Oh, they’re out there. But they fall into the category of functional jewelry nowadays and are priced accordingly and then some. Last time my wife went on a big clothes shopping trip, I went along and spent the afternoon hopping from watch boutique to watch boutique. Even though I wasn’t in the market for anything I was looking at, I love watches, and I enjoy talking about them with the sales folks who are typically pretty well informed and are generally not that busy. I tried on a good number of absolutely stunning watches with an embarrassing number of zeroes in the price. Maybe if I win the lottery.
Fair enough, and it makes sense that there would be some way to store the solar energy, since the watch doesn’t stop working when the lights are out. When the OP said they don’t want a battery-operated watch, I assume it was to avoid having to replace the batteries periodically, which is functionally very nearly the same to the user as having a rechargeable battery that lasts 20+ years. It’s been functionally the same for me, which is why, up to now, it hadn’t occurred to me they had a battery of any kind.
The watches on display in the nicer boutiques in Geneva do not have a price label attached. If you have to ask, or indeed care, how much it costs, you have no business shopping there.
A purely mechanical watch has a spring in it, not an electrical cell. If the movement is “automatic”, you do not have to wind it manually.
And when battery-powered quartz watches became available, most people saw them as an improvement. Accurate time? No need to wind a watch? Great; so what if a battery needs to be changed once in a while. And then even quartz watches became obsolete as people started carrying phones in their pockets.
Just try to find a new buggy whip or 110 instamatic camera.
You have to wear it every day to keep it going, or for watch collectors, keep it in a watch winder.
For around 20 bucks and decent quality you’re looking at a Casio F91W digital. Nothing else comes close (actually they’re about 30 bucks now- damn tarrifs).
You don’t want a battery, so that means either mechanical or solar quartz. Low end but decent for those is 100-200 bucks minimum. You can maybe get a Seiko 5 (automatic mechanical) for around a 120-150 bucks if you get lucky.
Yup, but even without that, back when low end mechanical watches were still available, a decent cheap Timex or something was about $20-$30, and that was a lot of inflation ago. I’d expect that same watch, even if it were common, to cost at least $100 purchased new today.
Of course, I knew what you meant, but:
- I haven’t had coffee yet, and
- Frankly, I was a little bored
I have a cheap analog quartz watch that I bought for those very few situations where I can’t use my phone. (Movie theaters, where taking my phone out of my pocket will blind those nearby, and airline flights, which until recently required phones to be off.) It cost me perhaps $20-30 and yet it cost roughly $10-15 to get the battery replaced in it.
And now I can leave my cell phone on during an entire airline flight. (And in Airplane mode connected to the in-flight WiFi, I’m even able to receive phone calls.) So there is little need for a regular wristwatch.
The instamatic isn’t new (“new in package” but still 40ish years old from the kids haircut), but kudos on the buggy whip.
I feel compelled to note that the OP’s name checks out.
Does it have to be a wristwatch, or can you rock a Flavor Flav clock? Though, even in a pocket-sized mechanical watch, if you want to pay only $30–$50 you are back to gambling on a random Chinese product.
I wear a wristwatch. I went without one for a few weeks, before i stopped commuting, and it really wasn’t fun to either guess whether i needed to run for the train nor to pull my phone out of my pocket to check the time as i was approaching the train station.
It also didn’t work when i interviewed people, and had to discretely keep an eye on the time.
I suppose i don’t really need it any more, but it’s a lot more convenient to have the time on my wrist than in my pocket. I’m much less likely to be distracted by my phone when i just want to check the time, too.
And there’s still a healthy market for wrist watches, even cheap-ish ones, despite the ubiquity of cell phones. You can still buy a cheap dedicated calculator, too.
Now, will i upgrade my plain watch to some kind of smart watch? Maybe. There are a couple on the market that i might like, although some of them may be too large to fit me comfortably. (I’m firmly in the “smaller is better” camp for wrist watches, which i realize is not what’s currently in style.)
Going back to the OP’s plan.
