A Collection Worth Writing About
Eighteen watches, one collector, and the honest stories behind buying, wearing, and sometimes regretting every one of them. This is not a business — it is a hobby I love, written down as I go.
The one I can’t stop looking at.
The Overseas Tourbillon Openworked — bought after a year of telling myself it was ‘too much watch,’ and now the piece that stops every conversation the moment someone notices the open dial. The full ownership story, accuracy numbers, and honest cons are on its profile.
Watches worth writing about.
A personal collection, documented honestly — the good, the compromised, and the ones I still can’t quite justify.
Nautilus 5811/1A
Aquanaut 5167A-001
Royal Oak 15510ST
Overseas Tourbillon Openworked 6000V
Overseas 4500V
Daytona
Explorer 40
Submariner 116610LN
Submariner Date 126610LV
Milgauss 116400GV
Datejust 36 116233
MoonSwatch Mission to EarthPhase
Seamaster Diver 300M "No Time To Die"
Aqua Terra Worldtimer Titanium
De Ville Co-Axial Chronometer
Master Ultra Thin Moon 39mm
AE-1200WH
Watch Ultra 2
Latest from the journal.
Reviews, wrist checks, strap combinations, and the occasional argument for buying less but better.
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 actually 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 actually want it.
What a Waiting List Is Actually For
It is not a queue, whatever it is called. Understanding what it really 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 actually 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 actually 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 — 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, human network of people who sell them — starting with one phone call my father made.
How to Maintain a Luxury Watch
Most watch damage is small, repeated and avoidable — the danger zone, how you put it down, magnets, and when a service is actually due.
Why Keeping Time Matters
A stick in the ground in 3500 BC, monks who did not want to get up, and a caesium atom in a basement — six thousand years of humans deciding the world deserved a finer grid.
Why I Love All Watches
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. 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 actually 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 eighteen are simply 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 honest 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 actually 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 really 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 actually 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 actually 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.
A Beginner’s Guide to Buying Your First Luxury Watch
The practical version of the advice I wish someone had given me.
Why In-House Movements Are Having a Moment
What’s driving the shift, and does it matter to the wearer?
Keeping a Mechanical Watch Alive: A Simple Maintenance Guide
The handful of habits that meaningfully extend a watch’s life.
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.
Quietly, one deal at a time.
Buying is the easy part. Most of what I actually do is helping people work out which piece is right for them, what a watch is genuinely worth before they sell it, and when the honest answer is to hold on to what they already have. More than 30 clients have let me do that for them, averaging 4.75 out of 5 — here it is in their own words.
New entries, as they happen.
Reviews written after real time on the wrist, wrist checks from ordinary days, and the occasional new arrival. No schedule, no sponsors — just the collection as it grows.