I acquired a Grand Seiko Lion... not the watch, but a statue!!! AKA, a field report and meetup recap from the Annual GS9 Experience in Hollywood

[Begin aside]

PSA:  Do yourself a big favor right this very moment, and go to https://theescapementroom.com/

There you will find many articles written by fan favorites @DeeperBlue @Porthole and @Aurelian.  My god, I can't remember the last time I've laughed so hard. Their posts are eff'ing brilliant.

[End aside]

Let’s just get this out of the way, yeah? Grand Seiko…

@ChronoGuy previously documented the meetup / event here:

https://www.watchcrunch.com/ChronoGuy/posts/watchcrunch-representing-at-gs-9-club-event-in-la-243207

@Fieldwalker has his thoughts and some awesome photos here:

https://www.watchcrunch.com/Fieldwalker/posts/gs9-experience-243627

And @Kayone73 too!

https://www.watchcrunch.com/Kayone73/posts/attended-grand-seiko-club-gs9-event-in-los-angeles-243718

And @Vox207!

https://www.watchcrunch.com/Vox207/posts/my-gs9-recap-2023-243890

It’s always great meeting up with people you’ve only previously known online, but feel a genuine kinship with. @Fieldwalker is as understated and kind as his posts would lead you to believe.  @ChronoGuy is so unassuming and humble that you’d never guess that standing in front of you is the owner of the world’s most amazing watch collection…

https://www.watchcrunch.com/ChronoGuy/posts/what-do-you-own-from-the-top-10-and-why-why-not-245352

@CliveC is the spitting image of John Cleese…

… and he’s British, so he’s exactly what you would expect too.  But, he doesn’t count, because he and I have known each other for like 2 decades in real life.

So, what’s there to say about the annual GS9 Experience?

1.  Is being a member of the GS9 Club “worth it”?

I’ve seen a number of posts where folks have asked, “Should I buy my GS from a grey dealer for a discount or get mine from an AD so that I can get into the GS9 Club?”  My answer is, “Depends on what you want from your watch ownership experience.  But, for me, personally, I’m happy to pay more for my watch in order to be in the GS9 Club."

Pay more money for a watch just to be in some goofy-a$$ "club”?  Yes, totally!

• Money is like anything else… the marginal value of each extra dollar you have goes down.  For example, if you’ve been stranded in the Saharan desert for days, dying of dehydration, that first glass of water is worth all your worldly possessions.  The second glass?  Maybe you’d give up your car for that glass.  The third?  The fourth?  By the time you get to your tenth glass of water, maybe you’re not willing to give up anything of real value for that glass…  maybe you’d only give up a Hublot watch for that tenth glass of water

• Dollars are like those glasses of water - each additional one is subjectively worth less and less to you - but make no mistake, money is still a wonderful thing.  You know all that pfaff you read about how “anything over $75k / year in income, doesn’t increase happiness”?  Or, even better, “studies have shown that people in rich countries are no happier than people in poor countries”?  All bald-faced lies designed to push a political and social agenda concocted by the envious and spiteful to forcibly confiscate the wealth and income of high earners.  Here’s a pretty good layman’s article that explains how, in fact, happiness does continue to go up with wealth and income:  http://www.thehappytalent.com/blog/yes-money-does-make-people-and-countries-happier-if-you-use-a-log-scale

• Given all that, if money is tight, and you just value the watch itself, then definitely just go grey and save yourself a few dollars.  If, on the other hand, you want the whole over-the-top Zaratsu-polished, nerd-kingdom experience, then definitely pay a few dollars extra to get into the GS9 Club

But, what do you get for your extra dollars?  

Well, throughout the year, mostly you just get marketing emails.  Ha!  

But, you’re also invited all the time to local events at GS ADs where they serve you sushi and alcohol, and talk in hushed tones about the dial of the SBGJ273, which according to the Grand Seiko website itself...

was inspired by the glinting red vinyl of Brittany Spear’s body suit in the music video for “Oops…  I did it again,” from her second studio album of the same name, released on April 11, 2000, by Jive Records as the lead single from the album, and her sixth single overall.  

And, then, once a year, you’ve invited to the Annual GS9 EXPERIENCE!  And, yes, it is equal measures awesome and cringe!

2.  The Annual GS9 Experience

You walk in, and everything is this weird shade of blue…

[photo credit to @Fieldwalker]

Makes me think of that poor girl Violet, who got turned into a giant blueberry (and then summarily executed by the Oompa Loompas) in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory - and I’m talking the classic 1971 Gene Wilder film, not those terrible later knockoffs...

