🎤 ⤵️

My wife did the obligatory obeisance check in at ours. Made the mistake of saying she was “on the waitlist for an OP” and got chastised that “there’s no waitlist. Only a registry of interest. And you’ll have to wait a lot longer if you want an OP.” Then I walked across the mall and bought her an Aqua Terra. The manager of our local Rolex Boutique is actually quite nice and good, but the brand culture fosters a sort of “we despise our customers” je ne sais quoi.

Good post, Brian. I have nothing personal against fakes, as long as they aren't passed off as the real thing to a buyer.

My dad had three large watch collections:

1) The largest vintage Accutron collection I've ever seen. He bought them broken and repaired things. He was an electrical engineer, and bringing them back to life was his passion.

2) A collection of steel Casio calculator watches that he wore to work, so he always had a ready replacement if a battery died or he smashed one to bits against a door knob.

3) A large collection of fake Chinese-made Rolexes. Good design. Dependable. Cheap. And he didn't have to worry about doing real adventure things in them. He certainly didn't freak out about scratching the bracelet on his Submariners on a computer desk.

My guess is that fake Rolexes go on more adventures than real Rolexes. I know for a certainty that the buying experience at a fake Rolex "boutique" is better than the buying experience at a real Rolex boutique.

Some guy on YouTube started a channel drinking coffee and selling NATO straps while talking about tool watches. He said he did it as an everyman response to people posting pictures of luxury watches on Champaign bottles. It’s currently a Rolex fan channel, so 🤷🏼‍♂️.

I guess it’s a way of saying, “I’m not the 1%. I’m better than that. I’m upper-middle class and on the HOA.”

Here’s how it works: Someone gives you something trying to be thoughtful, you thank them for it and appreciate it because gifts are primarily about that social connection, not the thing itself. You can’t find room in a box or a drawer for a watch? A community of folks who created “beater” as if it’s a watch design category can’t find some moment in their self-important lives to wear it and enjoy that someone cared enough about them to try to give them something that might possibly be special to them? These are rhetorical questions. Don’t @ me acting put out and unappreciative because someone tried to do something nice for you and it didn’t meet your standards.

I have that same reference! Love it.

My reaction exactly