A beginner's guide to buying a watch
Which watch?
Okay, but which watch to buy? How hard can it be to pick one? There are only 1.2 billion of them made each year, so the choice should be simple. However, it's anything but. If the world of watches was an ecosystem, it would be one defined by an insane mutation rate. Every year, all manner of makes, models, marks, and variants are released that are aimed at a bewildering number of markets and sub-markets. Worse, the categories tend to blur due to the fact that fashion plays to large a part in watch design and many models borrow ideas from others.
Even purely technological categories can meld into one another. For example, there are digital movements and there are mechanical movements, but then there are hybrid digital mechanical movements. There are also digital displays, analog displays, and digital/analog displays. Then there's … you get the idea.
This blending has become even more marked by the introduction of gender-neutral watches that bridge the gap between traditional men's and women's watches as women adopt more masculine styles. In fact, the world of watches is so surprisingly large that if you try to make up your mind by studying all the watches available before making your decision, you won't buy a timepiece for many years.
The much better way is to ask yourself what you want out of it. Is it just something that tells time? Is it a fashion accessory? A status symbol? Is it supposed to tell the world something about you? Do you want it for work? Sport? Play? Is accuracy important? What about functions? Durability? And, of course, price.
In a sense, the best way to look for a watch is to look at yourself. Are you the sort of person who would be happy with a $10,000 Omega? Would you be comfortable with a massive sportwatch designed to survive a hammer blow? Or would you prefer something elegant and delicate? Or do you want one to show that you've gone up in the world?
Of course, there are some very basic rules to help. You don't wear a Mickey Mouse watch with a power business suit, a garish orange sports watch with a dinner jacket, or a diamond-studded dress watch with yoga pants. Beyond that, let's look at some of the options in general terms, starting with the basic types of wristwatches
The field watch
The field watch is a good one to start with because it's the descendant of the first practical wristwatches. Up until the turn of the 20th century, watches were occasionally installed in bracelets as ladies' jewelry, but these were very inaccurate and prone to breakage because the mechanisms weren't very sturdy. They were for show and little else. Meanwhile, there were a few novelty wristwatches for hunters or aviators, but these weren't very popular.
Dive watch
Also called a diving or diver's watch, this is the major watch category and probably the most recognizable "tool" or sports watch. That is, a watch designed for a specific occupation or activity. Like the field watch, the dive watch was developed to meet a need. Specifically, a watch that could be worn by deep sea and scuba divers at increasingly greater depths and still function.
Aviator
Another watch associated with dash and romance is the aviator or aviation watch. These actually predate the birth of the wristwatch as we know it by almost 10 years. In 1906, the Brazilian aviator Alberto Santos Dumont complained to his friend, master watchmaker Louis Cartier, that he couldn't operate the controls of his plane and check his pocket watch at the same time. Cartier came up with a watch with a leather strap that he called the Santos-Dumont wristwatch, which was first sold to the general public in 1911.
GMT
The GMT watch was first developed for aviators by the Rolex company at the request of Pan American Airways for its international flight crews. Introduced in 1954, the GMT answered a growing problem for an air transport industry that was beginning to enter the jet age. With new aircraft capable of leaping across whole oceans in a matter of hours at just under the speed of sound, it was becoming increasingly easy for pilots to become confused about what time it was where.
Driving watch
Also called a racing watch, the driving watch was developed between the First and Second World Wars to meet the needs of increasingly sophisticated and competitive race car drivers. Because racing, and especially rally racing, places such importance on timekeeping, driving watches are not only rugged, they also include functions like chronographs (especially with lap timers) and tachymeters for measuring the speed of a vehicle against a measured mile or kilometer.
Dress watches
On the other end of the horological scale from tool watches are dress watches, though, as we've seen, they can overlap. Dress watches value looks over practicality and are often worn as open statements of wealth and status that are hidden beneath a facade of simplicity. They tend to be thin, sleek, light and are generally designed to make an understatement rather than a splash. Think a Bentley rather than a Ferrari.Fashion watches
Fashion watches arose in the 1980s out of a fit of desperation as the Swiss watch industry faced utter collapse. Despite being a pioneer in the field, Switzerland was caught completely off guard by the quartz revolution of the 1970s when quartz movements and digital displays caused the average cost of a wristwatch to plummet while producing pieces of unprecedented precision for the price.
