I Dream of a One-Watch Collection, Part One: The Why

The one-watch collection—as contradictory as it sounds—is a dream I’ve been nurturing in my head over the past couple of months. It’s a lofty dream. Those in the watch community might even call it an impossibility, again given the oxymoronic concept of having just one thing in a collection. 

To those who’ve already forgotten their elementary school English, an oxymoron is a figure of speech that strings contradictory terms together to form a compound word or phrase. Taken out of context they’re head-scratchers. But they’re almost never taken out of context and normal people who hear them understand what they mean. I only mention this because many watch enthusiasts seem to get triggered by the phrase one-watch collection despite accepting without overthinking other everyday oxymorons like humblebrag, bittersweet, pretty ugly, old news, working vacation, affordable luxur—hold it, yeah, they refuse to accept that one either. 

Beyond the silly pedantry of whether there is such a thing as a collection consisting only of a singular watch, I’m more interested in exploring how one could achieve it and why should one even try. So for our purposes, let’s just assume it exists.

I want one. 

Is that sacrilegious? I hope not but it might very well be.

There are many reasons why a one-watch collection makes sense, at least to me. But let me focus on one of those reasons.

Possessing multiple watches doesn’t have the same pull as it once had. There is baggage. All hobbies have baggage but the ones the watch collecting world are exhausting to unravel.

In my previous obsessions—comics, books, cars, etc.—I was able to show them off to fellow enthusiasts without being made to feel like an absolute heel. Finding a very rare issue in great condition of a popular title, one couldn’t wait to show it to fellow comicbook nerds. Check this out. See how it says first printing in the masthead? Yes, I had flexed my collection. I had invited people over to look at them or brought them with me when I visited them and they never made me feel like I was a douchebag for doing so. Same as with them, really. I would often get a text message when a person got an interesting issue they wanted to flex around me. There was even friendly banter that meant nothing malicious at all.

“What a piece of crap you got there.”

“Oh yeah? Better than your piece of crap.”

All in the name of geeking out. We celebrated each other’s collections. With watches—given how expensive some of the pieces are—it’s really difficult to banter without the owner taking it all personally. I know I would get offended if someone calls my choices crap. I enjoy meet-ups with fellow watch nerds because we get to geek out. It is still polite though. Most of these people are strangers and it’s difficult to get to the point where you’re just friends busting each other’s balls.

I do understand somewhat why this is the case. Like I said, these pieces are expensive. It’s easy to make fun of a 20 dollar trade paperback. It’s quite another to poke holes on a five hundred dollar item. People don’t want to hear that their Rolex that they paid thousands of dollars for is not worth the money. They don’t like to hear that they have more money than sense. Who does?

This is why I love my vintage gal. We’ve gotten to a point in our relationship where we’ve seen each other enough times, chatted enough, that we had stopped being polite to one another. The goal is to try and get the other person to flinch, you know, like friends do.

I remember when I got my Nautilus Seiko mod about two months ago. I was so excited to show it to her. So I visited.

She could not stop laughing. She kept putting me down, mocking me.

“IT’S TIFFANY FUCKING GREEN!” she didn’t even wait until she could first say hi. The second she got out of her car and looked at my wrist, she just went to town on me.

Guess what? It didn’t hurt my feelings whatsoever. I laughed with her. She tried it on and mocked it the whole time. I loved that she enjoyed making fun of it and me.

She’s not into homages, if that’s not already obvious. I, on the other hand, am a homage apologist, which is not a very good thing to be if you fancy yourself a watch collector. A lot has already been said about homages, more bad than good. The hate over homages is something I’m trying to understand but I must admit I never could. But we’re not talking about homages here. It’s just great to not have to pretend to like what others are wearing or wonder what people think about what you’re wearing.

Here’s another baggage: Just because I’m mindful of these nuances in the hobby, I bet I’m gonna get accused of caring too much about what others think. If you think this, you’re missing the point. Yes, I still wear watches for myself. No, I don’t buy watches to impress. No, I don’t care what other people think. Yes, no one cares about my watches but me. I consider myself to be thoughtful. I think about things. Sue me.

The point I’m trying to make is that I get to enjoy the watches I buy more when I’m able to share them with people. Yes yes yes, enjoy the watch for yourself. You know what that’s called right? Starts with M and rhymes with -asturbation.

Now, one might scratch their head and go, “Why not just share your love of watches with your friends who are also into watches?” The short answer is, I don’t have any, with the exception of my vintage gal.

See, I come from poor stock. Third world poor stock. Where I live, watches are still quite a luxury. No one in my circle thinks watches are fun to collect. They’re too expensive to have more than just one of, generally speaking. My circle—friends, family, co-workers—don’t understand why I’m so into them. Well, they do (sometimes) but they won’t be joining the obsession any time soon.

If you have friends that share your love of watches, consider yourself lucky.

What does this have to do with a one-watch collection?

Well, if having a watch collection is a purely masturbatory activity, why do I need more than one? When it comes down to it, why do I need more than one watch for any reason? I’ve thought about it a lot, like I said, for a while now. No, I don’t need or want more than one watch. It just makes life all that much easier and simpler.

That’s another reason to go one and done. The everyday first-world struggle of figuring out what watch to take out of a box full of watches is a burden that had lost its charm. For a while it was exciting to think about which watch matches today’s outfit and activity. Am I expecting rain today? Should I wear a 100 meter water resist beater or an elegant dress watch to go with my navy blue suit? 

I almost dozed off writing that last paragraph. It’s all so boring and tedious now. I know that nobody cares what watch I should wear but me. Except I’m starting to not care myself. Don’t get me wrong. I still love watches. But I find that I could love them without considering ownership. A vintage Omega that’s evenly patinaed and running ever so smoothly can still make me go, “Wow” without me wanting to own it. I’m just happy it exists in the world. 

I should stop here. This post gone on long enough. I think I’ll have to split it into two. Part 2 will focus on the how I’m going to go from multiple watches to a one-watch collection. It should come out relatively soon. I think. I hope.