What generation are you from?

I’m a Gen-Xer. I’ve never thought about whether or not my age has influenced my collecting, but now I’m curious. 
 

My dad wore a “gold” Seiko tank quartz on an integrated gold band. He was a Yuppy, but a mid-west conservative one. 
 

We were latch key kids told about stranger danger, the war on drugs, and the dangers of the occult tied to our board games. 

Computers were a thing, but not the internet (took a class on how to use it my freshman year in college). We were told that the only jobs available would be in the service industry and that we would be poorer than our parents. 
 

So, do Mechanical trinkets harken back to that simpler time?  I don’t think so. I didn’t even know what a mechanical watch was until a few years ago. Quartz was king!  
 

Maybe the idea that, now in my 40s, I’ve accomplished something akin to “making it“ has put me on this journey?  Me, my wife and kids lived pay check to pay check for over 15 years, and now I have some disposable income. I can’t tie my fascination to these Mechanical wonders to anything in my upbringing. It just seems to be a part of who I am now. 

I was a 90s kid and now that I think about it my collection has some 90s vibes, especially: 96 bluesy, 94 36 mm blue Tudor sub, and the contemporary but a decidedly 90s watch, the omega SMP 

I totally get where you're coming from and to be clear, I don't think there's a right answer.  The question was more curiosity on my part and involves no small amount of psychobabble and navel gazing 😃

Liking these little mechanical oddities is inherently anachronistic so I don't know that that's an indicator of any preference aside from liking watches in general.

I guess stylistically, I like two tone much more than I thought I would (which I suppose reached its height in the 80s while I was growing up).

My dad wore a solid gold mechanical Datejust that was replaced with a solid gold oysterquartz day date and now (having passed the day date to me) tells time on his phone.

But my preferences are pretty all over the place so it's hard to relate to age.

What would you consider the character of a 90s watch?  I can picture the 60s, 70s, 80s in my head.  The 90s and Aughts are kinda blank spaces that start again once you get past the 2010 for me

My collecting grew out of practical prepping and EDC. My watches are purpose built, even if that scenerio rarely presents itself. Legability and practicality are where it’s at, but I also put a lot of value in high quality and high aesthetic appeal.  Also I prefer to be under the radar to the uninitiated. 

Two tone gold and steel sports watch. 

See, to me that's a high 80s thing.  The two tone Santoses, the first five digit two tone Datejusts.

Fascinating how we all remember things.

Honestly, Casio calculator watches, and swatches dominated the landscape in the 80s. Seiko divers were a thing, but those were all budget friendly. The early 80s saw all gold watches, and they switched over to the two tones later, but that may have been the 90s. 

I wish we had more boomers out here. Some of the ones I know have crazy watch collections but they don't care about online communities. 

Hard to say - I guess I meant a couple of my watches are from the mid 90s, albeit with more mid century design.  
Also I have a SMP 300 that is associated with the popularization of 90’s 007.

Never really thought about this before… I definitely agree that there can be a sort of stylistic void in the 90s. However, trends do emerge in the design like incorporating aggressively curved lines, non-tapered bracelets, and alternating finishing on the bracelet. Eg: Tag Heuer Link.  Can’t really put my finger on it.

I’m 41, wife and two young kids. I’ve always liked watches but it was only fashion watches until my mid-30s. I think a higher income triggered me to start learning about more luxury watches then I was in a position to start buying ones I liked.

I'm definitively a boomer, so I did something those of later generations didn't: I watched the first moon landing of Apollo XI live on TV. Nothing has ever united humanity together like this fateful event, until the accident of Apollo XIII.

I'm a zoomer according to this poll's definitions, but I've been seeing a lot of people my age (early 20's) who are into mechanical watches. 

It's almost an antithesis to the abundance of perfectly-functioning tech that we encounter nowadays. Laptops and smartphones are in our classes and daily life, and mechanical watches offer a purely romantic interest/outlet in contrast to a society that values statistics and science. Of course, this is through the lens of someone who earned a degree in a very quant-heavy major, so I hope all of you don't see as many numbers-driven degenerates like myself. 

It's okay.  You and I are obsolete too!  

Well, I did grow up in the age of the participation trophy so... 😂

I'm just old enough to remember using cassettes, floppy disks, and dial-up as a kid

To the outside world I'm gen X (cool name ❤ it) to the watch world vintage (bloody vintage 😢 mind you I could do with a good service😉)

Gen X here. When I grew up definitely affected my watch wearing. Casio was king when I was a kid. I had one of the first calculator watches and we thought we owned the world walking around with a computer on our wrists! I remember that all of the yuppies were wearing Movado. 

I used my 1675 for what it was actually built to do. I had the hands set to UTC and used the bezel for local time wherever I happened to be in the world that day.

I did figure you for a bit older than me (a decade or so, not 3-4 years).  Its funny how we all come off on the internet 

65 here...you kids have fun with this hobby

I totally misread your comment.  You youngun.

Same year, same sentiments! 

https://youtu.be/YOx3XlQekpA 

😅😅😅😅

Like @Catskinner I saw Neil Armstrong on the moon as it happened. Classes at school were suspended as we gathered around the black and white TVs while the teachers tried to drive home the importance.

Here is one way to peg a person's age: what was their first cellphone? I still have mine, the G-Shock of phones:

Oh, I remember that one. We had one guy from Motorola R&D team in our reserve platoon and he was always bitching about the PRC-77 radio set he had to carry and how what he was working on will revolutionize the world. All of us were "yeah, yeah, now STFU, hurry up and catch up" until 3 years later...

Nokia Candy Bar 3310

Followed by a Motorola V60.

Elder millennial stereotype.

Ah, the 3310. The F91W of phones.

Boom!  My parents were boomers same as me.  I do have a younger Gen X sibling so I get that style fairly well.  The later generations; not so much, and I don't want to know that is all looks like in 50 years.

Swatch was the 80s watch and still relatively popular into the early 90s. I still remember mine that I had and loved. I think however we got into a transitional period in the 90s where Casios like the F91 Illuminator and calculator watches became popular.