Hello HIVE, today I will be talking about my new passion for watches and showing off my latest addition to my starter collection.
A few months back, 4-5 months ago, I came across a video from a lad from Belfast and decided to watch it because there are not many YouTubers from Northern Ireland. The video was a reaction to some famous person's watch collection and for some reason, it pulled me in. The dude (Nico Leonard) is highly entertaining and his knowledge was amazing. He was able to tell what watch the person was wearing from a 2-second clip and he was able to split the model reference number, the watches history and give price estimations. I ended up watching 4-5 videos back to back. The next day, the youtube algorithm picked that up and since then I have been consuming his content as it's been recommended for me plus i subbed as well. This is what the spark was and what has gotten me into watch collecting.
I started to watch other watch YouTubers and have got a thirst for it. I watch mainly 3 other channels. 1 is a guy that makes 30-40 minutes video showing him take Rolexs apart to service/repair, i love to watch him take the movement apart while explaining what each part does and I'm learning a lot from his channel. 2 is 2 guys that review watches and are very entertaining and 3 is some guy that does videos about building collections, each type of watch, best watch for this and that.
Long story short, about 3 months back i decided to dip my toe and buy a watch. Nico that i watch on youtube says that Casio is GODTIER because they are cheap, work really well and last forever.
The above watch costs £9.99 on amazon. It is water resistant, has a light, timers, and stopwatches, shows the time, day and date, has alarms, can take a few bangs and the battery lasts for up to 10 years. All for less than the cost of a 12-pack of beer.
Anyways, i never bought that watch because i wanted a G-shock. I thought this would be a cool starter watch because it's packed full of features, looks cool and it would not matter if i banged it off things. I looked at what was on offer and ended up going for a metal G-shock of a series they added around 2 years back. They has been released in resin 2 years back and these metal ones were new designs. I went for this one here.
I can't remember what I paid for it to be honest, around £130 I think, I used the 1st order 15% off code i got from signing up to their newsletter. It arrived and I have worn it every day since. I said to the wife that if I could wear it every day for 3 months, i would be able to justify buying a more expensive watch. I have impulse-bought cheap watches in the past, cheap smart watches, and health/sleep trackers. I'd wear them for a few days and never again so she thought this was the same thing.
She knows me well and asked, "Is this 1 of those things where you have to buy more and more and each one has to be more expensive?" The answer is of course, yes and that is my plan. Shit, I already have my next couple of watches already thought out. Not the models but the brands.
So I wore my G-shock for 3 months and window-shopped for the next watch. I decided to get an automatic watch and set a budget of £500. I have a slim wrist which limited me more as most watches are 40-42mm and 36-39mm is recommended for my wrist size. This limited me somewhat but there was still plenty to pick from.
About 2 weeks back I come across the Hamilton Khaki Field Murph 38mm Automatic Watch. It has a different face and hands compared to a normal Khaki field and was created for the movie Interstellar (2012). They released the watch for public sale in 2019 in a 42mm version and then released the 38mm version about 3 weeks ago. A normal Hamilton Khaki will cost £500 but this is £820. I saw the price of the 42mm version has held its value and is still retailing for its launch price which made me feel I could buy this and not lose money from holding it. We think of things to justify spending money, haha. I mean if it'll hold its value, then sorta ok to buy. right?
I bought this bad boy last Sunday at about 4am having seen it at an amazing price.
I was doing some window shopping and saw this on a sale for £697 from a jewellers here in the UK. I did a quick scam scan to make sure they were legit as I'd never heard of them and FOMO'd bought it. I paid for Next day 1 pm delivery think I got a bargain.
I was planning for this to be my new everyday watch and replace the G-shock and thought a different strap would be nice. The black leather is a little fancy for everyday use when I mainly wear hoodies and sweaters. I went to amazon and bought a brown leather strap and a Green nato (fabric) strap so that I had them before the watch arrived.
On Monday I received an email saying that they were waiting for stock to arrive later that day and it would be shipped on Tuesday. I clicked through the email to the website and saw the same watch I had bought was back to its full price of £820, must have been a 1-day offer are something. On Tuesday, it was marked as shipped and it arrived on Wednesday.
I instantly removed the black leather strap and put on the brown leather one to try it out. I never even got a picture with the black strap hence the google stock image from above. Here it is with the brown strap.
This will look nice when im wearing a shirt and when I tried it on, it was comfortable and a good fit. Granted the leather was a little hard and not broke in but overall I forgot I was wearing it after a few minutes.
I then swapped that over to the Green strap I bought knowing this was the strap that was staying on it. As I said, I mainly wear hoodies so this strap dresses the watch down a lot from the fancy black leather one it arrived with.
It's amazing how a strap can make a watch look like a different watch completely.
This is the new everyday watch and new newest toy not that there is much to play with. I have had it for 3 days now and to my eye, it has kept perfect time. I think the movement loses/gains a few seconds each day so it might take a few weeks/months before I have to change to time back to sync with my PC.
The automatic movement is pretty cool, it has a power reserve of 80 hours which is really good compared to the norm of 40-50 hours. The second-hand ticks 4 times a second and looks like it's rolling around the dial instead of ticking. It's very day dreamy and hypnotizing to watch. I googled it and found out that if I wear it for 6-8 hours per day, it would never run out of charge.
Oh, oh. The cherry on the cake is it has a see-through back.
This is pretty cool and it's a nice feature to the to be able to see the watch working. The part that says Hamilton on it spins around when I move my wrist and this spin winds up a spring that powers the watch in the simplest terms.
There you have it, folks. That is my new watch. Now I have 2 watches in my starter collection. I can use the G-shock if im going swimming are something and wear this on the green strap as my everyday chilling about the house watch.
Whats next? Im thinking a Tudor 😏
Hope you enjoyed this post and have a great day.