Setting aside inflation for simplicity of exposition …
A decent mechanical watch will cost $100. It will keep shitty time as long as you own it. If you don’t get it (expensively) cleaned and relubed after 5 years, it’ll keep even shitter time or just stop.
A decent analog face quartz watch will cost $20 (or maybe less), will run 5 (or more) years before the battery needs to be replaced. Yes, the battery replacement will cost nearly as much as the watch did; the battery itself is cheap; it’s the labor that costs. So just throw away the watch and get a new one with a new battery.
Bottom line: for $200 in purchase and maintenance you can get 5 years of shitty mechanical timekeeping. Or you can spend the same $200 over 50 years buying and throwing away 10 quartz watches. Each of which will keep excellent time.
The combo of “I want a mass market buggy whip” and “I want it ridiculously 50 years ago prices cheap.” just isn’t going to work.
My current dress watch is a woman’s Fossil I bought ~5 years ago for $75-100. That model was made as his’n’hers matching watches differing only in diameter. They also sold the same items separately, so I picked the smaller of the two based on how it fit me, not actually knowing until I was checking out and the clerk told me that that was a his’n’hers set and I’d picked out the woman’s model.
I’m a slender guy, but I’m still big as women go. On me it looks like a normal man’s dress watch did in the e.g. 1970s. The currently fashionable big blobs o’ metal and ostentation look silly on anyone much smaller than a football player.
One of the things I’m quite happy about is that the trend is away from the era of the giant watch. Yeah you can still go buy a hockey puck size watch but nearly every brand with any sense of elegance has re-centered their collections in the 34 to 38 mm range.
What he said.
As a nurse I needed an analog easy to read watch with a second hand. For the last several decades those have been quartz watches with a battery that might have to be replaced every couple of years. Where I am a new battery replaced by a jeweler costs between $5 and $8 and I’m good for another couple of years.
Today one of those uber reliable name brand Casio analog watches is $19.99 on Amazon.
I last tried a ‘mechanical’ watch about 10 years ago-an automatic one that used arm movement to replenish power. It was a name brand too, bought a a watch store for about $100. It lasted less than a year and would have cost as much to repair as to buy so it got tossed in the trash. Lesson learned.
If you want a chronometer, electronics may be the way to go these days. If you want a work of art (that probably keeps decent time), go ahead and get that $100,000 Swiss watch. For $200, honestly, I don’t know, maybe you can find a decent mechanical watch (but, yes, it will need eventual maintenance)? That is what the OP is asking.
A quartz watch, ideally, I would like it to keep within about a second per month.
The OP wanted to spend twenty dollars for this watch, not two hundred.
The OP also seemingly implicitly assumed the hypothetical $20 mechanical watch would never need maintenance. It seemed (to me at least) that their desire to avoid a battery-driven watch was entirely about avoiding the maintenance expense of periodic battery replacement.
I want to thank everyone for all the info; I genuinely didn’t know much, did I?
lots of people told me that here, but you were the first! 
I’m going to get something cheap soon ish, but long term I might do this. You know, recreationally.
yes, not just paying for them but having to run the errand. Just don’t want to.
the basical reason I want a watch is so I can NOT have my phone all the time. I’m trying to leave it home, or off, or at least in a different room, for all kinds of reasons.
thank you! I love how an analog looks, I really do, but I have a wall clock for that so this might be exactly what I buy.
umm, sarcasm? not really sure
probably not: I did look them up and you can get one on Amazon that actually works and it’s supposed to be light weight. certainly a conversation starter, I would think.
YES, exactly! plus I don’t have to have to pull it out of my backpack, purse or pocket. Or have it next to my bed.
I did kind of think that, for some reason. makes no sense, now that you point it out.
So, for long term, I will check out what’s available in thrift stores and estate sales, but for now I will decide between two:
-
the Casio Mozchron* suggested (digital is ugly to me but I would like to have an alarm option, maybe even a timer)
or -
a nurse watch like BippityBoppityBoo describes.
I’d much rather look at an analog face with a second hand so I’m leaning towards that option.
*Mozchron are you so famous AI has heard of you?! I just love experts/nerds of any type!