I am a slow collector with a few years under my belt and around 10 watches in my collection. My collection is divided into two main categories: vintage and microbrand.

My interest in vintage watches began with a passion for mechanical alarm watches from the 1970s, particularly those featuring the AS5008 movement and the progress towards the peak of this complication. This fascination led me to Seiko Bell-Matics, which in turn sparked a deeper exploration into Seiko's history and eventually found myself drawn to the early luxury quartz models produced before 1982, especially those equipped with the alarm function—a short-lived feature continued from the Bell-Matics era with the 7223 movement. My journey continued delving into Seiko's wild designs of the 1990s, discovering so many of Seiko's sister brands and an impulse purchase of a mid-2000s J.Springs diver. My first diver, purely out of curiosity to experience one to find out I quite like the form factor - such a good watch, but no alarm, how come lack of the most essential watch functionality is this accepted! ; ). Newer reasonably priced Seikos seem boring in comparison and feeling bothered knowing that there are so many good fakes going around.

On the microbrand side, have backed a handful of Kickstarter launches. I was fortunate to avoid any obvious China rip-offs - cancelled the infamous Filippo Loreti on the last days of the campaign when it started to smell wrong, but was not so lucky when I lost Gravity Alpha somewhere somehow. Later thou very similar design was rebranded and relaunched under the name Humism with a better movement, maybe I'll return to it.

These days, I am much more cautious with Kickstarter / microbrand watches, seeking out pieces that feel special, ideally representing a designer's long-time dream and the first passion project showing plenty of personality.

Also, I'm vaguely curious about Chinese watches, they say that those homages are the affordable way to own a watch with a quality and finishing comparable to watches priced an order of magnitude higher. As impressive as their manufacturing quality and price are, can't bring myself to buy an homage, but waiting to come across all original Chinese design that speaks to me.

Overall, my taste has matured over the years, but my interest still centres around original design, story/history/purpose, personality and innovation and having a good balance between boldness and tasteful nuance - and it must feel just right. Curious to see how my collection evolves, maybe I come across a meetup again to try out different rarer pieces and classics. There are some vintage models I'm keeping an eye out for, but with a buying pace of 1-2 watches per year and a budget capped around €500, I'm content to enjoy the slow ride and watches I've got. But man, if there will ever be a mechanical/automatic alarm movement available to microbrands, my wallet will be in danger.

Quite like them, but this is a curious discussion telling of times. Clearly, people have gotten burned by years of too many china-factorystock-ripoffs and gotten very sceptical kickstarter launches - justly so. But has this made it impossible to tell real passion projects and brave first designs from all the calculated fake ones trying to sound authentic - Is that any longer even possible within the scope of "normal watches"?