Hello, you crazy watch people! I am Thomas, aka "Motowatch".
Sept 6, 2014 9:48:10 GMT -8
Groundhog66, trandy, and 1 more like this
Post by Thomas on Sept 6, 2014 9:48:10 GMT -8
As a WIS, I was born in January 2005.
I was a watch lover however, from a much younger age. My PoP gave my brother and me our first watch, a Caravelle hand-wind that had a light-colored dial (silver? off-white?), thin lume on the hour and minute hands and little lume dots outside the "stick" hour markers.
I would love to charge the lume at night in bed, with my (crappy) Cub Scout angled flashlight, then dive under the covers and watch it fade. Which didn't take long. :-D
Somewhere in the roughhouse of young boyhood the Speidel Twist-O-Flex bracelet my Pop had installed was broken and that watch was lost.
Next, in my teens, I wanted a watch, but everything was horrible, chrome-plated, pot-metal, quartz crap. I finally settled on a Casio Twin-Graph, which I have to this day.
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Next is a jump of over 20 years, to Christmas-time in 2004.
I had collected five of the Casio Twin-Graphs by then, because when the battery finally died and I replaced it, I didn't know you had to "jumper" to a contact on the back of the movement to restart the watch! :-D
So when the 5th one finally died, I went searching for new watch, a Christmas present to myself. Well everywhere I looked, the selection was just like it had been 20 years earlier, everything was horrible, chrome-plated, pot-metal, quartz crap. :-(
I finally succumbed to a Wenger that was $90 at Costco. It didn't look all that bad...
...but "in hand" is was junk. :-/ A sloppy, lightweight, bi-directional bezel, a cheap, tinny, folded-link bracelet, and a plastic-looking "seamaster" wave dial.
I wore it for a couple of weeks, and over the Christmas holiday, but then I went back to Costco to see what else they had.
I was intrigued by a Casio PathFinder, for $135. It had a lot of cool features, and was easy to read, and in the store it didn't look that big, (HA!)
BAH! When I got home and tried it on, it's freaking HUMONGOUS!! 8-O It is over 53mm across and 18mm high. I don't have a single shirt that it will fit under. It's ridiculous!
I finally used some pipe insulation and made a mount for it on my dual-sport motorcycle handlebars. :-D It works just fine there!
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In desperation I searched the Internet, looking for "watches online".
Oh sure, I found plenty of watches, Rolex, Omega, Panerai, Patek Philippe, Jaeger-LeCoultre. WTF!! :-P These stupid things sell for thousands and thousands of dollars!! That's insane!! :-{
So I searched again, but this time for "watches online poor man".
And guess what, I found a forum called "The Poor Man's Watch Forum"! :-D It was "too good to be true"!!
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After a skeptical week or so, I finally believed it was true. I was prepared to send a Money Order to a Swiss guy, who lived in Thailand, to buy watches from a store in Hong Kong. 8-O
I was very crafty too. I saw that if I ordered several watches at once, I would save on shipping! :-D Bwahahaha!
So, after nights of careful consideration, I ordered my first WIS watches, SIX of them at one shot!
Three days later the packages arrived.
I was in heaven. High quality, affordable,. mechanical and solar powered, classically (or radically) designed watches, that were WAY above anything I could find in the stores.
So, what were those seminal, first six watches?
1) My first love was this Citizen Eco-Drive World Time GMT (BJ9031-58L). I had quickly learned to love the GMT "complication" and this watch seemed to have a very classic dial design, and the color of the dial and indices really appealed to me.
2) Next was a Black Monster. It took me a week or so to go from "Yikes! That's ugly!" to "I have GOT to get one of those!" :-D
3) And I guess I have the "set" disease, as I couldn't see getting the black one, without the orange one! :-D
4) The next watch (a Chinese market, Citizen 7 Natulite) was a economic, yet emotional decision. I liked the design, the lume on the dial, the automatic, hand-wind-able movement and the display back, and for well under $100 how could I resist!!
5) Next was another Citizen Eco-Drive, with all of my favorite features; arabic lumed numerals, a timer bezel, super-legible hands and dial, a high-quality bracelet, and an overall functional "tool watch" design. Duratech Titanium, the unsurpassed Citizen PMX56-2811.
6) The last watch was an homage to my hero, Jacques Cousteau. I was a skin-diver from a very young age, and doted on the TV coverage and undersea productions of Mr. Cousteau.
As soon as I saw this final watch, I remembered that he wore a "canteen" style watch in his early years, and despite this being a inexpensive quartz copy, between the iconic styling and the full lume dial, I could not resist.
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Ahh, the memories! :-D And it has been all "downhill" from then! I have probably averaged about 10 watch purchases a year, and I have never been able to bring myself to sell a single one! :-}
Almost all Seiko and Citizen, with some Orient and Alba (and two Invicta!) mixed in, and even a couple of vintage Swiss watches.
Still a sucker for lumed arabic numerals, complications, but insisting on simple, classic, functional design.
Okay, that's my story! If you actually made it this far, thanks for reading along! :-/
- Thomas
Thomas!
Well, thank you gentlefolk. Your warm welcome is much appreciated. 
I am so lazy! 
