My first watch..and first fleecing 16 years ago. What watch did you spend way too much on before you knew better?

I'll always have a special place in my heart for this watch, it got me into the hobby, and I still wear it once or twice a year in the black lizard strap or the Miami vice white gator and it always gets compliments. 

I certainly way overpaid and didn't know the first thing about watches, but say what you want about this "mall brand" the simple minimalist design was and is incredibly creative and quite beautiful. 

I had just celebrated a year in business at 25 years old and wanted to get a "successful" man's watch. 

In the early and mid 2000's Movado was still thought of as an expensive luxury brand by the uneducated masses and so I made my pilgrimage to the upscale mall to the Movado store. 

I'll never forget the salesman upselling me this watch at $1195 vs the $495 quartz version that looked exactly the same in the case.

He actually used the term "stealth wealth" ....for a Movado, telling me that even though they look the same, I'd have a superior timepiece and I'd know that my watch cost OVER $1000! holy cow, $1000 watch, and yet at the time, I, like most people thought the only more expensive watch I could buy was a Rolex and when you know nothing about watches, every Rolex is at least $10,000 and that is the entry point. 

I still buy "fashion brands" like Bulova and Tissot and once respected now trashed Breitling and wear them proudly next to my watch nerd approved Rolexes Omegas and others because design matters. Art has as much of a place in the hobby as engineering. Thanks Movado. 
 

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I bought a Movado  once . . .  Once.  The watch lasted maybe 3 years and died.  Luckily I didn’t get burned for a lot of money, and the lesson was worth the $$loss.

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I had a Movado automatic in a tonneau case and liked it a lot. Some call it boring but it's an iconic design.

I still have a quartz series 800 "fashion diver" that gets frequently worn. I have no problem with them as a brand.

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I wore a quartz Movado Museum Watch for several years prior to getting seriously interested in watches. I still have it, and even though it's dismissed as a fashion watch, I still feel it's one of the nicest looking watches in my entire collection. At 30mm wide, and a mere 5.7mm thin, it's the smallest watch in my collection. I still like it and don't give a rats ass about what other people think.

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When I had the money, but little experience, I bought this Bomberg Chroma I and I still have it and I like it, but I paid a lot for it.

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I had a Movado in the collection once. Same one you have but the quartz variant. Sold it a couple years ago for $125 I think. Two people I work with still wear Movado’s in the office almost every day. One of those guys alternates his Movado with a vintageOmega Constellation. Movado’s are good looking timepieces. But I realized they area bit too dressy for my day to day lifestyle and I moved on to more interesting (to me) pieces.

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While the style isn't for me, I definitely "get" the appeal of Movado design. I used to lust after Movado back in the 90s as a kid, though now I prefer my watches more toolish. 

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Movado was huge in the 90’s. Many of my workmates wanted one and a few of them made the plunge. There was a lot of mystique about the watch. I even had some guy claim the polished disc on the watch face was some kind of energy harnesser that helped power the watch. Weird stuff. But I vividly remember that everyone I knew who owned one loved it like it was his first born. 

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My first decent watch was also a Movado Museum watch (although mine was the quartz version).

I'd just made partner at Deloitte and my in-laws wanted to express their appreciation for how well I'd taken care of their daughter so they gifted me a Movado because they knew I loved the minimalist design - say what you want about the brand but it is truly a museum-worthy modernist design (take that Submariner).

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I still have the watch - I had to reorder a strap at some point because I had worn out the original strap - that watch never left my wrist for many years.

Cheers to anyone who entered the hobby via Movado!

Now I collect the classic Movados which are amazing and very fine timepieces.

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I've got the same Movado - my first "nice" watch. I had wanted one since I was a kid. Now, unfortunately, I rarely wear it since I can't get past the "fashion-brand" vibe.

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Greatgaspiwrist

When I had the money, but little experience, I bought this Bomberg Chroma I and I still have it and I like it, but I paid a lot for it.

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I fell for Bomberg too!

I love the whole Day of The Dead theme...and they got me good...

