I had long hair. It wasn’t styled into a man bun or braided or anything, it was just some hair that happened to be on my head. I was very different from my former self once I moved to Pretoria for university. Some political views changed, some remained. My faith did a full 180° rotation. I became interested in stuff like political history, financial literacy, and cigarettes, which thankfully haven’t become a habit.
Now, now, don’t worry, there’s still plenty of the old me left. I haven’t lost much of my “old world” charm. I speak and dress and behave much like someone from the 1960s. Of course, there are parts of me that don’t.
Word reached me that esteemed (that’s subjective, I suppose) brand Audemars Piguet released a jump hour. Before that, Maen and Nico Leonard did a thing. Merkur released a jump hour under their Pierre Paulin brand before them. There are others who did too, which I can’t be bothered to mention for brevity’s sake.
I did it before it was cool. I used to rock a proper vintage Lucerne digital jump hour… when it worked. I bought it for peanuts in 2023. I sold it in 2025 for 4× what I paid for it. A healthy profit, even if it wasn’t a ton of money. I won’t be surprised if vintage jump hour prices begin creeping up like they have always threatened to do.
This is good and bad, I suppose.
Some people will make money. Some people will be stuck with vintage pin-levers that don’t like working very much. Some people will pay a little more and get nice ETA or AS automatic movements that run without issues. I want one of those. A Camy jump hour came up for sale. I didn’t buy it. This may come as a surprise to many of my fellow writers, but I never foresaw my Camy bubble bursting. I bought two recently and sold them on at a decent profit after I serviced them. I am buying two more NOS examples, both automatics on bracelets. Hopefully the seller doesn’t back out on me, because he’s done that before and it really pissed me off. I intend on keeping one and selling the other. I only have my Club-Star because it’s sentimental and my rectangular Camy, because I think it will look nice on my fiancee’s wrist. I don’t have a fiancee, which is why it’s still warm and dry in the watch box. I wear it sometimes.
I can now say that I adopted a trend before it was cool. If I had hindsight, I would have kept the Lucerne longer and sold it later for even more money. That’s just speculation though, which doesn’t always work out well for me.
Maybe I am a pure blooded hipster and soon everyone will start wearing slim dress watches with light dials. That probably won’t happen soon… enjoy the clicky bezels and water resistance you guys.
The Escapement Room 