Horology or Chronometry || Time + Watches + Clocks || Mechanical || Automatic || Quartz || Obsession

Understanding that time an esoteric, mysterious, continual, non-discrete phenomena & the S.I. unit Second or S manmade or synthetic or artificial, a way of putting unit boxes defined into precise repeatable units for counting using accounting, math, science & technological means & methods, tools devices, the science of time known as Horology, like the cesium fountain atomic clocks at NIST or the National Institute of Standards & technology.

Time one of the 7 fundamental physical quantities in both International System of Units (SI) & International System of Quantities. SI base unit of time is the second, defined by measuring the electronic transition frequency of cesium atoms.

A cheap $15 digital sports watch made almost entirely of polymers or plastics with a B&W LCD display powered by a lithium coin cell like a CR2032 in the eponymous Casio G-Shock line with 10 yr Batteries for example.

One of the most common thoughts that people have "What time is it" along with "I need to pee" "I am hungry" "What should I eat" so we know that timekeeping with watches & clocks a major part of human cultures & societies worldwide today! 

Many cheap plastic gear train quartz fashion watches exist that are powered by tiny SMC377 cheap alkaline batteries and are available for under $30 in a wide variety of styles & looks, that have 1 seconds per month accuracy superior to even high end automatic mechanical watch movement in expensive wristwatches that cost thousands of times more, or what Business Insider calls So Expensive in their aptly named YouTube channel or show. 

So how can elite high end watch companies charge $1000 to $5million for a wristwatch? 

Silicon mainspring, entirely hand made textured movement parts assembled on 50+ jewel bearings with 120 hours of power reserve in an iridium housing accented with platinum & diamonds, attached to a titanium nitride ceramic band with tungsten titanium alloy screw pins electroplated in niobium oxide, with so many complications that it makes the most bag of bee's crazy hair dresser seem of a sound mind by comparison. 

"Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future" according to the related wikipedia entry! 

In a world with so many problems, so much preventable poverty, increasing income inequality, currency inflation debacle, wars, crime & worse, how can anyone pay so much for a wrist watch? 

Brands like Cartier, Vacheron Constantin, Panerai, Rolex, TAG Heuer, Hublot, Breitling, Blancpain, IWC, Schaffhausen, Breguet, Glashutte Original, Audemars Piaget, Piaget, Richard Mille, Ulysse Nardin, Grand Seiko, Tudor, Zenith, Bulgari, Chopard, Girard-Perregaux, Longines, Montblanc, Omega, ETA, Casio, Citizen, Van Cleef & Arpels, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Frederique Constant, Harry Winston, Patek Philippe, MeisterSinger, Verdure Watches. These companies are able to charge customers as much as a nice car, new motorcycle, or in some case a fancy house, for a wristwatch, thats just "Stupid" says my lovely wife Meg, who expands by saying "Even if I had that kind of money, I would rather use that money to help someone else, not wear it on my wrist"

 

Where is actually safe to wear such an expensive wrist ornament in public given the uptick in crimes rates associated with increasing income inequality worldwide? 

You can't not buy enough insurance to replace your life if someone kills you for your wristwatch. If you actually work, wearing anything fancy like that is going to scratch it up or damage it in the real world, and do you really want to subject an expensive piece of handmade mechanical art to conditions in nature that will damage the surface, since to buy something like that means you must be shallow and vain or materialistic and value the appearance of such a contrivance. 

God said in the Bible that "Greed must not even be hinted at among believers, for a person who embraces greed effectively guilty of idolatry, placing vanity, arrogance, narcism, selfish self centered thinking, or a blind eye to the sulfating of other people who are less fortunate, above God. 

In this way greedy people worship or make a false idol out of money & expensive things that that cannot buy their way into heaven. God expands by explaining that a person who habitually sins during life by making greed an idol for example, shall have their name blotted out of the book of life, such that when that person dies and their soul stands before the Lord our God for his Devine supreme fair judgment, he will say to them "Go away from me, I do not know you" casting them into hell with Satan and the other demons who defied God long ago. 

You have been forwarded. If you engage in greed, sexual perversion, lust, unclean acts, or give in to the temptations of your flesh repeatedly as a lifestyle of habitual sins without ever repenting to God, you have virtually no chance of eternal or everlasting life in Heaven with God after your human body on Earth dies. 

Noting that your soul is not your body, your mind is not your brain, you the person is not made of chemical elements or ordinary matter, you, the soul who is reading this are made of energy encoded with information, and in this way have something in common with God, for the Lord Our God is made of unending unimaginable energy of unlimited power, mind, and supreme knowledge about all in all realms, who is simultaneously present or ever present or omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent, above all other gods, as the oldest ancient being in all dimensions & legal owner of all existence in all realms, the alpha  the omega, the beginning & the end. 

