Audemars Piguet

The Berlin Flatline
332

• Show profile
• Show other posts

Island greetings

Happy Thanksgiving. Hope your kids are good to you. I’m lucky that way, but nonetheless I like to remind them that the watch collection hasn’t been allocated yet 😇😏😉

A wonderful watch which I don’t wear that often as my collection has taken me in new (and largely independent) waters.

I must have been four or five years old the first time I ever really noticed a watch. I had been taught how to read time in kindergarten, I knew people wore watches, but in 1972 my father bought a Royal Oak. It was steel, it had hard edges, and it was clear to me that Supermen like him wore pointy objects that glinted in the light.

Later on he also wore a lot of Cartier watches. He never had anything other than three-handers, those white dials were easier to read, but as an adult he also told me that the early APs simply weren’t that good. After sending it in numerous times the watch was retired to the safe where it laid until 1997.

I had begun collecting watches, but a Royal Oak in 1996 cost around $8-10,000 on eBay and I couldn’t afford that. I told him I was looking for a watch that reminded me of his from when I was a kid. He laughed and remembered it, but at that time told me he’d gotten rid of it as its reliability was a pain in his ass.

Bummer.

A few days later, at Thanksgiving in 1997, he told me he had found it in the back of the safe, and that I could have it. (It wasn’t working, and I would need to buy extra links.) I love that watch more than any other, it started me my watch journey, and has also been the foundation for a long relationship with Audemars Piguet.

This is not that watch, that’s a whole different story, but it reminds me of my father who passed away over a decade ago. On this Thanksgiving I’m thankful. I miss his quick-witted sarcasm, and his love for sunshine.

Site Info.