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Most Special Watch - Why a Collector
Many advertisers for watches bring the sentimental aspect of watches into play - the one that stands out most for be being Patek with their "Next Generation" campaign.
Is there a sentimental reason you became a watch collector? Some other "triggering" event? There was for me - the following is from some writing I did years ago. What is your story?
September, 2001
It is appropriate that I am writing this as I cross the international dateline on a flight from Hong Kong to LA. According to the calendar and clock, because I cross a certain line in the middle of the ocean, I am able to arrive in LA before I have left Hong Kong.
I have had a fascination with time for as long as anyone can remember.
I’ll save the debate as to the existence of time in a real sense by restating the emotion.
I have had a fascination with the measure of time for as long as anyone can remember.
As a photographer, many of the images that I find most interesting are those that exist for only a mere moment, in some cases such a small moment that the camera is unable to capture a clear image in 1/100 or 1/1000 of a second. The essential moment. The irony is that I will spend hours waiting for that moment. Or take hundreds of images trying to capture it. Whether the perfect sunset or the right person walking past a sign, I view the world through the lens as a series of captured moments.
So in that aspect of my life – I am measuring time. Or, maybe fairer to say, I work with measured time.
When I was young I began a “company” that made clocks. It was called “Reel Time Custom Clocks” because I used audio reels as the face. I placed cheap electric movements through the hole in the middle, added painted hands and sold them for $25.00. I figured every audio recording and editing company in the country would want one. I borrowed $500.00 from my dad and began production. I quickly learned that none of the audio houses in the country would buy one and place it in their edit suites. Why? Because they charged by the hour and wanted to avoid letting the customers know that time was looming over them. They all liked the clocks and I eventually sold 30 or so in total as gifts from the edit houses to their clients.
Not the success I had hoped for. When I moved out of the house for college, my creditor (dad) got the spare parts that remained as repayment for the balance of the loan. He had me throw them away when he sold the house years later.
But as I start fully exploring the world of vintage watch restoration and collection, I find that the reasons are much more emotional. There has been an explosion in me since the first of the year. Maybe it was moving to Hong Kong, both so far from my family and so close to so many devices that measure time.
Maybe it was coming for much longer than that.
My father has always said “better never than late”. He got it from his mother. And they mean it. We would leave for the airport 2 hours before anyone else would. Growing up, coming home 15 minutes late meant the police and hospitals had been called. Okay, I’m exaggerating, but the point is – a respect for time was given quite early. Being a few minutes late was not acceptable. Now I will admit to not having the same discipline as my father. But as I look at a watch now, I want to ensure that if I am late, it is my lack of discipline and not my measurement device to blame. Yet my interest is not the modern, new watch, with certain exceptions. In fact, quartz watches, which might be better at getting me places on time, are of no interest to me. Mechanical watches have a special place in my heart.
In the early 1980’s my grandfather passed. He was a very proper and imposing figure in my life. He wore a tie and jacket to dinner every night, in his own home. The living room was off limits to pets and small children. Being my only living grandfather, he had a major impact on my life.
To be honest, it is not the importance of these men or any one thing they did in my life that brings the emotion. It is something I did.
When my grandfather passed I was left a beautiful Movado Moon Phase and a Patek Philippe. They had not been worn in years. They needed to be repaired and serviced. I was young and not very interested in wearing watches in that style. We had them appraised and I decided to sell them. Maybe if they were running well I would have kept them but I doubt it. I have a memory of using the money to pay for an exciting trip on Route 66 from Chicago to LA. It’s a trip I did indeed make in 1992. My mother recalls me using the money to pay for college. Not as exciting, nor in a ways any more acceptable, but much more likely the truth.
In either case, I began to regret selling the watches the moment I did it. Not consciously, but most certainly.
This regret has built over the years. As my parents get older, and become my grandfather’s age, the regret has taken over. Despite the strange hope that one day I will be in a vintage shop and see the same Patek Philippe or Movado, with my grandfather’s names engraved on the back (despite the fact that his name never was engraved on the back), I realize that the watches were shipped off to Japan (where many fine Swiss watches went in the early 1980’s) and I’ll never see them again. I have possessions from other relatives and have learned not to be so casual with the memories that can be associated with these things. Let’s just say that this interest in watches is my payment for that one mistake made as a young man.
So I have started to try and regain some of the distance that I placed in my memories of my ancestors. I comb shops and research watchmakers hoping to find a watch so special, that maybe I can imagine it deserves to be one I got from my grandfather. I have started to learn how to restore and service them, to bring them back to life so I can return them to use. I have tried to let the process of taking them apart and placing them together distract me from the fact that they are not my grandfather’s – nor are they my grandfather.
I have completed level 1 and 2 at timezone. Because of my father’s influence in my life, I felt it was appropriate that my first “assembled” watches should go to him. I have learned to appreciate the simplicity and complications of the watch on so many technical and design levels.
Recently in Prague my father and I purchased a turn of the century pocket watch for him. It is from around the time his grandfather was born in Prague. It is a beautiful silver IWC. I don’t expect my father to leave anytime soon, and will happily wait my entire life plus before taking possession of that pocket watch. It is nice, however, to know that I will get a second chance to treat such a gift with honor and respect.
This is what drives my interest in wristwatches.
This message has been edited by MTF on 2007-08-12 22:05:47
