Well-preserved vintage Jenny Carribean 1000, one of the first of the extreme dive watches, which came to market in the early 1960's.I've been collecting watches with some level of seriousness and just enough knowledge to be dangerous for about 4 or 5 years now, and blogging about watches with a horrible lack of consistency for about 3 of them.
Over that time, I've come to the personal conclusion, a philosophy if you will, that the world of watches is simply too broad to allow for any kind of disciplined and coherent collecting without an over-riding focus or theme. Without one, it's tough to learn enough about the history, models, and relative values to prioritize your hunting and purchasing activities in a competitive and effective way. The stricter the criteria, the more focused the collecting. After all, it's easy to spend money on just any watch out there; it's the search that makes the purchase special.
To make a long story short, over the last several years, I've settled one of my collections on dive watches, specifically, on extremely over-engineered dive watches. How do I define extreme dive watches:
1. 1000m Depth Rating:
Yes, completely impractical, I know. But one has to draw the line somewhere, and 1000m depth rating sets a high engineering and construction bar to be met. It also narrows down the field of eligible dive watches significantly.
So, as much as I'd like to add an Omega Planet Ocean or a Seiko Marine Master to my collection, at the present time, I can't, as they're both only rated to 600m.
2. Automatic Movement:
I may adjust this one some day, but for the time being, I'm only collecting extreme divers with automatic movements.
3. Provenance:
This criteria is less objective than the other two, but it basically boils down to "does it have a story." If somebody wants to know about your watch, what can you say?
The story can be:
a) A noteworthy or unique horological history. Vintage watches often have this in spades.
b) A noteworthy or unique design and engineering story.
The best choices score well in both areas. For example, the Sinn U series scores a few points due to the overall provenance of Sinn as a company, and scores quite highly for its design and engineering achievements. Most of the eBay German/Chinese watches, on the other hand, while meeting the depth and automatic requirements listed (although the veracity of the depth rating is debatable), completely fall down in the area of provenance.
So, with that manifesto being written, let the blog commence. I'll be focusing on watches I find interesting, a few that I own, a few that I'd like to own, and also just general news that fit the theme.
3 comments:
Nice web page, DD! You have a very clear idea of what your interests are, and a nice stable of watches. As a diver watch collector, I too appreciate the engineering and robust nature of divers.. Hopefully you will be posting often. In addition to the provenance and engineering, do you have any preferences in watch movements? If so, what are they?
So far, I don't have any specific preference for movements. That being said, the ETA 2824 is currently over-represented in my collection and I'd like to diversify this. The vintage divers I'd like to add should help this and, if Seiko or Omega add 1000m divers to their line (rumor has it that Omega will do so this year), I may be able to add a Co-Axial or perhaps a Spring Drive to the stable.
Actually, let me amend that comment about movements:
I strongly prefer movements that hack. The only reason I haven't listed hacking as a 'must' is that I don't know of any automatic divers with (real) 1000m ratings that don't hack.
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