My birth year was the year that we lost Buster Keaton and gained Salma Hayek. Kwame Nkrumah lost control of Ghana. The Black Panthers were founded. The Flintstones left the air. Walt Disney died just before the first Kwanzaa. This was the year that we first saw It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! and How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
Is one of those my “birth year” cartoon special? Is Mike Tyson my “birth year” athlete? Is my “birth year” automobile this Thunderbird:
I have owned a ’68 and like the styling of the 1968 better. In my birth year they were still producing this car that was “unsafe at any speed” and G.M. was harassing the originator of that phrase:
Why would I want that?
The 1967 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary (R&R) Recording was given to a song that reached number one on the American charts (#2 in the UK) the previous year (my birth year): Winchester Cathedral. That’s right, a novelty meant to evoke ever hip Rudy Vallee won the Grammy. Is that my “birth year” song? Oh, not close.
In what area of my life would I consider the necessity of owning something just because it happens to be as old as me? None. The 1965 National Book Award winner was Saul Bellow’s Herzog. In 1967 it was Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer. I liked both of them; the one in between, not for me.
So, why the fascination with birth year watches. What exactly are you commemorating? You have you as evidence that you were born. You have wrinkles and scars (and in my case distinguished looking gray sideburns) to let you know your age. Hopefully, you still get a card or two.
No particularly interesting watches were introduced in my birth year. I like mid-1960’s styling and I own some watches from that era, but I don’t need to track down a Bulova movement code to get to the exact year. A birth year watch is merely a pretext to justify owning another watch. I don’t need to engage in such subterfuge. I can own what I want. Adult decisions, and all of that. To the birth year watch, I say “Pshaw”.
(This is “my” team. The fact that it is a birth year team is a coincidence.)
The Escapement Room 
I have a birth year watch I bought about 2 years ago. It’s not a great watch. It barely functions, needs maintenance.
It’s just like me.
I think the draw for me towards a birth year (or most any vintage watch outside of the design aesthetic) is to own something my parents might have bought, owned and used.
It’s been 34 years without my Dad & 29 without my Mom; 65% & 54% of my life, respectively. So maybe for me it’s about trying to reclaim a little bit of what I’ve lost.
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Of all the cockamamie things watch nerds do, pursuit of a “birth year watch” for … reasons (?) truly takes the cake. These rubes can really be sold just about anything.
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