Why do you collect watches?

The fact that you need to go down to #7 to find something interesting proves the adage,"Just because someone has a lot of dollars doesn't mean they have any sense!"

What is wrong with #2? Don't you like paintings? I could spend days in a museum.

I like some art, I can appreciate the great skill, effort and genius involved in creating it (where skill, effort and genius is actually used to create it, these days, much of what we are being told is art is utter bollocks)
Someone nailing a mouldy fish head to the wall of a gallery isn't an artist in my book, unless of course you include a bullshit artist in your definition of artist.
Some modern art is just a cynical con fest, of bullshit, on the other hand some modern art is absolutely striking and magnificent, but most of it is rubbish. I s'pose there was a hell of a lot of rubbish about in the classical era too but over time most of that ended up in the rubbish dump where it belonged. Unfortunately the rubbish amongst the modern stuff hasn't had sufficient time for the attrition rate to have taken its toll yet!

I can go to a gallery or a museum to see it, I don't have to spend good money to buy it at inflated prices.
Investment potential aside, there is not a lot you can do with art beyond it's decorative aesthetic.
And sadly the values of the best pieces is so great that a lot of it in private hands is hidden away in vaults so it can't even perform it's primary function of being seen to be appreciated.

Where as a collection of cars, boats, planes, antique furniture, guns or watches etc. can not only be beautiful, but fun to use and be practical to varying degrees, these items are more hands on, just looking at them on display is not enough to get the full enjoyment potential from them, though for most of us we have to settle for just looking at them, though sometimes we can get lucky and to see and hear something like a classic car or plane etc. being used either out in the wild or at an event.

Photo or didn’t happen 😀
seventy???

Because i can’t afford to collect cars. At the risk of being sexist, I think it’s a man thing. We appreciate the effort of mind and skill put into making these things. We are not complicated creatures and quite simple minded too. The most we can pry to see the beauty of things, is to open the back cover of the watch or open the hood. If it’s more complicated than that, like abstract art or poetry we will loose interest. In body building too we get sincere appreciation and admiration from men than from the original intended gender😂.
Watch kind of falls in the sweet spot of the majority I feel, it’s simple enough( to open the back cover I mean) and affordable enough, else we would have collected airplanes or tanks or battleships even.

I was something like 10 years old when Goldeneye came out so nobody will ever be cooler than Pierce Brosnan.

I always assumed a watch like that was unattainable and didn’t think much about it. Flash forward two decades and YouTube introduces me to Wristwatch Revival. I start learning how movements work and it clicked that now, in my late 30s, I make enough money to buy The Bond Watch.

I don't have an SMP, yet. My fun is learning everything I can about the different references, looking at prices and spending a hilarious amount of time looking at photos online. Ive got a handful of other watches—a Constellation, a Hamilton, a GShock—and just love looking at them and talking about them. I’ve also got a few screwdrivers and an ST36 I tinker with.

But when I think about why I started collecting watches, it’s because it’s fun and it’s also become a handshake, of sorts, with that awkward younger me who loved the movie (and game, of course). My watches remind me I’ve done ok, all things considered. Cheers!

A misguided attempt to deny mortality

I was promised a watch for my 5 year birthday, I was a sign that I was growing up and becomming an adult. Since then I have loved watches and never been without one although I dont consider myself to be a collector I have got two Omegas and two Citizens. The fisrst was a Timex automatc that lost its self winding weight when I saved a really hard football shot, alas it could not be repaired.