Anything that exists in any realm only exists because it is Gods unmerited divine favor or will that it should exist. In this way our bodies & this world are on loan to us from God, and he told us to take Good Care of the Earth as Stewards of Ecosystems, describing polluters of this world as evil perverse people who serve the kingdom of Hell or Satan, for most polluters are polluting to increase their profits since doing what they do in an eco-friendly ethical or socially responsible way costs slightly more.

I collect modest price street watches as a man, starting with a yellow single line LCD Casio sports watch that my Nextdoor neighbor Carol Mayo got me from Costco in 1990. I have lost a lot of my cheap quartz watches that I collected as a teenage, more were lost to accidents that broke the mineral crystal & let water in shorting out & corroding the movement or bricking the watch. 

My latest watch made of 316L Stainless Steel with Synthetic Sapphire Lens Covering the Dial & Exposition Movement Screw-Down Case-back. A mass produced Miyota 8215 movement powers the watch as wearer movements undulate the swinging weight that Automatically Winds the mainspring featuring 42 hours of power reserve, all for only $88 all said shipped with tax, as the BERNY Classic with a retro Railway or Subway Clock style full luminous dial. So under a hundred for a nice automatic made with a quality reliable & relatively accurate for its price automatic movement, that never needs a battery.

BERNY Classic MIYOTA 8215
"Black" Pewter "Gun Metal" Color

Though almost no one will have such a watch professionally serviced since the cost of such a service exceeds the price of buying a new one. 

Some DIY watch enthusiasts like me will take them apart, clean & lubricate the moment & then put everything back together slowly and precisely to increase the useful life of such since many mechanical & automatic wrist watches are heirloom quality & often passed down in family generations as nostalgic examples, like the 10K gold Tiffany mechanical that my dad got from his dad who got it as a 25 Year employee retention bonus gift in 1964 from National Distillers & Chemical Company of Ohio. It a manual wind spring drive movement with Tiffany branding & jeweled bearings, with fancy finishing of the parts, that is pressure fit together. 

If you saw my personal wrist watch collection, you might think I am crazy. What's more insane is all the examples that are missing, from Fossil to Timex & Casio, many many were lost to accidents, breakage, theft, loss & other causes over the years. I accidentally left my the stem pulled on my Swatch Watch & took a shower, which let water into the polymer case. I had a 10w desk lamp with a halogen bulb covered by glass protective slide from IKEA, and set the swatch water on there to warm it to dry out the water, since it was still working with water inside. I got a phone call & was distracted & came back to find it melted over the lamp, smoking up my room with plastic vapor, forcing me to unplug the lamp, open the window, close door, turn the pedestal fan on blowing air out one window as the other window was open to let fresh air in. I left the room to vent for and hour or so, then carefully scraped the melted watch off the lamp & restored the lamp, but the Swatch watch was beyond repair. Some bicycle crashes claimed various Timex models that I purchased retail at Target. 

In 1990 at the age of 7, Carrol Mayo bought me my first wrist watch, a yellow Cassio with single line of B&W LCD time, 10 year CR2032 battery, black resin strap, that actually run for 22 years without a battery change due to the hyper efficient digital quartz movement & low power display. I wore it on my left wrist perpetually, and the band was big enough that is lasted fitting until I was nearly 29 years old. I am not sure what ended up happening to it. I replaced it with a Timex Ironman that I bought at Target for $40 on sale. 

Current Personal Watch Collection Oldest to Newest 

1999 SKAGEN of Denmark 233LTTNN Titanium w/ Stainless steel Milanese loop, elegant no second hand, just minutes & hours, with Japanese Quartz & 3ATM water resistance. $100 back then. 

2002 Citizen Eco-Drive Titanium Chronograph H500 movement. I changed out the lithium titanate battery in 2022 for $15 that I purchased on Amazon, since the original battery was super weak. A dive watch with 200M water resistance, its rotating bezel also acts a time with the minute hand. It has a stop watch chronometer quartz movement made in Japan out of Grade 5 titanium. OEM price was $399, I got it for $199 on Sale at Macys. I really like the locked clasp mechanism of the titanium band, but lost the box with replacement links & it's a little small for my current wrist size & already fully adjusted. I looked into replacing the band, but it costs more than I paid for the watch to get a new band with all the links. 

2006 Citizen Eco-Drive Chandler from Ryan at Dacels Jewelry, long time friend of mine, it was his first cool watch, so he sold it to me for $100 out of a case filled with German & Swiss Automatic watches that cost $2000-$8000. I ended up misplacing this one & ordered a new one to replace in in 2020, but then ended up finding it, so now I have two that are remarkably similar, with vastly different serial numbers & H100 vs H101 movements. 

2007 I was browsing watches on Overstock.com & found a small 36mm while dial silver hand stainless steel Seiko 5 with AUTOMATIC 21 JEWEL 7S26A Japanese movement, & sadly no hand winding, it must be worn to wind up the mainspring with the balance wheel spinning from arm movements as a kinetic energy recovery mechanism that powers all automatic watches this way. More modern movements like the 4R36 feature hacking so you can wind it by hand without even pulling out the stem. This was my first mechanical automatic watch & set a trend for watch preferences going forward. $50 back then. 

