WATCH SUPREME

WHAT'S A WATCH

A watch is many things to many people. For some its a status symbol, for others if something to marvel at and to long for; for some its a fashion piece to match a bangle ring or earring but ultimately a watch is just a time piece. 

Technically, its a device capable of staying closely sychronized to a time standard like Greenwich Mean Time or an atomic clock for instance. The International Atomic Time (TAI) clock  is a time scale that displays the combined average time of some 400 highly precise atomic clocks located at 69 national laboratories scattered throughout the word. 

International Atomic Time is extraordinarily precise, so much so that it only deviates by just 1 second in a period of 100 million years. It is therefore one of the main components for the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), time scale, used to determine local times around the world.

In a nutshell, this time standard provides the exact speed at which our clocks and watches need to tick. However, most watches  loose time, some more than others and others gain time. Restated some watches are slow and some fast. However, the objective of buying a watch is to find one that hardly looses time. One minute per month is a good scale from which to start.  

Modern day electronic watches are synchronise by an electronic watch movement whereas perpetual movement watches are driven by a hairspring. The chronometric  performance of such watches are works of art and portrays mathematical genius, and craftmanship whereas electronic clocks and watches are as common as sand. They sell for a dime a dozen (exaggeration), and they are really not worth much. 

Perpetual movement watches on the other hand are worth their weight in gold, especially those using a self-winding mechanical movement.  Case in point Rolex watches.

I had a submariner and an oyster date just and when hard times fell on my business through no fault of my own  I had to liquidate them to offset my debt. I published a book for a client who royally screwed me over with a string of bad cheques but that's a story for another day. 

I initially bought them as an investment, thinking I would get a huge chuck of change for them, when I sell them, which wasn't really the case. My experience was that everybody was interested in buying my Rolex watches but when I said I needed the money the same day, their interest waned and the offers waned even more. 

The two Rolex watches were worth at least $10 000 but I eventually settled for $1 200, just a mere 12 percent of the market price. What I had hope for was a myth. Everyday there are dozens of Rolex Ocean Dwellers, Submariners, GMT masters, Yacht Masters, etc on e-bay for sale. Their owners expecting huge returns on their investment but no one seems to bid; and the watches stay on display for one month to the other, never sold. 

My disillusionment with high end, expensive watches has jolted me back into the land of reality and reason, so I avoid them like the plague. I suppose the operative phrase is "once bitten twice shy" apply.   

Owning a fancy watch is often compared to owning a fancy car. Any make of car in the lower price range will get you from point A to point B, the difference with the fancy car is getting you there in style and comfort. But a watch, whether cheap or expensive displays the exact same time,  keep time more or less evenly accurate.

Then the joy of owning a expensive watch is not in its owning but in its wanting, that hearing, that longing, that "One day I'll have one feeling. That's the actual joy.