One-horned cows.

Earlier this week, I sent a video to a teacher at my school via Instagram. It was a short video with the text “Today we will spell our names backwards.’ Kid named woc denroh eno:” and a video of a one-horned cow. Very random and strange, but that’s on-brand for my sense of humour.

She found my message so interesting she’s reading it to this day.

Anyhow, I see the one-horned cow as the perfect spirit animal for my watch collection. The term “unicorn” is thrown around a lot when referring to rare watches. Some use it better than others. Now, some may think that this term is silly, because unicorns don’t exist, but I actually believe in unicorns. I also cry knowing about the gender pay gap. (I am 6’4″, listen to Lana Del Rey and I am also single.)

Some folks have described a few of my watches as being unicorns. Pardon me lathering myself with praise, but I do own a handful of watches that are quite special. My Nivada Antarctic, for instance, is a very rare configuration of an already somewhat uncommon watch. Some of my watches aren’t unicorns per se; I am, from this point onwards, calling them one-horned cows. They’re about as rare as a unicorn, but not really as special or valuable.

Take my Ernest Borel Chamber of Mines Safety watch. Considering that just about every mine in much of South Africa gave out one every year, they weren’t all too rare. They are not at all common nowadays, because no one took care of them, thus very few are left in working condition. It’s not a particularly valuable watch, (although it has a waterproof stainless steel case and an ETA 2783, which make it well-built and reliable) but it is rare. They don’t go for unicorn money when they pop up for sale, but they are just as rare.

My Bucherer Chronometer, Lanco Tropical, and Junghans stopwatch all fit this bill too. As I have learnt by the interest on my Chrono24 listings for the former two, they are rare, but not necessarily sought-after. One-horned cows.

This was a long and probably confusing way of saying something that we all know already. Scarcity ≠ value. I am one in eight billion, and I’m still a piece of s***.