Finding The Real Joy In Watch Ownership

When it comes to information about the watches on our wrists, more isn't always better.

Any new 222s on the horizon? We’ll know soon enough.

Watches & Wonders is almost upon us! Next week, we will both be in Geneva looking for all the best new releases, chatting with our friends and colleagues across the industry, and taking plenty of pictures to share with you all right here. It’s going to be great.

As a reminder, instead of our usual podcast episode on Wednesday, we will be releasing mini episodes Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, live from Geneva. At the end of each day at Watches & Wonders, we’ll sit down to discuss what we saw, what excited us most, and what we’re looking forward to the next day. We might even have a few special guests here and there. Each episode will probably drop late at night in Geneva, so keep your eyes on your inbox and podcast player for when they go live.

This week, Justin’s got some more general thoughts on collecting, where the real joy lies in owning a watch, and how to ignore some of the noise out there. We’ve also got a few killer finds from around the web – including Justin’s favorite modern Patek and a watch Stephen would sell everything for – and the things that we’re enthusiastic about this week (both of which are good excuses to get outside for a bit).

Enjoy, and we’ll see you soon from Geneva!

Best,

Justin & Stephen

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Don't Let Up-To-Date Pricing Get You Down

Well, here we go folks. My very first story for The Enthusiasts newsletter. We had so many wonderful messages regarding Stephen's piece on time-only watches and the era that we're currently living through that I now feel the weight of pressure to deliver something special! My singular objective for anything and everything we do with The Enthusiasts platform is to speak to you directly as collectors about the things that we have had on our minds – without commercial interests getting in the way. Basically, it will all be about the stuff that we collectors spend our days thinking far too much about. And while I've got a long list of ideas (from design to waitlists and everything in between), the focal point for this story today is how the availability of market pricing affects our enjoyment of a watch. Let's get into it.

It recently struck me like a wet fish to the face that the majority (if not all) of the watches I walk around with are "worth" less than what I paid for them. The market correction from the highs of the pandemic (20/21) has seen it become a buyer's market – which is great. And sustainable. But with the immediate ability to access pricing (or near pricing) like never before via the likes of Chrono24, we now have a shortcut to discontent in a uniquely modern way. That is, I should say, if you allow the chase for "trading over retail" to haunt the simple joy to be had in buying watches. In years gone by, it was different. You really had to go into a shop for that full sense of loss when trying to sell. You'd walk into a dealer, more often one on the High Street back then, get low balled, and awkwardly shuffle out, either having had your pants pulled down or politely having said "let me have a think about it" (if you're from the UK, that's actually code for “I will never be back. Ever.”).