing to do with what any of them are worth now.
Why Lug-to-Lug Matters More Than Case Diameter
Everyone quotes diameter because it is on the box. The number that decides whether a watch fits your wrist is almost never advertised.
The Second-Hand Market Is the Real Market
Retail price is a suggestion made by one party. The pre-owned price is what happens when thousands of people vote with money.
Bracelet or Strap? The Only Honest Answer
It depends on the watch, obviously. But it also depends on something people rarely admit: how much fiddling you are willing to do.
What a Watchmaker Sees That You Don’t
I spent an afternoon at a bench watching someone open watches I thought I knew. Almost everything they noticed first was something I had never once looked at.
The Case for Wearing One Watch for a Month
I put everything else in the safe and wore one watch for thirty-one days. What I learned was mostly about the other watches.
How Long Should a Watch Actually Last?
Brands say generations. Watchmakers say it depends entirely on what you are willing to replace. Both are telling the truth about different things.
Why I Stopped Chasing Discontinued References
Discontinuation is a marketing event that happens to look like scarcity. I spent two years treating one as the other.
The $50 Watch I Own Alongside Patek Philippe and Rolex
The Casio AE-1200 costs less than a strap and gets more wrist time than watches two thousand times its price. That is not a charming contradiction. It is the point.
My Dad Handed Me His Patek Philippe 5811. What Happens Next?
He did not leave it to me. He took it off and handed it over while he could watch me put it on, which is a different thing entirely, and a heavier one.
The Watches I Thought I Would Wear Every Day — But Don’t
Ranked honestly: what I expected to wear against what gets worn. The biggest gap belongs to the watch I thought about hardest before buying.
I Own the Watches I Once Dreamed About. So Why Do I Still Want Another One?
Every grail I reached turned into a starting line. It took me a while to stop treating that as a failure of discipline and start treating it as the shape of the hobby.
Does a Watch Tell Your Personality?
It signals your register, your mood, sometimes your budget. It does not signal your character, and most of what gets read off a wrist was put there by the reader.
Does a Strong Magnetic Field Affect Watches?
A fridge magnet will not destroy your watch, and an MRI absolutely can. The difference is not the magnet. It is a scale most people have never seen laid out.
What Should You Do With Your Watch After a Day of Wear?
A day leaves skin oil, salt and lint behind, and the worst of it collects where nobody looks. The whole routine takes five minutes and needs one dry cloth.
Is a Watch a Statement Piece?
Sometimes, and that is fine. But the audience only exists in certain rooms, everywhere else you are making a statement into an empty room, and only you know which one you are doing.
Appreciating the Watch, Not the Price
The Royal Pop arrived and people talked about selling their Royal Oaks. But nothing happened to their watches, only to the conversation around them. If a conversation can end it, the conversation was what you owned.
The Thinner the Better?
A credit card is 0.76mm. The thinnest mechanical watch ever made is 1.75mm, a complete running movement in twice the thickness of the plastic in your wallet. Why that is the hardest thing in watchmaking, and where it stops being worth it.
How to Fix Your Luxury Watch
The crown of my JLC came off in my fingers. The answer to how you fix a luxury watch turns out to be shorter than you would expect. You do almost nothing, and you resist every instinct telling you otherwise.
How to Pick Your First Diver’s Watch
Almost nobody buys a watch by comparing water resistance ratings. You buy the one you cannot stop thinking about, then look for reasons, so here is the honest order to do it in.
Which Crystal Is Best for a Luxury Watch?
Scratching is not about toughness. It is about relative hardness, and sand is a 7. That single fact explains almost every scratch story in this hobby.
Are Expensive Luxury Watches Really Worth It?
Some are, some are not, and the reason splits cleanly down the middle: ask what you would still be paying for if the logo were removed.
Micro Brands Are Getting So Much Better
The old line was that a small brand could never build its own movement. That stopped being true, and most collectors have not updated their mental model.
Do You Have to Care What Others Think?
A stranger looks at your watch for ten seconds. You will look at it fifteen thousand times. Written down like that, whose opinion should win is not a close call.
Why I Love Building Relationships With Dealers
I thought I was getting into watches. What I got into was a small, slow, surprisingly human network of people who sell them, and none of it would exist without one phone call my father made.
How to Maintain a Luxury Watch
Most watch damage is small, repeated and avoidable, a date set at the wrong hour, a crown resting on a desk, a decade without a service. Everything I do, and why none of it is difficult.
