Has the internet potentially shortened your watch collecting longevity?

[M'Bob]

I was prompted by noticing how many people come and go on forums like this one: there is a burst of enthusiastic activity, then many people just never come back.

Could this be the reason:

The point? Pre-internet, you wanted knowledge, you got on the phone and called people. You canvassed antique and jewelry stores for the occasional find. And when you struck gold, it was was so gratifying.

The easy access we have to get every horology question answered in a few seconds, and our ability to buy watches or parts with equal alacrity I fear is having the effect of both lessening our joy, and shortening our collecting lives.

 

[Matty01]

You make a mighty good point methinks… I spent quite a bit of time here- then disappeared for 4 years, but that said am back and a regular visitor- and members here have helped with my most recent acquisitions…
To be fair there is almost no chance I’d know what I do about vintage watches without the internet (and specifically this site) and I’d be quite unlikely to have more that one watch…
Pictured 4 watches, 2 prior to taking a break, 2 post

 

[M'Bob]

I have of course neglected to include the small, sub-group of friendships that have been forged by the connections that the internet allows.

 

[Larry S]

Well, without the internet, I would still be wearing disposable quartz sports watches and I certainly would not have a wife giving me the stink eye whenever watches, audio gear, records/cd’s are discussed. My doom scrolling would be done via print media. That said overall I think the internet is mostly a good thing by connecting people and information. Perhaps it can be a bit like a sugar high though when it comes to pouring gas on the collecting fire.

 

[Modest_Proposal]

The internet makes you feel like any question you ask has been asked before and answered - and any collection you have will never be good enough.

Very hard to feel like you're contributing knowledge that way.

This makes collecting feel less like a community service (since it's all plainly been done before, but better, and by more experienced people with nicer cameras) and more like a selfish, pointless pursuit.

What we sometimes forget is that contributing to an online community comes in many forms and we don't need a collection or expertise to do it. The internet has done more good than harm, imo.

Edited: Sep 22, 2023

 

[Larry S]

Modest_Proposal

The internet makes you feel like any question you ask has been asked before and answered - and any collection you have will never be good enough.

Very hard to feel like you're contributing knowledge that way.

This makes collecting feel less like a community service (since it's all plainly been done before, but better, and by more experienced people with nice cameras) and more like a selfish, pointless pursuit.

What we sometimes forget is that contributing to an online community comes in many forms and we don't need a collection or expertise to do it. The internet has done more good than harm, imo.

Welcome to the hive mind. I believe one needs to maintain a sense of distance and self interest to avoid such feelings.

 

[pdxleaf]

There was a cartoon somewhere that basically noted that we have a device in our pockets with all the world's knowledge and we use it to look at pictures of cats.

It kindof depends. It is amazing that you can type any obscure question and someone has an answer. "How do I change the ignition module on a 1988 VW Vanagon?" 13 videos and 50 posts in random sites. The internet has helped me fix a lot of cars and do a lot of plumbing projects.

Overall, I don't miss the days when i had to wait for a college catalogue to come in the mail to try to decide where to go for school, or picking up free pennysavers to search for a used bike near me or try to find an apartment.

The downside for me is less of the loss of satisfaction and more the compulsive need to keep digging.

The nice thing about watches is that there is so much to learn or to try to find answers for. The internet does not hinder that for me or take away the satisfaction of finding answers. The negative is that it exposes me to so many different watches that it's overwhelming and I sometimes miss the time when I had one Speedmaster and was blissfully content in my uninformed state.

 

[itsjustausername]

I hear what you’re saying, I think. The satisfaction of the discovery process was a much slower pace back in the pre-internet era, certainly compared to the firehose of info we have today. Meant you had to work for your dopamine hits!

 

[Zman4eva]

Pete Holmes is a great comedian. He has a new YouTube series called Bat-canned where he fires members of the Justice League. He just released two episodes this week too.

Back to the topic, I would say the internet has also sped up how people build their watch collections. Look at eBay, Chrono24, forums, Facebook, reddit, etc and the wide variety of watches available for sale (vintage, modern, etc). Pre-internet, you would need to attend auction houses, visit antique shops, go to brands stores, or build a network to achieve the same results we now have with a click of a button.

 

[Davidt]

I think the internet simply allows greater access to knowledge.
If your goal is relatively modest and you can ‘complete’ vintage watch collecting by ticking a few boxes, then the internet will facilitate that quicker, allowing that person to move onto the next fad.
if, on the other hand, you have a deep and genuine interest in vintage watches, the internet allows newcomers to stand on the shoulders of those who came before, increasing community knowledge exponentially.

Definitely a force for good imo.

 

[sheepdoll]

I took an 18 or so year break from active watch collecting.

