Your watch that started the insanity?

My girlfriend gave me one in 1988.  It was stolen at a softball game a few months later.  I wish that I still had it. (I really wish that I weighed the same as I did in 1988.)  It was still a few years before a Hamilton peaked my interest.

Vostok Komandirskie, it was my love of submarines that led to this madness.

I got this Rado  more then 15 years ago, and it was my daily wear for about 6 years. Looks as perfect as the day I got it. Rado does some nice things with materials. the entire watch is all sapphire and ceramic. I thought it would be fun to copy the photo :) 

I got hooked by this little Seiko about 2.5 years ago, so you could say that the Cartier Tank is to blame for this particular hobby of mine. 😁

A Swatch back in the mid 80s. But I lost interest in watches for many years until the Apple Watch got me to wear a watch again. Then I bought a Casio A168 on a nostalgic whim, and here we are.

I don’t have a good photo, but my wife has the diamond MOP version of that. Coincidentally, it was also the first luxury watch she bought so fits this thread perfectly. 

It’s super tiny but the design sent me on a ten year collecting binge of vintage Hamiltons. I have reduced my vintage collection sharply and growing my modern collection now. 

Alpina Startimer Pilot Auto.  A few months prior I had bought myself a 'nice' watch intending that to be my one and done but a few months later I was walking past a store and I spied this and suddenly the idea I wouldn't have another watch, and another, and another was dead and buried.  This wasn't my first watch but its the one that lead to the obsession.

for me the first watch to start this hobby is orient kamasu. it is the first mechanical watch that i buy, and i tend not to sell it or buy another dive watch 

The watch that started it for me was my Omega Seamaster Polaris which I bought with one of my first pay checks. I still have it and love it. Super slim and it has all the practical features of a digital watch and when you turn them off you are left with a plain black dial that looks classy. 

In 1975 when I was five, I was given a little faux gold Timex.  My Dad taught me to tell the time and that was it, smitten.  Always been into watches ever since but only really started collecting about five years ago.

My uncles old Certina from the 1960’s I acquired it in the 1980’s and it started my interest and my wallet hasn’t had a rest either.

Some really great stories here. Well done! My first "good watch" was a gift from a new girlfriend around 1994. I still have the watch...and the woman. Lucky guy.

Can’t tell if it started after getting this one:

Or after getting this one:

But somewhere in there I went from a one-and-done attitude replace it if i break it, to a wut-i-dun-now attitude.

I did have a few before this one, but this Omega Speedmaster Broad Arrow Co-Axial started it… still have it, but don’t wear it too often for some reason. I think it is due to my current strap options for it, or maybe rather the lack thereof…

I was recently in Las Vegas and there were a few Swatch boutiques.

some great fun styles….

SKX007/009, had many of each but none anymore.