Why Keeping Time Matters
A stick in the ground in 3500 BC, monks who did not want to get up, ships that sank for want of a clock, and a caesium atom in a basement. Six thousand years of humans deciding the world deserved a finer grid.
Why I Love All Watches
Some collectors will tell you quartz does not count. I think that costs you most of the interesting things about this hobby, a spring, a crystal and a satellite are three different answers to the same question, and all three are clever.
Thanks, Dad
Four of the watches here came from my father, the Datejust and Submariner off his own wrist, the Milgauss in a box with a handwritten card, and the Nautilus at the moment he wanted me to know he had been watching. Everything else came from what those four made possible.
Do Expensive Watches Actually Get Noticed?
The short answer is no, almost nobody notices, and the few who do are other collectors who just want to talk about it. So buy the watch for the one person guaranteed to see it every day.
Is It Okay to Wear a Woman’s Watch?
Someone will eventually tell you the watch you love is a ladies’ watch. Here is why that sentence describes a shop shelf and nothing else. And why the two markets have been converging for years.
Why Is Watch Reddit So Angry?
Watch forums can be brutal to strangers who did nothing except enjoy their own watch. Here is what I think is going on, and why it should not change what you wear tomorrow.
How Do I Make All of This?
The question I get most often, answered plainly: more than three jobs across two countries, and a stubborn refusal to give up sleep or the gym.
The Watches You Don’t See Here
A confession: this site is not my whole collecting history. I bought more and sold more than anyone can imagine, these twenty are the ones that earned a page.
Superclones Are Getting Good. I Am Staying Real.
Replica watches have never been better or more popular, here is why my answer is still, and will always be, the genuine article.
How to Wear a Watch?
Which wrist, where it sits, and how snug, the fundamentals nobody teaches, animated.
Wearing a Piece of Art
Paintings hang on walls. The art I collect runs at 4 Hz and comes everywhere with me.
Automatic Watch versus Quartz Watch
Two ways of keeping time, one spinning and one vibrating, animated, explained, and why I happily own both.
Why I Collect Watches
The answer has nothing to do with movements or market values. It is about the time I am losing, and the two people I am losing it with.
Gérald Genta: The Man Who Drew the Modern Watch
The designer behind the Royal Oak and the Nautilus. And how one pencil helped mechanical watchmaking survive the quartz crisis.
The Waitlist: Real or Fake?
Real for the regulars, imaginary for the walk-in, what six years of authorized-dealer conversations taught me about how The List works.
The Expensive Watch and the Cheap Car
My most contrarian money opinion: drive modestly, wear meaningfully.
Wearing the Overseas Tourbillon Openworked With Various Straps
Bracelet, rubber, blue alligator, how one quick-change system turns the most serious watch I own into three different watches.
Buying and Selling Watches: The Honest Flipper & Collector’s Guide
How trend watches like the Daytona and Royal Oak trade above retail, and what it takes to buy right and sell at a profit.
Going to Buy Your Watch at an Authorized Dealer
Waitlists, purchase history, and boutique etiquette, how the authorized-dealer game works, from someone who played it.
Do All Watches Really Sell?
A handful of references sell over retail on the day you list them. Most do not. And the gap between those two facts is where collectors lose real money.
How to Build a Real Relationship With an Authorized Dealer
Six years of buying across Bangkok, New York and my local boutique, what turns a stranger at the counter into a client who gets the call.
Why the De Ville Only Gets One Strap, and Why That’s the Point
Not every watch benefits from a strap drawer. Sometimes the factory choice is the whole design.
A Beginner’s Guide to Buying Your First Luxury Watch
Skip the retail waiting lists and the forum arguments. Here’s the practical version of the advice I wish someone had given me.
Why In-House Movements Are Having a Moment
More brands are building their own calibres than at any point in decades. What’s actually driving it, and does it matter to the person wearing the watch?
Keeping a Mechanical Watch Alive: A Simple Maintenance Guide
Nothing exotic here — just the handful of habits that meaningfully extend the life of a mechanical watch between full services.
A Strap Change Is the Cheapest New Watch You Can Buy
Bored of a watch? Before you sell it, spend forty dollars and a spring bar tool, the right strap can hand you a completely different piece.
The Quartz Crisis: How the Watch Industry Nearly Died
A battery-powered watch almost ended Swiss watchmaking, and in surviving it, the mechanical watch stopped being a tool and became a luxury.