Your view of watches as a child

[mseamaster]

So.. as a child, I didn't know mechanical watches exist.. I thought they were all powered by batteries. Didn't know what Quartz was either.. I thought it was a brand. 😁

Also, I didn't know crap about brands(save for Casio/Omega/Rolex/Quartz(lol)). Most watches I saw were plastic with shitty rubber straps. Mostly with digital screens.

Honestly back then, I thought it was a chore to read the time on an analog watch. So digital screen>analog, even better if it could have backlight(not talking about color LED/LCD, just backlight).

Also I didn't know watches could lose/gain time, expecting them to always be accurate once set.

Thinking about it, I do remember seeing Omega and Rolex and thought it was a fancy watch for high class people or newly minted millionaires. But I didn't even know how was it different from 10$ watches. I didn't have an idea of pricing either, thinking it must cost in the tens of thousands or so.

No one around me wore a proper watch either.
I think I saw a Casio G-Shock once which looked super nice.

So one day I got a watch(generic digital one), and I got an allergic reaction(big rash, who knows what kind of shitty allow it was), and then I thought I can't wear watches... 😁

 

[Foo2rama]

A certain brand took a licking and still kept ticking.

 

[JwRosenthal]

I was fascinated by mechanical things when I was a kid and used to take things apart around the house- but didn’t put them back together (to the chagrin of my parents). I was also a history geek so when I went to an antique store while on a school field trip at the age of 9 and saw a Westclox pocket Ben in the case for $5 (I had $10 my mother gave me for the day trip) I bought it. Then I took it apart. Luckily I figured out how to get it back together.

 

[mydeafcat]

Foo2rama

A certain brand took a licking and still kept ticking.

Indeed. I received my first Timex in 1970 when I turned eight (a steel case, white dial), then a blue dialed one when I turned 10. I sure wish I still had them.

I was always fascinated by the concept of timekeeping, and wristwatches in particular. I was mesmerized by the seconds hand, and when I could peer inside (unlike @JwRosenthal, I didn't dare take it apart myself), those intriguing gears and springs and things that made it work. My dad wore a linen dial mid-century Swiss Gruen that I still own. Then Pulsars and similar LEDs became the bomb to me when I was 13; I received a cheaper Birks knock-off for my birthday and I burned out the battery in no time. But the real dopamine hit came with the Seiko 5 automatic I purchased at 16 - I still have it, too. When my older brother bought a brand new Sea Dweller in 1979 - for +/- $1000 - that was it. I was but 17 then but always knew I'd be a watch guy.

 

[X350 XJR]

My father always wore a gold-plated wind-up Benrus on a classic stretchy band.

 

[Zman4eva]

I remember when I was in elementary school in the 90s that the Casio calculator watch was the coolest thing. I actually got my mom to buy it for me from the corner store too! I don't have it anymore but that was my first watch.

I don't remember the exact model but the one below is close enough.

 

[JwRosenthal]

Zman4eva

I remember when I was in elementary school in the 90s that the Casio calculator watch was the coolest thing. I actually got my mom to buy it for me from the corner store too! I don't have it anymore but that was my first watch.

I don't remember the exact model but the one below is close enough.

I got one of these when I was in middle school (an earlier 80’s model with a chime) and I got the worst heat rash from sweating under the rubber strap. Gave it to my brother and have never been able to do rubber straps in the summer since.

 

[MtnMarine]

Funny timing for this thread…. My first memory of watches was when my Dad gifted me a timex Ironman for Father’s Day when I was about 6/7 years old. I don’t remember what I got him but I’ll never forget that timex. (Recently bought the same model off of eBay for 35$).
At the time, I was all about the digital display. I loved the fact that the colons in between the time flashed with every second. I used the stop watch for almost everything. I also loved the little light that illuminated the screen.
Fast forward a few years, after never taking that watch off, it started to deteriorate. The band broke, I knocked off a button on a dirt bike, etc.
Around the time I turned 11/12, my father again gave me a watch on Father’s Day. This was the new model Timex Ironman with Indiglo, I wore that watch until I lost it when going to USMC bootcamp.
At the time, I couldn’t understand why anyone would want anything other than a digital read out with a battery you could change every few years. Now my opinion is exactly the opposite. I still wear digital watches when running races, climbing mountains or anything that I know will beat up stainless steel, but my appreciation for mechanical watches has evolved considerably.
My father passed away a few weeks before I deployed to Iraq in 2007. I miss him dearly, but it was him that originally got me into watches, whether or not I knew it at the time. If he was still around, I think this would be something we could bond over.
Not sure that all of this was relevant, but felt like sharing anyway. Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there!