There’s an open bar serving all-you-can-drink beer and wine and champagne…  I guess they figure the drunker you are, the more likely your beer-goggles will convince you to buy that super ugly SBGC253 - which I am definitely getting as my next GS - from the room that houses every current GS model which you can try on-wrist and order on the spot...

There was another room for the high-rollers, where you had to schedule an appointment ahead of time, to see the Masterpiece Collection watches - I was too poor for them to deign to give me a showing!  

And then there are these performance artists roaming around, in these psychedelic costumes on stilts...

[photo credit to @CliveC]

My wife’s reaction...

The panel discussions are a bunch of watch nerds talking in hushed tones, about the red dial of the SBGJ273 and its inspiration…

It’s sooooooooooo overwrought and serious!  2 minutes into one of the panel discussions, and here was my wife’s reaction…

I own 11 GS, and I bought 1 for my wife and another for my sister.  I am the target audience for this piffle, if ever there were a target audience, and even I couldn’t help but…

And, yet…  it’s also strangely perfect.  I mean, that was PRECISELY what I was hoping for from the panel discussions!  What you want is to be reminded of just how pretentious the hobby is, and to remember to laugh at yourself, and to be reminded by your spouse that for all your talk about the tri-synchro regulator and the masterful Zaratsu polish…

… watch collecting is as vapid and vacuous as it gets…  and that’s what makes it such a phenomenal hobby!  The world is filled with weighty issues and real struggles.  I don’t need to be reminded of any of that.  Just let me argue with people online as though the fate of the world depended upon whether it’s okay or not to wear a diver on a leather strap, and I’m happy as a clam.

3.  Ultimately, as @FlatteryCamp has noted before, it’s about the people

On the drive home, I told my wife that if it weren’t for meeting up with @CliveC and @Fieldwalker and @ChronoGuy, there was no way in hell I would want to go to the event.  I mean, it’s just an event.  It’s lavish, there’s free alcohol, there’s amazing food…  but whatever.  You can eat food and you can drink alcohol at home.  No, in the end, it’s only worth it if you can hang out with cool people.

• @Fieldwalker and I had been planning to meet up for the better part of a year now, and this was the perfect excuse to finally get together in person.  We traded watches for the evening, him wearing my SBGK015 and me wearing his exquisite SLGA017

[photo credit to @ChronoGuy]

• It was a delight to finally meet @ChronoGuy and to voyeuristically listen in on a conversation between him and the manager of the Miami GS boutique, talking about acquiring a truly, truly special and limited GS piece!

• I stood in line at the open bar, behind Matt Farah, waiting forever to get my old fashioned, and he and I got to talking about watches and cars - he seems like a nice enough guy

• But, much better was running into @Wes_nodus and hearing about the latest happenings with Nodus.  You know how Nodus did the watch collab with Matt Farah and sold out within like 1 hour?  Well, there’s another exciting collab on the way, with someone who is approximately 3,000x more famous than Matt Farah!  Can’t wait!!!  (Speaking of Nodus, @Edge168n recently acquired the Nodus Sector Deep Blue, which I’ve been lusting after for some time.  So, as soon as he’s ready to sell, because he can’t hold onto a diver for more than 2 weeks, I’m buying it…  and then I’m sure I’m going to end up charity auctioning it here on WC, when I inevitably start to feel guilty about owning so many watches.)

4.  Finally, where else can you go in order to steal a Grand Seiko Lion?

Now we get down to brass tacks!  All night long, I’d been staring at these statuettes they had placed throughout the venue...  

I mean, sure, they were handing out party favor bags, filled with random branded baseball caps, pins, blah, blah, blah…  But, NOBODY I know has ever received a Grand Seiko Lion statuette!  It must be reserved only for the truly elite - you know, those high rollers who were allowed into that one room the riff raff like me were kept out of!

So, finally, I told my wife, “Baby, remember when I was 18 and I stole that giant wheel of cheese from Stanford?  You know how I stuck it to THE MAN?  Well, I’m gonna do the same with this lion!”