Within a few years, Swiss dominance of the world watch market collapsed. World-renowned firms were closing their doors or merging, and the entire industry depended on handouts from the Swiss government just to survive.
Bangers
Bangers are watches for everyday wear and are the watch world equivalent of the rabbit as opposed to the field watch's fox. As predators, foxes survive by being roughly built with strong muscles and dense bones, so they can chase down prey. Rabbits, on the other hand, have relatively weak muscles and fragile bones. They survive by reproducing so quickly and in such numbers that a reasonable number of their progeny survive.
Smartwatches
This being the 21st century, there's another type of watch on the market that may be as radical a change as the introduction of the quartz caliber. Smartwatches are essentially wrist-worn, touchscreen computers that have roots giving back to the early 1980s, but started to appear in their present form about 10 years ago.
The works
So far, we've touched on the major watch categories, but what about the details? Obviously, one thing to consider are functions. Do you need a simple watch? How simple? Not even a second hand? What about telling the day? Date? Day of the week? Or maybe you want something more complex like a chronograph, a tachymeter, or a tide indicator.
What to look for in a watch
So what specifics should you look for in a watch? We've already talked about how it should fit your lifestyle and have the functions you want and none of the ones you don't, but what specifics should you be on the alert for?
One obvious factor is the cost. Watches have never varied more in price, ranging cheap enough to give away at cinemas to fetching a million dollars at auction for a collectors item. That may seem daft, but a wristwatch is one of those items where the price is whatever the market will bear. So, the best advice is to pick a watch that fits your budget and seems worth the price. What that is is up to you. I've seen someone hopping up and down with glee as he went to pick up the Rolex that he'd scrimped a decade to afford, and I've also known others who think that anyone who spends more than $10 on a watch is barking mad.
Another top factor to consider is legibility. My previous watch was a very stylish dress watch that looked great and was reasonably priced but the elegant hour, minute and second hands were so easy to confuse for one another that I always looked like I was pointedly staring at my watch when I was just trying to figure out the time. A watch that's hard to read is like a hypercar that you can't fit into. It may be fantastic, but it's also pointless.
By the same token, a watch should be comfortable to wear. If it gouges into your wrist or keeps catching on things, then putting it on in the morning won't be much of a pleasure. In addition, consider the watch's size. A big watch will probably be less comfortable and will look silly on a small wrist. On the other hand, too small a watch might be harder to read and will look equally silly on a large wrist. The best rule of thumb is to find a watch that is proportional to you – especially if it's being worn on business or formal occasions.
Flip it over
If you're looking for a watch that's a little more on the pricey side, there are a few hallmarks that you can be on the lookout for. Flip the watch over and study the case back for a few minutes. If your watch has a case made of gold or silver, it may have actual hallmarks to certify the metal's purity. Other certifications can show that your watch meets the standard to be marked Swiss Made, that it meets official chronometer standards, or that it's made to government specifications for military issue.
Weight and accuracy
If your watch is in the medium to expensive range, it should be heavy for its size. This doesn't just apply to a deep-sea dive watch, but for any timepiece down to a small lady's watch. Even the smallest should have some heft to it compared to a cheap one of the same width.Accuracy is another thing to look for. Today's quartz movements are so accurate that they can be used for celestial navigation, but mechanical watches can vary a good deal with an accuracy within seconds per day, month, or year showing the quality of the movement. Swiss-made watches are tested by the Official Swiss Chronometer Testing Institute and are accurate to within 10 seconds per day.
Another way to judge accuracy in a mechanical watch is by looking at the seconds hand. On a quartz watch, the stepping motor makes the seconds hand shift in steady one-second beats, but in mechanical watches, the beats can be several times a second. This can be seen in the seconds hand. The quartz beats one second, then another, then another. In a mechanical watch, the hand will move five, 10, or even 20 times per second. If it beats enough times, the hand looks like that of an electric wall clock and seems to move in a single, smooth sweep – an indication of a very precise, accurate movement.