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Not sure why Movado,  Tissot, Bulova, got lumped into the "Fashion Watch". They don't slap their brands onto  purses, wallets, shoes, handbags, though I think Bulova also makes clocks.  Some of them been around a long time like Tissot 169 yr, up there with Omega 174 yr, Bulova 147 yr, even older than Rolex at 117 yr. For that matter Cartier,  Monteblanc, Hermès are truly Fashion watches. They slap their brands on everything from shoes to bags to pens and fragrances.  Yet their watches are more respected in the watch community than Tissot?

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eddieincorona

Not sure why Movado,  Tissot, Bulova, got lumped into the "Fashion Watch". They don't slap their brands onto  purses, wallets, shoes, handbags, though I think Bulova also makes clocks.  Some of them been around a long time like Tissot 169 yr, up there with Omega 174 yr, Bulova 147 yr, even older than Rolex at 117 yr. For that matter Cartier,  Monteblanc, Hermès are truly Fashion watches. They slap their brands on everything from shoes to bags to pens and fragrances.  Yet their watches are more respected in the watch community than Tissot?

Sadly, Montblanc does not get the respect it deserves. Prior to Richemont's acquisition of Minerva, Montblanc was appropriately a middle of the pack vanilla watch brand. But with Richemont giving Minerva to Montblanc, they turned them into a manufacture that stands with the absolute best of the best. With Minerva no one can call Montblanc a fashion brand any more.

Minerva's chronograph movements are the sine qua non of chronograph movements. The watches Montblanc produces in the Minerva atelier are all made by master watchmakers by hand and better than or at least equal to any Patek or Lange.

Just take a look at this gorgeous split-second chronograph based on an early manual Minerva movement:

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A thing of beauty...

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I wouldn’t say I got “fleeced” when I bought this watch back in 2008, but I did pay too much for it. We were in Las Vegas to take in the drag races and they had this at Tourneau so I just had to have it for the races. It is a LP Italy quartz watch with date, btw. It cost around $800 at the time. 
 

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ChronoGuy

My first decent watch was also a Movado Museum watch (although mine was the quartz version).

I'd just made partner at Deloitte and my in-laws wanted to express their appreciation for how well I'd taken care of their daughter so they gifted me a Movado because they knew I loved the minimalist design - say what you want about the brand but it is truly a museum-worthy modernist design (take that Submariner).

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I still have the watch - I had to reorder a strap at some point because I had worn out the original strap - that watch never left my wrist for many years.

Cheers to anyone who entered the hobby via Movado!

Now I collect the classic Movados which are amazing and very fine timepieces.

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Loving the classic Movados rather than the modern stuff.  Mine is below

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I totally agree with you. If they produced the watch with the Minerva name and logo that would be awesome. I think the Minerva name and logo is one of the best ever for watches. Sorry I think the Rolex logo is pretentious with the crown and the shield/rose for Tudor is also a bit silly and pretentious.

Maybe that would make for a fun poll on WatchCrunch - who wants Minerva to be resumed as an independent brand.

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I agree with most of the sentiments in this thread. There’s nothing wrong with “fashion brands” and there’s a time and a place to easy to wear and accessible watches that don’t an arm and a leg.

But I also think that’s the issue with some of these “fashion brands” like Movado and Tissot. They cost so damn much for what they’re offering!

As watch lovers we know what’s going on under the case - that these are commodity parts without the high end manual craftsmanship that top tier watches have. And we know what the costs of these commodity parts are! So when these “fashion brands” charge a heck of a lot for them - we feel ripped off or cheated and that’s why we dump on these brands.

For many of us, we know now that those first watches we bought were a rip off and we could’ve gotten more quality for the money we paid. But these early watches in your collection will be part of your watch collecting journey.

One could argue that Cartier does this too - even though they are widely accepted as “haute horology”, they still produce and sell quartz models selling for thousands of dollars. I, myself, have a quartz Solarbeat Tank. So you could say I‘m a sucker too. But I guess it all depends on what you value. In my case, I valued thar Solarbeat watch as being more than a sum of its parts.