***

[Okay, okay, okay…  interlude for context]

This is perhaps the single proudest achievement of my life.  My senior year of high school, I applied to a bunch of colleges, one of which was Stanford University.  I got accepted, but had no intention of going.  Between application and acceptance, I’d realized that Stanford was where the beautiful people went to school.  Several classmates of mine had gotten in, and they were all good-looking, socially well-adjusted human beings.  Me?  I was not (still am not) either of those things, and I realized that I could never show my face at a place like that.  

Nonetheless, Stanford put on a local reception for admitted students, to wine and dine the parents and convince the parents that the hundreds of thousands of dollars they were about to flush down the toilet of higher education was worth every penny and more.  (Spoiler alert: it’s not!)  So, instead of taking my parents to this reception, I brought 3 of my buddies, who were lured by the prospect of FREE FOOD!  While all the good-looking and socially well-adjusted kids and their parents talked politely with the admissions officers and with one another, the 4 of us degenerates stuffed our faces like we were at an all-you-can-eat buffet, stocked with the finest prosciuttos, salamis, and cheeses that the Stanford University endowment could buy!

And in the middle of the table was this 20-lb wheel of cheese…

I turned to two of my buddies and said, “Guys, I’m going to stuff that wheel of cheese under my shirt.  You two stand either side of me so no one sees.”  Meanwhile, when I turned around with the wheel under my shirt, my third buddy walked in front of me by about 6 inches.  By marching behind him, heel-to-toe, nobody could see my protruding belly, pregnant with the 20-lb cheese wheel.  I made it all the way to the elevators with nobody any the wiser, until the doors opened, and who should exit, but Amber Carpenter.  

Amber was the raven-haired, brooding gal at my high school, who was into Sylvia Plath and experimental poetry, and the one time she agreed to go out to a local production of Edward Albee one-act plays with me, I went off on how great “Zoo Story” was.  This was her expression…

I said, “Oh, uh, which one did you think was the best?”  She said, “Well, everyone always talks about Zoo Story, but I really found American Dream to be moving.”  What???  It was a bunch of people walking around the stage mutely, staring off at the overhead lights, like French mimes or something.  She said, “Did you understand what it meant?”  I answered, maybe a trifle too quickly, “Of course!”  

Anyway, we get to the elevators, the doors open, and there’s Amber Carpenter, standing right in front of me.  She takes one look at me and my 20-lb cheese wheel fetus, and my 3 clown buddies, and it takes her half a second to surmise what we were up to, and she says, “Classy as always, Brian.”  Needless to say, she did not agree to be my girlfriend.  

Nonetheless, I had struck a major blow for freaks and geeks everywhere the world over, by taking 20 pounds of parmesan from THE MAN!

[End interlude for context]

***

Okay, back to stealing the Grand Seiko Lion.  I told my wife, “Baby, remember that time I stole that giant wheel of cheese from Stanford?  You know how I stuck it to THE MAN?  Well, I’m gonna do the same with this lion!”

The expression on my wife's face…

She says, “No.  No you are not.  Stick it to the man?  You were 18 and a child when you did that.  And now, you are nearly 50, and you have become THE MAN.  So, you’re going to stick it to yourself?”  

I was crestfallen the rest of the evening, and even a couple of free old fashioned’s couldn’t lift my spirits.  

But, friends, there is always salvation for the faithful and the resolute!  As we were leaving the event, there was one last Grand Seiko Lion statuette standing by the party favor bags the GS employees were handing out to exiting attendees.  I picked it up, and said to this very charming young lady, “Is it okay if I steal this Lion?”

She burst out laughing, and said, “You know, I won’t say anything if you won’t.”

The next day, my 10 year-old daughter asked, “Where did this lion come from?”  I then regaled her with both tales - the 20-lb cheese wheel and stealing the GS Lion from the Hollywood event.  She was dying laughing, while my wife looked on disapprovingly.

As a result, my 10 year-old went ahead and made a couple of watches for the Lion…

And he must be some sort of hip hop artist or whatever, because he’s also sporting a white gold chain with a big “S” on it, which stands for “Seiko.”

@ChronoGuy, when you get your truly, truly special and limited GS Masterpiece collection watch, let’s see if it comes with the Grand Seiko Lion statuette.  If it doesn’t…  maybe there’s yet another status tier that we don’t know about!

So, there you have it.  It’s a great event.  The food and alcohol are fantastic.  The watches are cool.  But, don’t go unless you can meet up and spend time with even cooler folks.  

Would you do it?  I mean, pay more money for a GS watch from an official AD in order to be a member of the GS9 Club, so that you too can attend events like this?  Or would you rather go grey?