On a whim earlier today I decided to check to see when I first came to this forum and, low and behold it was actually today. I came to this forum as a babe in the woods owning a 3313 POC and an SKX009. I was trying to get more information on my somewhat impulsively purchased Speedmaster Date "Yeman." Very quickly I purchased an Orient Bambino to wear with a Tux to my sisters wedding. I had tried some other watch forums in the past but none of them seemed to have much if any real content or even stuff worth spending time reading. Then this forum took over, through some false starts and committing the noob error of thinking I knew something and usually being gently corrected, I feel that I have a home. I started to read almost every post, trying to learn as much as I can. I think John Mayer said it best: "Collecting watches is one of the last bastions of required reading, so to speak. The more you know, the better you can collect, and you can’t just get there with a Google search. You get there by meeting new people, by hearing their stories. You have to interact." By interacting on this forum it oddly occurred to me to very quickly source a birth year 145.022 for my upcomming 40th (what are the odds of that?) Which I then serendipitously sourced from a great member here, as I am not so sure he wanted to sell it quite yet. So thanks @abrod520! Thankfully he did not take me to the cleaners in my enthusiasm. He even nicely threw in a new modern bezel while cautiously advising me that it would be a mistake to swap it... oh the innocence of youth, and thanks for that advice! I then purchased a great little 1968 Seiko Navigator timer, which at some point I need to pm a member I met at the OC GtG to give me the name of his Seiko guy in San Diego. Then of course being part of the great GtG we had in Orange county and seeing all the great watches, and even more importantly meeting all the great people that share our passion was a highlight of my year. As some one always attracted to tool watches someone had a Sinn 903 for sale, and I thought WTH that's a clone and googled it, then learned its history, flash forward a post asking "what watches do you want for the next yea"r is started and I mention the Sinn 903 and then looked on ebay... Yup in the mail from Japan within a few hours. Of course that meant my drug dealer... umm strap pimp... favorite strap maker? Yup that works! @jankoxxx posts the next day a perfect strap in the right size for the Sinn, so yet another shipment coming to me from him. So I'm pretty sure I have more straps from him then watches. Today as pondering what I was going to write, I thought wouldn't it be a kick to buy a watch from the forum to celebrate, I start looking at the nice little Lagonda for sale that had just gone up 4 minutes earlier, and I kid you not an Aston Martin Lagonda drives past... Well that pretty much settled that, and it is now on the way. Thanks @Severin ! I want to thank everyone here from the Mods to even the Trolls and all the great members in between, for teaching me more then I thought I would learn about watches, and surprisingly not just Omega's. All the great posts this last year from the truth about Helium Valves and losing a watch in the Bay, to all of the ones that have taught me so much, it has been such a pleasure to learn from all of you. Hopefully I have been able to pay back a fraction of what I have received from this community. Thanks Again! -Foo2rama aka Phil
I do love @jankoxxx's straps, they're as good or better than a lot of the brand name trendy vintage look straps but he changes reasonable money. Good to have had you mate.
I'm glad I was able to catch such an informative/important thread too! it saved my SMP from a catastrophic loss!
@Foo2rama, you are an awesome individual to have and interact with on these forums. Congrats on 1yr in and many more to come!!
You really have come a long way... it shows there is always a chance that a pesky n00b can truly become an important member of society!... I'm glad you're here ... ... but you do, indeed, need to post at the least one pic of your Sinn with the @jankoxxx strap!! Until then, check out these two that he did for me:
I realised the other day that we actually do have way too many stickies now, we'll need to go through and prune some of them so the important ones don't get missed as its sort of like "Go read the important threads... ALL of the threads are the important threads".
And Phil, Please understand that I say this with a good heart; we were all 'pesky' n00bs at first, not necessarily a bad thing. If we weren't a little pesky, then we probably were not trying hard enough to learn as much as we could from the fine veterans here on this amazing forum...
We're all glad to have you here dude, and while I do miss the -76, I'm really happy it went to someone like you who truly enjoys it Here's to many more years on OF!
I choose to not post pictures as it was more about the community and it's affect on me then the actual watches.