Branding
Like other consumer goods, watches are often known by their brands as much as their specifications or looks. And, like clothes, motorcars, and wine, it's often the label you're paying for rather than the quality. This is particularly the case with some upmarket timepieces being mass produced, yet commanding prices with an alarming markup. But that doesn't mean brands aren't worth paying for. They often do matter. This is more so with watches because they also include reputations for craftsmanship and even a certain legendary quality as some watches and brands become interwoven with famous figures, historical events, and technical milestones. Owning the same brand of watch as James Bond or Buzz Aldrin or Sir Edmund Hillary can be and often is a major selling point.
Then there's the protective nature of branding. We've already mentioned the term "Swiss Made." To stamp this on a watch, it has to pass the very rigid standards that Switzerland imposes to protect the watch industry's reputation. Over 26 million watches are made by Swiss companies each year. That's a tiny percentage of the world's total, but it also represents half the total dollar value of the world watch trade.
Those two words, Swiss Made, can immediately bump the price of a watch up by 20 percent. To justify this, 60 percent of the production costs of a watch must be based in Switzerland, half the value of the parts must be from Swiss-made components, 60 percent of making the movement must be done in Switzerland, as must all the technical development for the watch and its movement.
A word about fakes
One very important thing to remember is that once you get into the more expensive watches, fakes become a real problem. Thanks to the internet, cheap international travel, and a penchant for certain countries to indulge in consumer piracy, it's easy to get suckered into buying a counterfeit watch. It's a billion-dollar business and a highly illegal one. Show Search Fakes can range from very competent forgeries that would require a practiced eye and a look at the movement to spot, to cheap knock offs with the date window turning out to be a sticker, to Frankenstein watches cobbled together from the parts of several others.
The simplest way to deal with fakes is to remember that if a deal is too good to be true, it probably is. If someone online is trying to fob off an Omega Seamaster and wants only $50 for it, then it's almost certainly a counterfeit and worth a tenth of what's asked. The two best ways of avoiding fakes is to first, always buy from a trusted dealer. Legitimate shops that only offer discounts within a reasonable percentage of the regular price are highly unlikely to be dealing in fakes, as are those who deal regularly in vintage or second-hand watches. Even eBay, which used to have a problem with fakes, has become much more trustworthy these days.
The second way to deal with fakes is to do your homework. If you're going to invest money in a watch, learn all you can about the ones you want. See one in person, feel the heft of it, note the details. Many watches have crystals in the back, so you can see the movement. That means you can check to see if the proper caliber has been swapped for a phony. The basic rule of thumb is that, while a fake might deceive on its own, when it's compared to the real thing, it will generally look as crude as it is.
If you find yourself tempted to buy a fake, keep in mind that there is an alternative in the form of homage watches. Watchmakers aren't well covered by copyright laws, so their designs are easy to legitimately copy to a surprising degree. As a result, many companies create watches that are very similar to a luxury item with the exception of the logo and a few minor details. Unlike fakes, these are above board and are generally as well made as any other watch in their price range.
A personal choice
We're not going to claim that the above is a comprehensive buyer's guide to wristwatches. We've ignored many kinds of watches and the bewildering overlap between them, as well as the fact that watch manufacturing is marked by technical innovation, fashion-crazed design explosions, and major brands making improvements to classic watches over decades. To do justice to the entire field would require several very thick books, a library of videos, and much patience. At the end of the day, it comes down to the fact that a watch is a very personal purchase. Chosen wisely, it can quickly become a prized possession or a cherished gift. Chosen poorly and it can end up lost in the back of a junk drawer. The secret is to know what you want, what you want to say about yourself or the person the watch is meant for, and what you can afford, then doing some research to make sure you pick the right timepiece. This might be as simple as skimming an online catalog for a few minutes, or as complicated as hunting down that elusive "grail" watch over a period of years. But it's worth the effort.
After all, you are buying time.
June 11, 2018
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