2008 STUHRLING Original skeletonized 20 JEWEL Caliber ST90089 movement on a black leather strap band, though the first one we ordered from Jewelry TV had a rotor balance wheel the scraped against the back glass, so this one was the replacement. $100 back then. 

2009 Casio TheG G-SHOCK model GW5600J Tough Solar Digital 2924 with 20Bar Water Resistance. In 2018 I replace the resin strap, since the original was cracking & wearing out. Made in Thailand, with Shock Absorbing Structure screw back made of stainless steel. $80 back then. 

2015 Apple WATCH SERIES 1 38MM Aluminum Case ION-X Glass * COMPOSITE BACK WR-IPX7 with white resin strap, though many aftermarket straps were used with it, and carried forward to newer Apple Watches. $349 back then

2019 Apple WATCH SERIES 5 40MM ALUMINUM & CERAMIC CASE ION-X GLASS GPS WR50M that Meg now wears as her daily, with a white zirconia & SS band. $499 back then. 

2021 Invicta Pro Diver 3044 with Seiko NH35A 24JEWEL Japanese automatic movement in a giant heavy stainless steel case with 300M water resistance. This the largest heaviest and most manly of all my watches & garners compliments galore when I am wearing it in the real world. It was only $100.

2021 Citizen Eco-Drive Chandler H101 to replace the misplaced original 2006 H100 model, then I found the original, so I have both, though the mineral glass scratched on the original not the newer one. They are both still working with original batteries. $168 back then. 

2021 BODERY Titanium Case 50M WR BDA001T Automatic Movement of 21 JEWELS with 72 hours of power reserve, while the skeletonized movement really beautiful & you can see how wound the main spring is by looking into it as you wear it or hand wind it, using hacking even while its running :) Meg really like this one with the textured leather band & beautifully polished case, for $200 it was a great deal compared to similar watches with same amount of power reserve. The skeletonized movement very beautiful, but legibility sucks & the LUME not the best quality in terms of light maintenance. On the up side staring it harder to read the time helps to see all the polishing & finishing details in the movement. I think this my coolest watch overall. 

2021 Casio 5302 AE-1500WH 10BAR WR inverted LCD & Resin Strap for $15 on Amazon as a throwback to my first Casio watch. The CR2032 coin cell powers this for 10 years. 

2022 Apple WATCH SERIES SE (Original) ALUMINUM & CERAMIC CASE ION-X GLASS GPS WR 50M on a $10 Milanese band from Amazon, that required constant fiddling to keep it snug. $299 back then. 

2022 MARATHON WATCH GENERAL PURPOSE QUARTZ MIL-PRF 46374G 6645-01-318-9833 WW194004DT 25 MILLICURIES NRC ID 54-28526-01E GS-14F-002K CAGE 38776 CTRL No. 39062030 SER: A/0793DT with ETA high torque Quartz & Swiss Made GTLS self luminous tritium lights at the hours and on the hour & minute hand. 12 O'CLOCK unit orange color while all the other lamps are green. It is the US GOVERNMENT H3 model nearly identical to the one that I was given as an agent when serving missions in the Middle East 2003-2006 as an information technology G12S contracted scientist working with the ARMY special rangers, doing missing in IRAN mostly to take out information technology infrastructure to inhibit or slow down the Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program. Ironic given that tritium gas decay electron emissions hit the phosphors on the glass vials to produce light so you can read the watch in low light conditions, nearly dark since they are not very bright and reach 50% brightness after 12.5 years. 

2022 Seiko SRPD59 Seiko 5 Sports Men's Watch Silver-Tone 42.5mm Stainless Steel 10BAR WR & Bright Metallic Orange Dial. I love this one & wear it daily many days of the week left wrist normal. $243.59 back then. 

2023 Apple WATCH SERIES 8 in 41MM ALUMINUM & CERAMIC CASE ION-X GLASS GPS WR50M for $499. This is my daily on a ULTRA DEEP PROFESSIONAL ULTIMAL orange & black breathable velcro band strap. I wear it upside down on the inside of my right wrist. 

2024 BERNY Classic Automatic Watch for Men Mechanical Self Wind Wristwatch MIYOTA 8215 Movement Stainless Steel Strap 5ATM Waterproof Full Luminous Dial Railroad Watches, Pewter Case. $88.00 total all said including tax & shipping, as my latest watch. 

That's about $3600 worth of watches that I paid for out of pocket, not including the ones not mentioned that I inherited from my late father, late brother in law, grandpa & other people who died who left me their watches knowing I am a watch collector. All said about 23 total though at least one missing in action somewhere, or it would be 24. 

Currently there is a memorandum of understanding moratorium between my wife & I about not acquiring any more watches, since the collection already vast enough to keep my left wrist stylish no matter what the occasion. I always wear the latest Apple Watch on my right wrist & actually watches on my left wrist. Sometimes in the watch community this is known as double wrist-ing.