 

[JwRosenthal]

Lovely share- thanks @MtnMarine

I loved the indiglo when they came out- that color of blue/green is mesmerizing still to this day.

 

[BlackTalon]

Received a manual Timex in the early 1970s. Wore it on-and-off for many years. Also had a couple cheap manual pocket watches, usually from one of my grandfathers (drugstore watches -- nothing heriloom quality). Received a quartz seiko in the early 1980s, and wore it daily for the next ~30 years.

 

[wagudc]

mseamaster

So.. as a child, I didn't know mechanical watches exist.. I thought they were all powered by batteries. Didn't know what Quartz was either.. I thought it was a brand.

I'm a child of the 80s. Mechanical watches were done by then, but my grandparents owned jewelry store. I had a mechanical travel alarm clock, but everyone in the family wore quartz Seikos or Citizens. My mom occasionally wore a Caravelle manual wind pendant watch:

My dad had an Omega Speedmaster which he said was the pinnacle of mechanical watches, and he also had an old pocket watch that was given to him buy the original owner. As a child I admired the pocket watch the most. The original owner worked for the railroad and was a customer of my grandparents shop. He gave it to my dad when he was a teenager, because he admired it so much.





I had never paid much attention to Rolex, but knew Omega, Bulova, Caravelle, Seiko, and the classic american pocket watch brands Elgin, Hamilton, etc. As a teenager I wore a mechanical Russian pocket watch my dad bought me:


Although i knew quartz was more accurate then mechanical, I never paid much attention to monitoring it closely. Mechanical watches always fascinated me as a child. The jewelry store had a watchmaker and his workbench was always a curiosity. We were forbidden to go near it for good reason.

 

[dougwhiz]

My Dad's friend had a thing for Seiko chronographs in the 1970s. I really wanted one but I was too young at the time. So he gave me a slide rule Cimier "chronograph" like this one instead. I was thrilled at the time, but after a while I discovered that the pushers only stopped and started the second hand. But it did have a cool rally strap and race car caseback, even if it had a pin lever movement.

Later my Dad gifted me the Seiko flyback I had always admired. That started my interest in mechanical watches, though I owned an LCD and several quartz ones in the 80s.

 

[timjohn]

Like it seems most people here, my first watch was a Timex. I still have it...

 

[Voila]

I admit: when I was 40 I wanted to buy a watch and I kept thinking; this one is cheaper because the inside has a battery....that means I will have to buy one now and again so... meh

 

[hen]

When I was very young at the end of the sixties, I crawled around on my relatives laps. I always wanted to see and fiddle with their watches, so after the first crown pull out they turned their wrists and all I saw was the buckle. And the buckle always had an Omega symbol on it. I don`t remember the watches but I do remember the buckles and I remembered that Omega symbol some years later when I saw it on the time displays in the Olympics.

My first watch was a Timex. I remember my mother telling my father to get a watch with numbers on the dial, so I easily could tell the time. I did not like that because, that was for kids and I was all grown up, being five years old. I liked that watch, it was automatic and it was blue. The Timex broke when I did a save in football with my left hand. The weight fell of the automatic winding thingy.

Later I got digital watches that we used to time each other in the ski slopes and annoy the h... out of our teachers with the alarm.

 

[DoctorEvil]

I'm old enough to remember when mechanical watches were still considered the norm. Heck, I still remember that we had mechanical wind up alarm clocks back then!

My first watch was a mechanical Mickey Mouse where his hands would move around the dial. I would have been about 6 or 7 at the time and I was very proud of it. As it was a manual wind watch, it prepared me well for my Speedmaster 40 years later. No angst about winding it up too much! Sadly I don't have the Mickey Mouse any more. It gave way to a Citizen quartz with a LCD screen when I was about 10, which I thought was the bees knees at the time. Wore quartz watches until I was in my early 30s, when I decided to get a midsize Bond Seamaster Pro. I was getting tired of having the battery of quartz watches dying on me unexpectedly.

 

[Larry S]

From an early age I had a watch. Mickey Mouse, a succession of Timex ( prolly why I’m still fond of the brand), cheap divers. First nice watch was a Bulova in HS.