New(ish) Member Intro and SOTC

I've been on this app a little over a month now and I thought I should finally do a proper introduction.

Hi 👋 my name is Dave, I'm a graphic designer/marketer. I live in Vermont and I am a new, enthusiastic watch collector.

Warning: this is a long post, I won't be offended if you don't read the whole thing. 😂

Before January 2024 the only watches I owned were an Apple Watch and a Swiss Army watch my wife got me decades ago that had mostly been in a drawer since the battery died. Last year I got the Apple Watch for Christmas and after not wearing anything on my wrist for a very long time I wore the Apple Watch every day. I decided I liked wearing a watch but I wanted something with a bit more style. I have a couple of friends who are into watches and a coworker as well. I started hitting them up with questions and they helped me figure out what sort of watch I was looking for and what budget.

So the first watch I purchased was a Seiko 5 Sports Automatic Blue Dial Pepsi Bezel SRPD53K1. I absolutely loved it, wore it every day, and started spending a lot of my free time watching watch (ha!) videos, reading articles, researching, and looking into all the other things that I might really like.

In other words, I was hooked.

I decided that my next watch needed to be black and another diver because that is the style that appealed to me most, even though I don't dive. I waffled between a number of different black-on-black divers, the Seiko 5 Sport, the Orient Kamasu, and the Orient Kanno. Eventually settled on the Kanno because I liked the clean bezel and I knew it would look amazing with almost anything in my wardrobe. It also reminded me a bit of the Bond watches I had seen. Purchased that one and have been enjoying it very much.

Shortly after I bought the Orient, I had a decent sports betting win that netted me a little extra "free money." Instead of just losing it all again to DraftKings I took out $200 and decided to buy another watch. I wanted to get something different for my budding collection, maybe from a microbrand. I liked the field watch style. I looked at a few different watches around my budget and settled on the Redwood Kilroy, (a Canadian company.) Love the watch, it keeps great time, it's quite a bit more subtle than my dive watches, and it's a lesser-known brand that brings a little differentiation to my watch box.

This is about the time when I fell down the G-Shock rabbit hole, purchasing a classic square 5610U from Amazon, and then my wife purchased a CasiOak (GAB2100-1A) I had my eye on for me for my birthday. Both are fun watches that I wear a lot on the weekends when I'm knocking around the house and I don't want to mess up my nicer watches.

This weekend I was gifted another watch from a friend. He had this in his collection that he rarely wore and he thought I'd enjoy it. He was right. It's a Deep Blue Master 1000 dive watch with a Tiffany blue dial. It's a big one, 44 mm wide and 15 mm thick, but on a nice rubber strap, it wears quite well on my big wrist. I think it looks sensational and for a watch that retails fairly inexpensively, I think it has quite a lot of presence.

So that's where I am now. Less than three months into collecting watches and I already have a pretty good little collection, especially on a budget. I think like most watch enthusiasts I could give you a list of watches I would love to own but can't afford (at least right now). No different than cars I guess, I've been into cars my whole life. I love mechanical things as well as art and design so it's no surprise that watches have grabbed me so strongly.

I get a real kick out of matching straps and watches to whatever I'm wearing that day. My wife is very much enjoying my hobby. She bought me watch gifts for both Valentine's Day and my birthday earlier this month. We are going to Italy in May and she really wants me to buy an Italian watch over there to commemorate the trip. It'll be on a budget, but it will be fun to figure out what kind of Italian-made watches I might be able to afford that I would really like.

Anyway, I've greatly enjoyed this forum. It has been incredibly helpful, inspirational, and informative. I've been trying to put up #WRUW posts fairly regularly.

Thanks for having me. 👍