Community Stories

How often do you see ANY nice watch in the wild?

YYTIN
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Having improved and trained my eyes, I realize there are a few of the senior managers in the firm I work for who are wearing classics : DJ, Navitimer AOPA, some new speedies and lately I realized a man who is also a priest in life wears a Daytona (was kind of surprised).

Yesterday I was at my watchmaker : he showed me a watch (omega 2451) he bought and I thought was rare but is likely not original, and he showed me a customer watch he was working on : a close to NOS state sea master bullhead : very attractive indeed (won’t post as I have no rights to do so but very very nice).
 
Braindrain
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YYTIN YYTIN
Having improved and trained my eyes, I realize there are a few of the senior managers in the firm I work for who are wearing classics : DJ, Navitimer AOPA, some new speedies and lately I realized a man who is also a priest in life wears a Daytona (was kind of surprised).

I'd strike up a convo with the guy wearing the AOPA Navi. Clearly an enthusiast.
 
Pastorbottle
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Waltesefalcon Waltesefalcon
I had a student who's father bought her a rose gold datejust for her birthday. She was very excited to show it off, so I showed off my Eterna automatic.

I'll show you mine if you show me yours!
 
ErichPryde
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Holy smokes batman! It was watches on display at Costco today. Saw a black SMP on a wrist walking out as I walked in, a DJ on an older gentleman's wrist, a bunch of citizens (the most interesting of which was unmistakably a H145 eco-drive on a very vintage looking "komfit" style bracelet, a pairing I've never seen) and a very attractive and thin black dress watch I couldn't identify. As I was walking out, someone wearing a sub was walking in as well.

Could be simply because it's mother's day? I normally see steel watches at Costco but not to this degree.
 
Tayne
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Can you really pigeonhole Costco customers to one type of watch?
I would have thought there would be a fair spread in terms of watch type and value.
 
Aroxx
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Tayne Tayne
Can you really pigeonhole Costco customers to one type of watch?
Well since they buy their watches in bulk, no. 😁
 
RevZMan123
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Of all places I went to Jersey Mike's a couple weeks ago wearing a vintage Universal Geneve FS and my g-shock. The kid behind the counter ringing me up said "Nice watch" and I resisted the urge to ask "Which one?" and just answered about the UG. He was in his mid 20s and remarked that he had a Lord Seiko at home, I asked him if he knew about King Seiko and he said that was something he wanted to get next. I thought it was cool and I'll have to make sure I chat with him again, this tracks with Gen Z loving all things Retro for sure.
 
Doc Savage
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Waltesefalcon Waltesefalcon
I had a student who's father bought her a rose gold datejust for her birthday. She was very excited to show it off, so I showed off my Eterna automatic.
A friend of a friend bought his daughter a Datejust just for graduating Middle School.

They are quite wealthy.
 
Doc Savage
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YYTIN YYTIN
... lately I realized a man who is also a priest in life wears a Daytona (was kind of surprised)...

Wow. How does that square with a vow of poverty, I wonder?
 
Pastorbottle
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Doc Savage Doc Savage
A friend of a friend bought his daughter a Datejust just for graduating Middle School.

They are quite wealthy.

So if she'd done better than just merely graduating, would she've got something good and worth having? ::stirthepot::😁
 
Pastorbottle
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Doc Savage Doc Savage
Wow. How does that square with a vow of poverty, I wonder?
It upholds one of the finest traditional values of religion.....hypocrisy!
 
STANDY
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Quentin Willson
Wearing a white Speedmaster in a interview in the house of whatever your UK guys call it
 
Tayne
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STANDY STANDY
Quentin Willson
Wearing a white Speedmaster in a interview in the house of whatever your UK guys call it

The numbers won’t be real, it will have been clocked.
 
Jakeys
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I'm a millennial in Australia and for me it's very rare, I work in IT and there is not a lot of appreciation for high end watches. Likewise almost all of my friends and family have little interest. It kinda sucks, but I'm into watches for me.

I have pushed a few friends/colleagues who express an interest in watches towards Seiko, but there is very little interest in spending more than a few hundred for most. I think it might just be a digital mindset amongst IT folk, although personally I like anachronistic technology like mechanical watches as a bit of escapism from my day job. A colleague asked me point blank what one of my watches was worth and after initially deflecting, I told him and he clearly thought I was insane.

All that being said, over the past decade in total I have seen:

* Couple of Speedmasters
* Planet Ocean orange bezel
* A real Seamaster Pro, and another Seamaster Pro I strongly suspect was fake
* Handful of MoonSwatches
* Rolex Explorer 36mm
* Panerai Radiomir
* Breitling Navitimer
* TAG Heuer Monaco
* Tudor Black Bay 58
* A hell of a lot of Seikos, Casios and fashion brands
* One guy who liked to collect oddball vintage watches, mostly cold war era Russian (one that set off a geiger counter)
 
mseamaster
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The people around me don't care about watches. When I asked colleagues, it turned out only one had a non-quartz, it was an Orient. Otherwise most people wear Apple watches, Casios(G-Shocks are cool), etc.

Sometimes I see strangers with nice watches, but I don't feel like talking to someone out of the blue to ask about his watch.
Edited:
 
Dsloan
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I saw a TON at our local aquarium the other day (including a Sinn U-50! I never see those out in the wild). I also got a TON of bad reactions to my enthusiastic shout-outs.

One guy had the new white dial speedy. When I asked him how he liked it, his wife grabbed his arm, covered the watch, and pulled him away like I was about to mug him. That would have had to do with a 6-year-old on my shoulders. 🙄
 
STANDY
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Just cleared a heap of aircraft for the biggest jet fighter exercise in the world.

The C17 pilots had better watches than most of the Jet fighter pilots.

If I was going to give an award to the most seen watch……Garmin won.
(Hundreds of Ground crew….. G-Shock won)
 
Vinz Clortho
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Got back from Cancun and saw a different ones at the resort, fishing, on the flights. At the resort, the staff were wearing a lot of g-shocks. Resort goers there was a mix of Rolex Datejusts and Day/Dates, a Breitling, Longines, Seikos, and one White Dial Omega Speedmaster .

Saw a ton of Apple watches which I don't consider a watch, it's a wrist phone which does everything worse in a smaller package while addicting you more to your devices.
 
bassem abadan
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any4xx any4xx
I think I must just hang out in the wrong places.

Granted, my post-retirement job is driving a dump truck, so I never see a nice watch being worn anywhere I go except what is on my own wrist.

Last night my amazingly beautiful wife and I attended her HS reunion. It was at a nice place in Monterey and there were a few hundred people there. Many financially successful folks among them. As is my usual habit, I looked harder at wrists than at name tags. The nicest watches I saw were aluminum Apples.

In the past year I spied one Sub on a friend's wrist at a barbecue at my brother in laws house. That's my sum total of finds in the wild.

Am I just a low-class rube who hangs out with the wrong crowd, or has the world really gone 99.9% G-Shock and Apple?
One more Sub in his natural habitance
 
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