The Full Story of My Camy Club-Star

I’ve long talked about this watch, everything from its exact date of purchase to its sentimental value. The whole story is split up in so many different posts and comments that it’s probably not the easiest thing to piece together. Nobody asked for this, but here we go…

December 31st was slightly overcast if I remember correctly. Several days prior, I had taken my Casio Outgear Fishing Gear watch to my local watchmaker to get cleaned; this was my first time in his shop, which, in retrospect, is surprising, as I was sixteen at the time and lived in Fochville my whole life. I had left the watch with a jeweller in the next town over, who kept it for a month and did nothing to it. The plastic bezel was lifting up, so after being very (and I believe reasonably) frustrated, I just super glued the bezel down myself. It’s not perfect and there are little blobs on two of the lugs if you look for them, but it worked. I should have just glued it myself if I had known that this jeweller would have done worse than nothing. They had left the watch exposed to the elements during its one month stay, and it collected a bucketload of dust under the crystal. I took it to this watchmaker when my mom took a necklace of hers in that needed fixing in the hopes that he could open it up and clean the dust out.

I am so glad that that jeweller was the incompetent bastard that he was.

The watchmaker and I clicked quite quickly. He couldn’t see any dust in the Casio due to his eyesight, but blew it out with compressed air and changed the battery. There’s still some dust in there, but I don’t think I’ll ever remove it on the basis of being too lazy to give a damn. It was when I was waiting for him to fetch my watch from the back that I first gawked at what sat on display. I spotted a Camy Happy Bird. It was an odd experience. I had just received my Seiko 5, my first mechanical watch, and I felt the urge to explore mechanical watches further. At the time, I thought that the watch was Chinese or from somewhere in the far East, because, well, “Camy” doesn’t necessarily sound too Western and “Happy Bird” sounds like a token example of “Engrish.” I could tell it was vintage by its proportions and, if I’m being terribly honest, a lucky guess. The price wasn’t bad and I was willing to buy a watch smaller than I was used to just to get something mechanical.

I went back to buy it on December 31st, a day or two after spotting the Happy Bird. I took a good look at it and when I turned around, the watchmaker stood there with a box on the counter.

This was a picture I took in a bit of a rush. Not my best photography work, but it has so many memories attached, as every other watch in that box (and the box itself) has been sold. I’ll go through them from memory. Top left is my Camy Club-Star. The two watches next to it are Camy ladies watches. The two after that are two Van Dyk watches. The one on the left has a green dial, so either poor lighting is making it look brown or it’s a different watch altogether, which I doubt. The one on the right has a silver dial and orange lume. I can’t exactly make out what the watch on the bottom left is, it might be a Challenger. Next to it is a Jumbo-Jet, followed by two Populars.

You have no idea how sad I am that I didn’t buy them all quick enough. That box and everything it stands for is an image burnt into my head that I won’t forget. Everything happens for a reason, so it wasn’t meant to be,

But sometimes I wish it was.

I like to stop and think that in an alternate reality, this post would be titled “The Full Story of My Camy Jumbo-Jet.” I bought the Club-Star along with a new leather strap at about twelve o’clock, maybe half past twelve, which was right before the shop closed for the weekend at one. I fell in love with it. It was the first Swiss thing I ever owned outside of Nestle products. It was my first hand-wound watch. It was a whole new world for me.

Shortly afterwards, I joined WatchCrunch in February. Being able to share my story and learn from others shaped me not only as a collector but as a hobbyist watchmaker. The knowledge I have gained would baffle me-from-the-past, but this hobby is so vast that I haven’t even scratched the surface yet. Recently, I have decided to start work on a book aimed at beginners in the vintage scene. I’m nowhere near knowledgeable enough to advise the veterans, but I aim to spread awareness of some common mistakes when starting out. There’s no doubt about it, the internet has made vintage watch collecting far easier.

My Camy was unlike anything I could find on the internet. I am not one to care much for uniqueness, because anything can be unique if you get specific enough. One day I received a message on WatchCrunch from someone with a picture of a pristine Camy Club-Star. Some other lucky bugger found one just like mine, although his had a different strap and clasp. It was a bizarre moment for me, because seeing someone else with the same watch as you is something special, even if it is a new and common thing. Seeing someone find one that laid untouched for half a century, just like mine, was a very special moment, especially because he described it as being a “Fochville Special,” which meant that my story had at least travelled to one other person.

