My watch-collecting journey in the last 2 years (5 minute read)

My last update of the collection was two years and boy has my collection drastically changed…

A watch I purchased to celebrate my new career change into employment and recruitment.

It was a vintage 1950s Tissot Antimagnetique

This was a fun small watch to wind the crown and watch the small seconds. It was 30.5mm and lacked any water protection so I ended up selling it to an owner who would enjoy it more.

Through my deep dive into watches on YouTube, I came familiar with Squale, an Italian brand that I heard highly from YouTuber, TGV.

I remember I said to myself it was an affordable price and I’ll wear it until I can afford a grail piece. Well… that didn’t work out. The watch was good but couldn't compare to the Seiko SPB series or the next one. So it left the collection.

Mido Ocean Star Tribute - This was an amazing watch, it was my best entry-level dive watch,

From its divers extension, unique mesh type bracket and satisfying bezel action, the OST made it hard to take off the wrist.

That was until I found a great Facebook market find, 1.67k USD. Anyone would take that bargain. The gentleman who was selling it just had too many watches and was a bigger fan of Bremont.

That’s when I dived into Tudors history with 7922 and found the interesting history around the 79220N production for 5-6 months before they introduced the in-house movement with many changes including the logo, text layout and thickness.

I kept a casual lookout but made the silly move of asking in the Australian BST forums I was looking for one, where I was directed to SwissEmporium who funny enough I went into 5-6 years ago and remember speaking with the owner of the store.

Long story short he was able to sell me on paying as much as a pre-owned explorer for this ETA Tudor. Funny enough, I can laugh it off because I was amazed at his charism and way to get me to pay that much. Fair play.

Now a weird thing was I kept overthinking I need to shelter my new Tudor in case I got robbed or stolen. So I went searching for an “affordable” field watch.

I found the Longines Spirit Titanium was everything I was looking for, light, no date simplicity and cheaper than my Tudor so I wouldn’t feel as bad if I lost it.

I didn’t plan on buying it, I simply read someone’s comment “I went to check out the watch and ended up walking out of the shop with it.”

This statement got me curious to see if was it that good..?

Turns out it ticked all the boxes for me and became my new daily driver.

As months passed I came to realise there’s no point in value retention and prestige condition if you’re looking to keep the watch for your whole life so I enjoyed my Tudor ETA as my daily and realised it made my Longines redundant. So unfortunately the Longines left the collection.

I then went on a Cartier binge but never felt I could afford one seeing the medium size Santos. To scratch that itch I purchased a Baltic MR01, one thing I knew about myself was I prefer bracelets on watches since it showed the personality behind the creation of the watch.

Through a friend who posted a picture of us with me listed as a watch enthusiast, his friend, a fellow watch geek got in contact with me to share his passion for watches.

It was great since we shared our thoughts on certain brands and shared great listings on the FB market. It was thanks to him I found a great find, finding a Cartier Santos Galbee Quartz that fit within my budget with some negotiation.

This comes to my latest addition, when I come across a new piece I don’t know about and started to do some research.

From this came urgency to purchase this having FOMO on a “vintage” Tudor chronograph and signed with Tiger (for Tiger Woods).

This surfaced my love for chronographs, to subtly time the time elapsed.

The oyster style case and shiny steel bezel made this one my favourite of the bunch.

If you read down this far, thank you for taking the time to hear about a watch nerd’s rant and justification of some of his watch trades.