TI Series 550 LCD Dark Brown 1978 Model Digital Watch

Hello everyone! I have OFFICIALLY added my most recent Ebay find to my collection, bringing my total number of watches up to 8. The reason? I found a decent strap for it.

The watch was originally intended as a child's watch. And it (not this particular one) was the first watch that I ever owned. I got that watch at the age of 10 years old, either for my birthday or Christmas.

(I can't remember, but I am leaning towards Christmas, because birthdays were usually at our house, and I have the memory of opening the watch box while sitting in my grandfather's recliner, at my grandparents' house.)

So obviously, now as a man of 54 years, my wrist is far too wide for the original strap to accommodate. And my most basic rule for watch collecting is, if the watch is non-functional, or cannot be worn / utilized, then it cannot become part of the collection.

So my son measured it the other day, and discovered that the lug width is 20mm. So tonight, as he was changing the strap on one of his Timex watches, he mentioned to me that the strap being removed from his Timex was a brown leather one. It was slightly the wrong shade of brown (too light) but I believe that it still looks good, so I told him to go for it. He also opened up the caseback, so that we could photograph the battery. This watch uses an AG5 Alkaline Cell button battery. I hope that these batteries are still available. (I'm sure they are, but I am understandably nervous, seeing as how I want everything to turn out perfect.)

Thus, my son put his old leather Timex strap onto my TI watch, and here is the result. I used a paper clip to press the inset button on the side of the watch case, and figured out how to set the watch in less than 30 seconds, lol. 🤣 Part intuition, part memories from childhood.

So, I think it looks great, I was afraid that it would look too small, but I think it is barely big enough to "make the cut" of not looking awkward. The watch movement appears to be not only working, but keeping precise time. I will check the seconds display tomorrow morning, to see if it has lost any time, but knowing TI the way I do, I seriously doubt it. Even a TI movement from the 1970s is bound to be a very precise instrument, and as you will notice from the pictures, the movement is in pristine condition.

One of the pictures compares the case size to my 47mm Invicta Grand Diver, and surprisingly, the Invicta doesn't look THAT much bigger. And I love the clean lines of this watch and the simplicity of the LCD display. And it looks GREAT sitting in my watch box, in a place of HONOR, next to my greatly prized and beloved Casios.

@whystopatone you will be happy to know that I followed your advice! And I will be wearing it in tomorrow's WRUW post 😎

@Deeperblue I am always interested in hearing your thoughts on newly acquired watches. Did I do good? 🤣

@DigitalDivider Do you have one of these? Or something similar? Just curious. I wanted to tell you that I am extremely grateful for the assistance you gave me when I first started here at WatchCrunch, back in January. You helped me figure out that my memory was fuzzy, and that I was looking for a TI watch, not a Timex. You didn't mention it directly, but you gave me enough to go on, so as to facilitate the leap in logic required to arrive at that conclusion. You rock, dude. 😎👍

Well, there you have it, folks! Cheers to all, and to all a good night! 😀 ✨🍻