The Road to 10 Watches

If you’ve been following my watch enthusiast journey on WatchCrunch (sue me, Greg 😉) for any significant length of time, you are likely aware that I have a good number of watches. Presently, I have 24 watches in a wearable condition (working, keeps reasonable time & has a strap or bracelet). Yes, this is sort of a SOTC post, but hopefully the story around it makes it bearable.

When the watch bug really took hold in early 2022, I imagined a limitless collection that encompassed nearly every complication, brand & most countries of origin & didn’t care about wrist time. Now? I’ve found that twenty-four wearable watches are too many for me. Wrist time for a watch is now a concept that matters and I’m trying to figure out why. Is it because I’ve “leveled up” and now am mostly interested in watches of a better quality than Walmart brand or an Invicta? Am I trying to justify the higher cost of some of my acquisitions? Is it because the number 24 is simply too many for me? I think it’s a combination of all, along with the consideration that sometime in the next year or so the wife & I are probably going to be traveling the country while remote working; so space for a 24-watch collection or larger will not be feasible, right? Hold that thought…

Now, granted, I’m not too far off the Walmart & Invicta watches, but I’m definitely trying to acquire better watches (up to $1000, new or used) and not buy just any old watch whenever I feel like it. As of now, I’m trying to reward myself for accomplishments or real milestones with a watch.

Now, regarding the wrist time consideration, I try to give each watch a week on the wrist and if I put them through a “proper” rotation of wearing all of them before repeating, I’d only wear each watch roughly 2 weeks a year. This is unacceptable to me for a couple of reasons; First, as we all know, all watches are not created equal. There’s a price disparity of roughly $10 to millions of dollars to attest to that. I have watches that cost me $10 and I have watches that cost a heckuva lot more than that. I still like most of my watches, but the feeling I get from wearing one of the $10 watches is much different than the feeling I get wearing watches like my Lorier Falcon, Seiko Save The Ocean Tuna & Glycine Airman; the ones that prompt the best feelings deserve the most wrist time. The second reason is that I’m never going to prepare a rotation of which watch to wear and when it needs to be worn. Once the rotation is set, it feels like someone else telling me what to do and it’s my wrist dammit! I’ll wear whatever I want, on whichever strap I want to wear it on, whenever I want. Hell, I’ve even rebelled against the wear a watch for at least a week at a time thing I set in place a few months ago.

So what are the watches that get the most wrist time in my collection? For the last 5.5 months, in order of most worn to “least worn”, it has been my Lorier Falcon (55%)(1)*:

My Seiko Tuna (23%)(3)*:

My Glycine Airman (8%)(2)*:

My Sugess Pilot Chronograph (6%)(4)*:

And my murdered out Casio Royale (5%)(25)*:

The above 5 watches have accrued over 97% of the wrist time on my primary wrist (yes, I occasionally Schwarzkopf) since I acquired my Lorier Falcon in late July, and as you can see, the Falcon & Tuna nearly hit 80% together. So that’s one “segment” of my collection. Pareto Principle, my ass. Haha!

The next easily grouped segment of my collection is a group of 8 watches that are mostly pure novelty (basically toys), and as such, are rarely worn. When I say rarely, I mean probably once every 3-4 months. The 2024 stats show those 8 watches were worn a total of 36 times, or 9.8% of the year; on average about every 3 months each. Yeah, not a lot and these watches basically occupy most of a watch box. Because I’m struggling to shrink the collection, I should probably just get rid of most of, it not all of these 8 watches. The problem is one of these watches is the one I’ve had the longest in still working order, another is an anniversary gift from the wife and another, I just really like the absurdity of it.

If I keep those 3 plus the most worn 5 from above, that gives me eight and the watch box I want to keep going forward is a 10-slot, so I have 2 more spots. However, as you can see from the stats, only 2 of the 5 most worn since acquiring the Falcon even reached a 10% wear rate. Therefore, at least one of those will be leaving.  The departing watch will probably the Sugess, buuut… ST1901 movement, so maybe the Casio? But that’s on track to be my only digital, so the Airman? That’s what I consider my first “real” watch that I almost got in trouble with the wife for buying. So maybe none of those 5 in the most worn category will go? I also have a watch on pre-order to be delivered mid-year, so if I want to get down to 10, all but one of the following watches will need to go; a tall order.

The rest of my wearable collection, 10 additional watches, is slightly more serious. I have a vintage (antique?) Elbon I’ve just had serviced+:

A birth year Timex from when I still imagined a limitless collection & just not in love with the idea of anymore:

A digital Armitron that isn’t as functional as the Casio Royale, but it’s red & goes so well with my game day attire+:

A Timex Expedition I bought because it is a field watch with Indiglo and it ticked two boxes in my previous collection manifesto right before I came to the conclusion that my original direction of the curation of my collection was a little too high-minded for who I am as a person. 

Then there’s the two “Citizen” Mumbai Specials I got for $30 for both. Not bad watches, but when they need a service, I’d rather use that money on a new watch or straps:

The Timex Manhattan that was fun for being sub-$40, but has now been basically replaced by the Elbon & also the watch on pre-order:

There’s also a quartz chronograph from Blacklist, a brand I never see on WatchCrunch that has a broken crystal (might use getting rid of this as an excuse to break my one rule):

And the Citizen EcoDrive Radio Controlled Pilot watch, that could fill a couple of wants in the collection, but I think it’s just too big (46mm x 51mm) for what I want now, but it would be my only EcoDrive if it stayed+:

An Etsy special, that’s just cheap drop-shipped junk, but for now is keeping me from thinking about the 2023 Spinnaker FiftyPhantoms+:

And, ye olde wrist computer… I hate keeping it charged, but it was a gift from the wife+:

I just don’t love most of these watches enough to maintain & keep. Out of these, I’m pretty sure the Elbon is the only wearable watch of these that will be in the box when the sands of the hourglass stop falling on this process.

But here’s the rub, of my current wearable watches, 3 of them are gifts from my wife and all 3 of these are presently on the “To-Go” list. Can I really get rid of these gifts? Would you?

Another fly in the ointment is that no one is making me go through this exercise of paring down the collection but myself. The wife would be totally fine if I decided to keep the collection as it is. She’s even told me that I can do whatever I want with any of the watches she has given me. So it’s just me & my own thoughts going through this sadistic exercise of deciding the fates of my watches & as I’m doing it, I’m finding reasons to keep most of the watches I should get rid of.

For that reason, I am going to do something I should have done long ago & divide the collection into two sub-collections; ‘Horology’ & ‘Others’. The ‘Horology’ collection will be my favorite enthusiast watches & the ‘Others’ will be the not-serious watches & the ones with more sentimental value than horological value.

The Horology Collection

The Others Collection

Making this division may seem like a cop-out (it is); but in the long run, it’s the first step I need to take in order to actually move on from most of these watches. It may not feel like progress to you, dear reader, but it is small progress and sometimes we have to celebrate our small victories to give ourselves the courage to strive for bigger ones.

Keep moving forward, even if you have to go backward to do so. Cheers!

*Numbers in parentheses are the percentage of wrist time & the rank in purchase price in my collection as of this writing.

+ Told you I was capable of rationalizing the retaining of most of these!