It does seem like 30 or so years ago there was much more social interaction. One learned things by word of mouth. Not entirely internet free. I had access to Modems and such starting in the mid to late 1970s. By the Mid 1980s BBSs and email lists existed. So one could connect with people in different time zones and continents.

I used to collect a lot of paper/ ephemera. Still have a large if dated Library. Some of the rare books were expensive. Much of this has been scanned and placed online. Nowadays more of it seems to be behind a paywall or other gated community. Back then sometimes one could get the curator of the BHI to go into the attic and send missing back issues to mostly complete 50 years of a trade publication.

Estate dealers would send out beautifully printed catalogs of rare technical books. And one could find the darnedest things at doll collecting shows relating to clockwork automata and indirectly watches. These books can (and may still be) expensive. One book lists for Over 2000USD or SFR. Only 200 were printed . I was loaned a copy by the library inter loan. I did return it. After I had photographed and photocopied all the pages. Some things came of microfiche. Which I may still have somewhere. There are reprints, but the original printing plates were lost and the reprints not much better than my film copies.

Not all of this is available online. Much has been scanned by better means than what I did. Yet it remains subject to copyright. If the copyright is obscure. Then even Google Books will not release the digital version.

For much of the 18 years I avoided online watches. Probably as the first spam emails I got in the late 1980s and early 1990s were watch related phishing attempts. By the early 2000s there were simply to many fakes and overpriced junk to really care about.

The other shift was my mentors passed away in the early 2000s. So without a place or people to share my passion with, there was not much point in continuing to collect the watches. Meanwhile the tools rusted away.

How long this current impassioned phase will last is any guess. I have been active here a bit over a year. The passion I had in the 1990s seems to have returned. Could be that the pipe (Theater Organ) collectors is going through what the old watch guys did 20 years ago. Like in the 1950s this collecting has lost most of the value. That is a much smaller interest group. Technical information never really took hold on the net.

I was interested in film making when young and in school. So I collected film cameras. Making cartoon animated films. I took classes in theater. I found film cameras and cine projectors also interesting as the watches. I could see the writing on the wall that if animation was to survive it would have to be done by computer. So I became interested in language parsing and compiler design. Not to mention embedded micro control systems.

It is difficult to separate pre and post internet stuff given that I was aware of it in the 1970s. I was an early adopter of digital image processing and photography. In college I joined Sigraph. So was well aware of synthetic image generation and digitizing of film. Even using the plotter in the physics department to assist in the creation my animated student film in 1980. I got interested in film and paper transport systems. When the Macintosh came out in 1984 I was moonlighting cleaning KEM film editing machines.

The Macintosh changed everything. It could even do rudimentary animation. Fast forward 40 years!

I still have a lot of data from back then. Transcripts of old Usenet groups and such. Zipped and compressed in obscure cryptically named files. Sometimes I attempt to see what is in these folders. It is always the lost data or image one desires more than the others. When I do look at the old chat transcripts they seem odd and I wonder why I saved them. Or the many revisions of the programs what read the data.

This was supposed to be a case study of something called a PCD Film scanner 2000. I was blogging this when I found OF last year. I got one of these in 2020, as that is when I started doing online surplus shopping as the brick and motor surplus stores were failing. And probably would have failed anyway. Based on my search history I may have bought the last 'PCS film scanner 2000.' The store I purchased it from has been out of stock for three years.

Every few months I put this search term in google. Kodak leased these. Only 100 or so were ever made. Most of them were destroyed. Perhaps half a dozen may still survive. Most of the online data is from others looking for more info. They probably gave up. Kodak went out of business.

Then things got nasty. Aggregator phishing sites started offering the desired manual behind a paywall. Even showing what looked like a blurred version of the document and supposed text excerpts culled from other websites including my own. I even got a prepaid gift card to see if I could buy the manual. The card was only good for US purchases so was declined. The help chat bot never heard of a 'PCD Film scanner 2000.' The burner email I used then became full of really nasty phishing spam even regurgitating the burner password.

I did however hear from 3 other people. One had some of the driver software, what was stored using the wrong archival format and corrupted. Another had the service manuals, and the third after a year sent me the missing part. None of them have responded to any follow emails in the last year.

So the net has become almost useless for finding obscure technical information. Unless one is lucky enough to find an honest site like this one. Most of these special interest groups went to Fadbook when Yahoo shut down. There was a successor listserv but the users abandoned it as they wanted to charge for what had been free. I do not have a personal Fadbook account, but do look at the family account from time to time. Most of what I see is socially engineered to be distracting and enticing.

Even Instagram and Twitter (X) <- see how Elon social engineered me. Have become useless. I used to tweet Mariner 9 stuff. Now what is the point? It is simply shouting in the wind. (which I am probably doing here, but the UI here is much better.)