Over time, the watch picked up more stories. It took me a while, but I realised that a watch was more than a tool or something shiny to collect. A watch is a sort of talisman to me. It’s a strange thing, but I revel in the fact that only I can appreciate my watches as much as I do. They’re little sponges that absorb victories and defeats, soldiering on in spite of whatever the wearer is going through. It sounds pretentious, I know, but every watch has a story. I don’t collect watches; I collect stories.

The Camy had a history before I met it in December. My watchmaker’s father was also a watchmaker. As far as I can remember, my watchmaker spent his early days in Stellenbosch, before the family moved north to the same area I live in now. He remembers his father buying supplies from a shop called B.J. Oberholzer, which still exists to this day. After moving, his father set up shop in Westonaria, not too far from Fochville. The watchmaker told me the story behind his first watch from when he was about thirteen or so, an Oris, that he found on the side of the road cycling back home with a friend from the communal swimming pools at Libanon recreation club. He took it to his father, who got it running for him. I have no idea what happened to it, but he wore an automatic Camy during high-school. Now I just need to get myself one like it, for the sake of being poetic.

(I am retelling this from memory, so some details may be lost.) A Greek businessman approached the father with an offer to buy up his shop. It was a small business and a tightly-woven community, so a deal was organised where the father would keep half of the stock and the Greek would pay him in postdated cheques.

This is where the new old stock part comes in. This Camy was likely in a box in the back of the shop in Westonaria before being taken by the father. While I don’t know where he kept the stock, I’m assuming it was in his house. As we all know, things left in houses for many years gets forgotten about. My watchmaker’s Camy that he wore at school came from this point in time. His father called him and his brother to each choose one watch from his leftover stock after he had sold the shop.

Unfortunately, his father passed away when he was eighteen, right before he was due to do his two years in the army. Lo and behold, the Greek businessman who had bought the shop from his father got in contact with his mother and got him a position in the shop. After some time of learning, buying, selling and servicing, the watchmaker bought the shop back from the Greek, in the same way that he had bought it from his father years ago, with postdated cheques. Some of his father’s stock was sold and some kept. It was in the portion that was kept that I found my Club-Star, albeit many years later.

While I never got to experience any of this myself, the story struck a chord with me. The Camy was a token from this; a physical object that watched everything play out from the background. In my mind, it serves as a reminder of this epic true story. Upon retelling this, I realised what this watch represents most: completeness.

Full circle.

It has seen generations of people. The world has changed around it, but everything works out in the end. From chaos comes order. I struggle imagining it, but I will too be old one day. I’m not bothered by my own mortality, but it always comes sooner than one thinks. I hope for a predictable death at age a hundred-and-twenty-thirteen where I see a bright light as I sit in an armchair, but I’m realistic enough to know that I may, at any time, go out in a (mostly metaphorical, but maybe literal) ball of flames so quickly I’ll barely know it and have no time to accept that it’s all over. I will pass this watch down too one day, which is why I want to have as complete of a story as possible. I don’t want the next owner to see it as a clean slate and “just a watch.”

So this watch has an incredible story without my influence whatsoever, but I believe my little touches are almost as important in building it’s sentimental value. I wasn’t joking when I said “talisman” earlier. If I write an exam, guess what I wear. If I’m attending any sort of prizegiving or similar events, I wear this. Hell, I’ve promised myself that it’ll be on my wrist when I finish high-school and when I get married. My luck could have it that I become an unmarried celibate high-school dropout, but it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it? When South Africa took home the Rugby World Cup last year, I wore this. I only watch Rugby once every four years, but, yet again, it’s the thought that counts.

Life changes quickly, which has always been something slightly difficult for me to grasp. Sometimes it feels fast, other times ridiculously slow, so I have always been needing an anchor of sorts, something that reminds me that things will work out. It’s cheesy, but we all need to hear it sometimes.

I believe that wearing this watch is an extension of my watchmaker and his father’s legacy. One day it’ll be an extension of my legacy too. Like my watchmaker, the first watch movement I took apart was a Baumgartner 866. Like my watchmaker I wore (and will continue to wear) my Camy to school.

The watchmaker has done so much for me and I can only hope to settle my debt one day. He made a choice: to give a donor movement to some random teenager. Without his help, the world would have one less watchmaker. This is how I will repay him. I will make an effort to do the same. I’ve fixed up some old clocks and the like for good friends and in the process spread a tiny bit of knowledge. Knowing that this Camy seems to (almost eerily) make things come full circle, I have faith that many years from now, a random teenager will ask for a donor movement.

And a donor movement they shall receive.