you are trapped in here with us
To: janjenson69@hotmail.com From: Ian.Farnworth@bwcm.uk Subject: British Watchmakers’ Day Dear Mr. Jenson: Thank you for your interest in participating in the scheduled British Watchmakers’ Day. I am sorry to inform you that your brand, TrollDeep, does not qualify as a British Watchmaker. Independent of where TrollDeep’s watches are manufactured, you have incorporated in the Faroe Islands… Continue reading Missing the show
This is how my mind operates. I casually troll auction sites and vintage online retailers. I am committed to not buying anything. I see a 1940’s military style watch from a brand that I don’t know. It is a 1940’s automatic so I assume a Felsa or an A. Schild lurks inside. I have been… Continue reading Cheap watches, cheap history
Greg: Here is my topic du jour: What watch do you own that you have “fallen out of love with”? Why do you think that you have? And what do you plan to do about it? Mine is my Chaika Stadium watch. A couple of years ago I went on a Soviet watch kick. I… Continue reading It’s not you, it’s the Round Table (No. 11)
I come not to praise Bulova, but to bury it. I have a problem with modern Bulova. Every time that I see this or that enthusiast enthuse about their newest Jet Pilot or Mil-ships I want to stick my nose in and puncture their joy. It is a reflex that I have resisted so far.… Continue reading Table for one: a Bulova reproach
The following is another in an occasional series of The Escapement Rooms interviews. Tramelan, Switzerland. In a small, prefabricated building at 14 Rue des Sucettes is Doilea, S.A., a small but important part of the Swiss watch industry. Its founder, and today seemingly its only employee, Al Doilea sits behind a large desk in a… Continue reading The Escapement Room Interview: Mr. 60%
(What follows is not about watches. I could have tried a weak attempt to make some watch related reference, but it would have been transparently bad. At all historical times alluded to below you may assume that I wore a Fossil "Blue" with a green dial and a yellow fixed bezel. I am not ready… Continue reading A Man of His Time
When I was sixteen years old, I worked in a fast food restaurant in suburban Maryland. I took my job very seriously and figured it out in short order. My best friend, an older schoolmate of seventeen, and I were so good that eventually with a manager running the cash register, we could do an… Continue reading Learning curve
We are back for the second installment of the occasional Escapement Room series “Ask a Watch Collector Anything”. We have collected a variety of questions and put them to Steven Kolchak, the marketing director for a plumbing supply company in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Steve is fifty-one and collects everything from luxury Swiss brands to… Continue reading Ask a Watch Collector Anything (Vol. Two)
Greg: I thought that we could talk about collecting goals for the next year. As collectors (not enthusiasts) where do we think that we are going? Do we have goals? Ambitions? What is on the horizon? I think that I am going to be less impulsive. There is still the joy of finding something undervalued… Continue reading Round Table No. 10: Boys Club
The first day of January is one where we frequently look back at the previous year and forward to the one to come. (The Roman god Janus had two faces for a reason, maybe.) Here I will discuss what I learned about myself this year (I am dictating this while staring at my visage in… Continue reading It was a year, the year that was
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