What really irks me though is the amount of video. Now I do not mind the occasional You tube. On the other hand when I want to read an in depth BBC world news article, and I get served a loud shouty video aimed at the illiterate. I become frustrated. Which seems to be the goal of a lot of this. To keep the viewers engaged and wanting more.

The promise of finding that missing piece which may or may not exist.

 

[koppsg]

Larry S

Well, without the internet, I would still be wearing disposable quartz sports watches and I certainly would not have a wife giving me the stink eye whenever watches, audio gear, records/cd’s are discussed. My doom scrolling would be done via print media. That said overall I think the internet is mostly a good thing by connecting people and information. Perhaps it can be a bit like a sugar high though when it comes to pouring gas on the collecting fire.

I'm still laughing at your post. Your wife and mine must be soulmates. My experience is that the internet can be a source of horological knowledge, but in my case, I have to steer clear of the constant source if marketing information. I've found that to be very expensive.

 

[Mam]

Up until two years ago I wasn't into watches. I had two watches ( longines lindbergh and omega speedmaster). I was happy. Then Internet changed everything. Two year after I am collecting watches and smoking pipes .

 

[ErichPryde]

M'Bob

I was prompted by noticing how many people come and go on forums like this one: there is a burst of enthusiastic activity, then many people just never come back.

Could this be the reason:

The point? Pre-internet, you wanted knowledge, you got on the phone and called people. You canvassed antique and jewelry stores for the occasional find. And when you struck gold, it was was so gratifying.

The easy access we have to get every horology question answered in a few seconds, and our ability to buy watches or parts with equal alacrity I fear is having the effect of both lessening our joy, and shortening our collecting lives.

The same thing happens in any sort of active collecting group, to some degree, as a result of the internet. Dusty hunting whiskey bottles? You had to do the leg work yourself, find the liquor store as yourself pre Google maps, do tons of research and really dig to get that good info. And when you found a bottle of actual SW distilled Weller or an actual 8 yo WT101, it was worth it.

Today anything you want to know at all can be found with minimal effort in terms of info. It's written down somewhere online. Nothing is a secret anymore, which means that exclusivity is rarely the result of hard work and making your own luck, so much as a lot of money and a little bit of luck.

I will say that something I see in some of the communities I am part of is this sort of Follow the Leader shifting between what is best because of youtube: entire groups listening to tiktok influencers or YouTubers about what is objectively the best watch, or the best weapon in a video game, and then you see this explosion of posts about whatever it is the influencer has talked about---- even if they are objectively wrong.

 

[ErichPryde]

Mam

Up until two years ago I wasn't into watches. I had two watches ( longines lindbergh and omega speedmaster). I was happy. Then Internet changed everything. Two year after I am collecting watches and smoking pipes .

Pipe smoker, eh? What's your choice?

 

[Mam]

ErichPryde

Pipe smoker, eh? What's your choice?

Lately I enjoy a Dunhill white spot. I guess classical .
You?
When it comes to tobacco I smoke Mac baren's black ambrosia.
What is your choice?

 

[ErichPryde]

I very rarely smoke a pipe these days but it is either W.Ø. Larsen Signature or McClelland Legends (very different tobaccos).

Most of my pipes I've sold or traded, including a couple of dunhill Amber roots and some Askwiths... only one I have left I cut and carved myself. This one has an English ghost and isn't suitable for the Danish W.Ø. Larsen.

 

[koppsg]

The turn of this topic towards pipes has brought a smile to my face. My pipes went unused for 10+ years due to an unexpected (aren't they all?) health issue. My favorite shop in my son's college town bought them. To be honest, I have such fond memories of the place, I would have given them away for free and trust that they would find a good home.

 

[Aroxx]

I think the internet helps extend the collecting journey. There are so many rabbit holes to go down and so much to learn. Yes, it’s easier to get quick answers but it still takes time to do research and really go deep on specific brands, references, etc. It is also fun to see all the stuff that’s out there and discover new things. I don’t know if I would be so into watches if it wasn’t for ye old interwebs.

 

[ErichPryde]

Aroxx

I think the internet helps extend the collecting journey. There are so many rabbit holes to go down and so much to learn. Yes, it’s easier to get quick answers but it still takes time to do research and really go deep on specific brands, references, etc. It is also fun to see all the stuff that’s out there and discover new things. I don’t know if I would be so into watches if it wasn’t for ye old interwebs.

I think both takes have value in merit. The internet allows people to explore things they might be interested in in a depth that they were not able to do so before, which can lead to a brief flurry of activity and then total abandonment as the op mentioned. Or, you can get flurries of activity as people get interested in something because they saw an influencer talk about it.

But it also can lead to people like you and me and others falling down the rabbit hole and REALLY get involved in the history.