Yes most of these crowd funded watches have cheap Chinese movements inside, and it's no surprise since the factories where these are made are in China. If you look at any of these and the people who are behind them are being honest (not all of them are) you will see that they are often labeled "Designed in XXXXX" and not "Made in XXXXX" In some cases they would be breaking the law if they said "Made In USA" because the watches clearly are not being made in the US (or other country).

I actually get emails from these watch companies stating they can either make watches for me to my own design, or I can simply pick from hundreds of design elements they have in stock to create my own custom watch. These emails usually go where they belong - in the Spam folder.

If you read the crowd funding sites for these watches, rarely will you get any real technical information, but more on design philosophy and their own personal inspiration, sometimes that can be very strange, at least to me. One Canadian one I saw recently is "inspired" by mitochondrial disease...mmmm...okay I guess.

These watches will not be worth repairing when the time comes (monetarily speaking anyway), and if you need spare parts in the future, well good luck with that. I doubt the people who are behind these crowd funded watches are thinking of support for their brand down the road. Are they keeping seals, crown, hands, dials, etc. in stock? Not likely. I'll bet you 99% of these people have never touched a watch movement, so likely if something goes wrong, the only thing they will offer you is a replacement, if they have not sold all the stock they bought.

It's an interesting fad at the moment, but not sure long term how this sort of thing will hold up once people realize they watches they have bought are pretty close to be disposable.

Cheers, Al

 

Interesting topic, and as far as I know correct in asserting that Chinese watches are crap. However, make no mistake, if someone in China chose to make an ultra-high-quality watch (or pretty much anything else) they could do so, provided you institute sufficient quality control to make sure that they don't scrimp or outright cheat you when they think you're not looking. I don't think they even find this immoral, to their way of thinking it's just common sense to make more money any way you can. (moral: don't stop watching, at all, ever.)

 

Just to clarify, if you are referring to comments made by me, I never asserted this. I simply said that the majority of the crowd funded watches use cheap Chinese movements, certainly not that all Chinese watches are crap.

And of course there are already some higher end watches made in China. Most of what we see on forums are the cheap watches, but even Seagull has made a nice repeater, which I think runs in the $15k range or so.

Cheers, Al

 

I did not intend to misquote you. Sorry if I gave that impression

 

Not a NATO, but I thought I'd show this while we are sort of on the subject... Nomos with mesh bracelet ( and Rolex end links to fill the unsightly gap... talk about a Franken-Strap! ). I think I have a strap addiction - this is the sixth that this one has been on ( three horween colors, a beige velour, a brown suede Hodinkee and this ). I'm rolling with it for a while - I think the all metal look is appropriately teutonic!

 

By the way, ever notice how often 'non-watch-addicts' seem to comment/compliment more often on the watch strap than the watch itself?! Sort of like the watch equivalent of when you ask your wife "What kind of car was it?" and she says "A blue one..."

 

Agree, that really nice combo conveys a genuine teutonic look!
And you managed to find a great solution for the long lugs, how did you come up with that idea?

 

Thanks! I had a pair of the George Yeo links that just arrived for my 1675, and just thought "I wonder..." They are actually 1mm too short, but hardly noticeable. George is seeing if any of the other models would fit better (paying attention to case curvature too). I love this watch, but my absolute least favorite thing about it is the massive gap to the strap!

 

I think this is the most common (and maybe only) complaint about Nomos, that distance from the case to the strap is pretty large (if not huge for some models ). I've also ordered a couple mesh straps for mine, looking forward to see how they will fit overall. I'm hopping that for my Nomos, being a 35mm, the distance will be proportionately smaller than in your case, so maybe no end links would be necessary.

 

While waiting for those mesh bracelets, here are a couple pics on leather:

Brown croco (strap bought via ebay)


Brown ostrich with blue stitching (100% hand made from a friend in my home country)

 

Beautiful watch. If I had to buy a new watch, this would probably be it. I think the Croc works best IMHO Also nice to see a limited edition for "charity" that isn't ugly. Nice and understated.

 

Because I like to also check out other options and I find the Nomos strap to be a bit dull (although it's a good quality strap).

 

I just stumbled upon this thread. May I ask where you got that Nato strap, please?

 

To go back to the first post, the first nato with the nomos looks really good. But to me this nomos on almost any strap would look ready for casual jeans and t-shirt . Unless you had it on a gold strap with diamonds previously .

 

Sorry, I don't remember. As far as I can remember, cheapnotastraps.come is a good source, yet I don't recall if I come it from them or from any other place...