PS: You have a nice collection, so at least you’ve made some good choices lol. 

I think the danger is that it can become more about the thrill of the purchase and less about the watches themselves. That dopamine rush becomes the raison d'être rather than actually enjoying and experiencing the watches. I’ve succumbed to “retail therapy” on occasion too, and the problem - not to get too serious - is that you can never really fill that hole, so once the excitement dies down a bit you need to buy something else to get a similar rush. For myself, I don’t buy watches very often. I‘ve always bought them to mark an important milestone, the same way someone might get a tattoo to mark a significant event in their life. Milestones only come along once in awhile, so that effectively limits the pace of my spending and the size of my collection. 

For a long time, before I got interested in watches, I perceived Rolex as kind of crass, and I had no real desire to own one. I did appreciate them as far as design goes, but had no interest in acquiring a status symbol.
 

Over time, as I learned more about the history of watches, my appreciation for them started to grow. To celebrate a big milestone, I did eventually buy an Explorer 114270. It seemed the least flashy Rolex, and I liked the 36 mm case size. I have to say, I do love the watch. It still brings me a little spark of joy when I put it on. It keeps great time, and is very robust, and the design is so iconic and versatile. It also flies well under the radar as I’ve never had a single person even look at my watch, much less say anything about it. 
 

As far as value retention goes, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t at least part of my decision-making process. Or more accurately, it was how I helped justify the purchase to myself. I’m not wealthy, so spending that much money on a watch was pretty daunting, so knowing the watch would hold some of its value helped to soften that blow. 

Very nice watches! I have a Speedmaster too, and love it. Iconic watch. I think your BB36 looks great too, but then, I like smaller watches. My Explorer probably gets the most wrist time of all my watches. 

I started collecting when I was younger, so we did used to play each other and try to win a “cool” one. These days they’re just in a box somewhere, sadly. Haha 

I collected toy marbles over the years. This was before EBay so I found them in various antique shops and yard sales. The photo is part of my collection.

I have everything from clay marbles, traditional machine-made cat’s eye marbles, to handmade latticino core, banded core, banded swirls, and onion skins: which are all various cane-cut marbles that were produced mostly in Germany from the early 1800s to around 1920. 
 

My rarest marble is just below the large onion skin - the small one with alternating blue and copper bands; it’s called a Lutz, and the copper band is made of adventurine, which is glass flecked with copper or gold flakes. They’re sought after by collectors (and pretty expensive on eBay) but I found that one for ten cents at an antique market. The fun part about collecting marbles was that they were very inexpensive to collect, but now I see them selling for quite a lot, especially the rarer ones which can go for hundreds of dollars. Handmade marbles are easily distinguished by a small pontils, which are rough spots on the glass where the marble was cut from the rod. 

Thank you! I’ve almost pulled the trigger on a vintage dress watch a number of times.