I’m not watch-head, as far as watch fanatics go, but I kind of dance around the hobby and go through phases of obsessively reading about them. A while ago I stumbled across a guy who was growing shrimp in his bathtub, and 💩 posting about the luxury watch market.

It was through his series of unhinged tweets, which unfortunately I have lost forever, where I learned that a lot of watch guys have been black pilled over the collapse of the high end market. I also learned that it is completely possible to turn a six figure business with an apartment, a bathtub, and access to an Asian market that sells live shrimp. At least according to my sources.

At the end of the day, in my uneducated opinion it seems like the high end luxury watch market is sort of run by a cartel. Not dissimilar from the diamond industry. Watch companies make people go on waiting lists and force them to jump through hoops to get a call from a dealer. They intentionally release as few watches a year as they can to artificially and intensely pump up demand. This for a while created so much demand that a used watch was worth more than a brand new one.

I don’t think these unnatural market are great investments, but this artificial price inducement is common across all speculative markets, even stocks, crypto, and real estate. I think the watch market was probably more prone to serious collapse due to the fact that the average person can’t afford a $300,000 watch and it was basically just a small subset of guys buying what amounts to a number of watches that could be measured in the dozens.

During my time learning about watches I stumbled across “reps” or replica watches, and found whole subreddits of guys asking each other if they were passing. I thought people were buying reps as sort of a fun hobby but people really use them as a hack of sorts, to try to gain social influence among their peers and worry about being caught out.

To me, a watch is more about a personal style choice than self worth or net worth. It’s a way to put myself out into the world. That is to say, I like wearing watches that say something about me. My daily driver is a sub $100 Casio G-Shock with the blacked out display.

Wearing that watch is a distinct choice that gives technoskeptic vibes. It maximizes its purpose and maximizes what technology can do for me without me having to do for it. This is because the watch, doesn’t have gps, processing power, or Bluetooth. It doesn’t collect my health or location data. It doesn’t help my phone map my social graph. It just tells and measures time with its clock, stopwatch, and timer functions. It has a radio in it that adjusts it nightly to the precise millisecond of official US time. Every night after it syncs it’s possible to visit time.gov and watch the seconds roll by in perfect sync. The all black details are not quite tactical but still provide some essence of a low key grey man on a stealth mission. It hints at off-grid zaddy without the loudness of a Garmin GPS watch.

Then my dressier watch is a classic 70s quartz crisis era seiko 4004. This watch has clean lines and feels understated, even as it achieves what is potentially a class of perfection. It is accurate, durable, and has a calendar function. No chronograph, or alarms, it doesn’t even have glow in the dark paint on the hands. It just does two things and does it accurately for years without any manual intervention, unless there’s a leap year (or it’s dark). It’s blue dial paired with a blue silicon band looks modern but doesn’t scream for attention.

And those are the two watches I mostly wear, though I have a few more. My first real watch was a Seiko automatic, it has a 70s vibe to it as well with a racer green dial, sporty vented leather band. It’s a cheaper reproduction model, intentionally riffing of an earlier era, but it has an accurate movement that is automatically wound as you move throughout the day.

I have a budget Casio watch with a huge display that I like to wear to bed. It has a very warm orange back light that is easy on the eyes in the dark. I called it my bed time watch.

All this thinking about watches, I think there is money to be made (or lost) and fun to be had in the low market. Buying quartz watches is a challenge because there is so much crap out there. Probably billions of watches were made as disposable promotional giveaways, fashion watches, or for soulless celebrity brands. It takes effort and lots of digging to find something worth buying and preserving. It’s hard to strike out buying a Patek Philippe, or Richard Mille, and that’s not to say you can’t make a mistake or that there isn’t much to know – but it is saying that if you’re spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a watch, chances are it will always hold some value. With quartz, even great brands like Seiko, Bulova, and Citizen have made tons of worthless models that nobody actually wants.

I want to start buying and selling quartz watches, maybe a few automatics here and there, mostly focused on Japanese and Swiss quartz. The good stuff is still approachable, good watches can be found for well under $1000 all day. The seiko I believe to be perfect, the blue dial 4004 was a top of the line offering back in 1977 but only set me back $90. I bought a second one today, gold tone, with a black dial for $50, and passed on another with a scratched crystal someone offered me for $36. That one even had a bracelet.

When I bought mine, the seller even provided a new battery, and it’s kept perfect time ever since. The bracelet it came with was just right for a man with thinner wrists but thanks to my robust bone structure and daddy-esque physique I had to swap the band out, which set me back another paltry sum of 24.

The strategy I’m going to use is to create an audience around quartz timepieces on social media and sell them on the great benefits of quartz. Quartz watches, especially the earlier models are not only vintage, they’re historical in ways, their advent revolutionized the watch industry and made time keeping affordable for everyone. They’re more accurate than even the most expensive manual or automatic watches, they last just as long, and they don’t need expensive overhauls, oiling, cleaning, or fuss. Most of the time they just need a new battery here and there. Not only are they low maintenance, they’re also affordable, and you don’t have to be worried about losing them or damaging them, because they can always be replaced with something new, for what is practically just a few bucks. What are those benefits?

To me, Quartz is the pinnacle technology for time keeping. Its affordability is a feature, not a bug and only makes them even more desirable especially when you factor in options to have radio or satellite control which guarantees your watch will always be perfectly accurate, far more so than any manual or automatic watch, even at the highest price tiers.

It goes without saying that by carefully choosing a quality quartz timepiece, you subtly indicate your fashion acuity and distinct taste. People do notice and are often surprised about the choice. It is a conversation starter. A watch often has a story, or at least a meaning behind the choice, which provokes discussion.

Quartz watches are also privacy protecting in so many ways that smart watches aren’t. Just like people pay extra to remove ads, it would make sense to pay a monthly subscription to have a watch that has tracking disabled, but a quartz watch (and automatics) do that for free as a standard option.

I think my plan will be to buy some watches from Japan, or maybe create a market where I buy and sell and have a storefront online. The nice thing about the hobby is that I can go through a lot of watches and have it mostly pay for itself or maybe even become profitable – at the very least I’ll have some fun and maybe learn a few things doing it. So that’s it, now you have it. My adoration of quartz, and my grand plan for total global domination 🤣.