My vintage Swatch experience

I'm kind of a mall rat... so I'll say that Swatch got me into collecting. Weird Swatches were a great accessory to the weird outfits I was wearing in college. It wasn't long before I started looking through the Swatch back catalogue online. Was 25-year-old new old stock really available at these rates that seemed so reasonable?? I had to try ordering one. (Thank God I did - squiggly.com, the primo retailer for such things, would fold all of 3 months later.)

I fell in love with 1996's "High Temp" (SRK103). It's bright! It's loud! It's solar (always a plus for a cheapskate quartz collector). It's 90s but not hopelessly 90s... and check out the gorgeous space theme! Since I was getting a science education at the time, I loved the absorption-spectrum theme of the strap. The planet names and orbital periods on the dial are pretty darn cool too.

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Unfortunately, sometimes plastic isn't fantastic. Immediately after unboxing, I noticed the violet end of the strap (so vivid in old pictures!) had faded to more of a blueberry. Well, that kind of thing is to be expected, right? It still looked pretty handsome...

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Disaster: the strap lasted about 1 hour on my wrist. Yes... the interstitial layer of clear plastic had completely deteriorated in those 25 years of storage, and the tiniest amount of flexing was enough to tear it to pieces. At least the printed design layer survived... but I can't think of any simple way to re-mold it into a usable product. (If anyone has a home plastics laboratory and a charitable heart, drop me a line.)

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So I got a replacement strap from the Swatch store... a very plain, barely-off-white replacement strap. (Not like there are a ton of other alternatives with those proprietary Swatch lugs.) For a budget watch that I mostly bought for the strap, this was an crushing disappointment, and I've hardly worn the thing since I bought it.

In hindsight... I think my story has gotten a little funnier with age. After all, the days of being able to easily browse the Swatch back catalogue online are over (or at least they seem to be). So although my experience was shocking and frustrating, it was also exclusive! Isn't that what being a collector is all about? (But seriously, this was my first watch that wasn't a mall impulse buy. So even though it literally disintegrated in my hands, it will always have that special place in my heart.)

I have one question... because I haven't given up on my High Temp just yet (the actual watch is perfectly operational, and writing this post was great for processing my grief over it). I've always thought this thing would look amazing on a bright orange strap. Do any Swatch lovers know a good source for third-party straps that match that loud, vibrant Swatch aesthetic?

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Very nice taste, diggin' them. Swatches feel like these fun toys we used to have like we were little, brings a lot of memories looking at these.