I’ve got a fossil watch, water resistant with a metal band- ~$60 -which looks nice enough to go with anything when I’m dressed up, but is solid and functional for every day use. I’ve also got a Dr. Seuss, Sam-I-Am watch which probably cost me about $55 and a Winnie the Pooh watch that has Eeyore as the second hand, floating around the face while the other characters look over the bridge (as in the Poohsticks story) which was probably about the same. I doubt I’d ever spend more than that for a watch. Therefore, I imagine a cheap watch to be in the less-than-$20 range. Anything over $100 tends to not look any nicer than my Fossil, and often gaudier, without a subsequently proportional increase in fine mechanics, etc–at least until you get into the thousands range. Fine pieces of jewellery, mechanics, and such I can appreciate, but it seems like the $150-$350 watches just look ostentatious without looking fine, if that makes sense.
I recently had to give in and upgrade from five dollar watches to ten dollar watches. I need good waterproofing. My arms go into water pretty much fifty or sixty times a day. Even a sixty dollar watch fails after three or four years of that. A ten dollar watch lasts at least a year, often two, and occasionally three.
I also hate digital watches, and watches with extra stuff on the face. I want Arabic numerals, and a sweep second hand. Accuracy is important, but trivial, in the modern electronic age. I set mine ever couple of months by the USNO, and it is usually off by ten seconds, or less.
Of course fashion is not a consideration. I tend to think of semi-formal as “a tee shirt with no words printed on it, and long pants.” My black faced black metal watch is generally the classiest thing on my body. Not fancy, though. I couldn’t wear a fancy watch. Even when I was wearing my Granddad’s Rolex Perpetual, it was plain, steel, with a steel watchband. I liked that one best, as an all around use watch. But, finding a guy to clean it, and fix a broken crystal turned out to be a major exploration trip. Then it got stolen.
Tris
“Sic transit gloria mundi. And Tuesday’s usually worse.” ~ Robert A. Heinlein ~
Is your car the less expensive you could find? What about your clothes? Your computer? Your TV set? Your house or appartment? The food you buy? The jewelry you (maybe) own? Your furnitures?
If you answer “no” to any of these questions, then you’ve no business telling others they are too stupid to breathe because they own a watch more costly than yours.
I had a timex that i payed about 12 bucks for. Wore it for about 4 yrs on the same battery. Lost it about 2 yrs ago. Somewhere in the middle of a field in Kentucky there is a watch that probably still has the right time.
This is nothing more than poor angst IMO.
To someone who is poor, yes buying a $100+ watch is monumentally stupid when you have more pressing concerns (making monthly rent payments, groceries et cetera) if you’re like me and you do not have to worry about your monthly expenses anymore than a dog worries about the stock market spending $2,000 on a watch isn’t anything at all really. It’s like spending $20 on a watch for you.
I buy watches that I think look cool, I have some watches I really like that cost $150-200. I have some I really like that cost several thousand dollars. It’s just like a suit, I buy what I like. The only time price comes into consideration is I know there is a certain “cutoff” line for suits where you run into shoddy construction so you need to be very careful.
Difference is, you wouldn’t believe the mark up on Watches. Take a designer label watch brand my company sells. In the shops, £135. Cost price/Staff sale, including VAT & shipping on top, £12 or thereabouts.
Theres some profits to be made using the right Hong Kong factories.
I have an old Seiko, an 18th Birthday present from my parents. £60, and it looks a lot more expensive.
I wouldn’t spend $100 on one for a quick business trip, and just chuck it, but I would if I was in higher-powered sales or something - I am in sales, just not to the level where your watch really means getting the deal or not. But I do work with people at that level, and it really can make a difference - wearing a cheap $5-10 watch would loose them the deal as they wouldn’t be taken seriously. Shitty, and totally unfair, but true.
I have 4 watches:
Timex IronMan - I use this for running, gym workouts, etc… Cost me $75 last time I was in the US, but it’s got some great time modes that I use a lot
Nautica Stainless - this is my dressy watch; stainless steel and nicely chunky, and surprisingly damn near bullet proof. Water proof to like 100 metres, stop watch, etc… Cost me $500 US (I bought it in the UK for £375)
Nixon Scout - this is my cool going out watch. Big thick arm leather band, really cool watch, and a present from my girlfriend. Cost about £60 ($100 US or so)
Seiko - something I got from my dad just before he died. Cost him quite a bit, and not something I ever really wear. I am terrified to break it.
I like wristwatches a lot, and so have about five right now, although three are in need of batteries. I personally have no problem with anyone who really wants to splash out on a watch but none of mine, save a Skagen that was given to me as a present, have cost more than about 30 bucks. On my wrist right now is a Wal-Mart special that cost five bucks.
Oh, and personally I consider anything under $50 to be a cheap watch.
So, watch mavens, how do digitals stack these days? This one’s mine.
http://cantrell.typepad.com/photos/wr_casio_gw300/casio_gw_300_2.html except it has red highlighting. And yes, that’s a chrome bezel. I consider it the rough equivalent of my dad’s old aviator watch, as far as macho goes, but where does it stand on style?
So, watch mavens, how do digitals stack these days? This one’s mine.
http://cantrell.typepad.com/photos/wr_casio_gw300/casio_gw_300_2.html except it has red highlighting. And yes, that’s a chrome bezel. I consider it the rough equivalent of my dad’s old aviator watch, as far as macho goes, but where does it stand on style?
Colorblindness strikes again. That one’s a odd purple. Mine is a very nice and sedate black band and body. http://www.shopping.com/xPO-Casio_G_Shock_GW300A1V
If the work I did in January keeps up, I’m in a position to do much better this year than I ever have, by at least an order of magnitude (once people actually, you know, pay me), and even there I couldn’t possibly think of what to do with all the money. I’ve been splurging a little bit on stuff for my house, and I’d like to travel, but the Scot in me is appalled at the idea of large frivolous expenses, and if I had enough money to pay for all the small frivolous expenses, no doubt I’d do something boring with the rest of it, like put it in an RRSP. Or spend it on my friends.
I really don’t get the three-car-garage-in-Westmount-buying-$120-a-kilo-mushrooms-from-Cinq-Saisons thing, when you could be saving all that money and doing something with it that would actually be fun, or good for others, or both. That’s just me, though.
Cheap to me is USD 50 or under, and I’m perfectly willing to admit that most of the watches you can get for that are serviceable, last an adequate period and keep good time. I used to wear a Wenger standard issue I got for about 50 USD, had to replace the battery exactly once in seven years, and just couldn’t kill it – stainless band, tough crystal, waterproof etc.
I upgraded this year to a Wenger Battalion Diver ( I paid 125, ususlly retails for 175-200). Moveable bezel, bigger nands with better illumination and a little chunkier. Tough enough to wear while doing dirty work yet looks dressy enough in a James Bond kinda way.
As an aside, my former boss spent about three weeks last year agonizing over which Omega to buy, finally spent about USD 2500 for something that could have doubled for a paperweight and was, IMHO, the middle-manager “man-jewelery” equivalent of a midlife crisis. He admitted he didn’t really need it but it was cool looking and was the same watch 007 wore in the movies. That’s just sad, considering my (used) car cost about the same.