I’ve just had this watch arrive.
A stunning looking dress watch. Gold case, white dial, simple roman numerals.
35mm across, 38 mm lug to lug and on an 18mm strap. With a manual wind movement to boot.
From a distance am I describing a calatrava? a vacheron constantin patrimony. No I’m not.
This is a watch you know the name of, it’s a timex Marlin, but not the resissue. And it embodies everything that your favourite vintage dress watch does without the need to break the bank.
Now true this watch is not perfect, it needs a little attention after winding you need to give it a small tap to get it going, but I’m going to argue that that’s charming.
You’ll have seen the patek adverts stating, you never actually own a patek phillipe you merely look after it for the next generation and while that applies to Patek. It’s not just true for them.
This is a 1976 watch. Which means that at some point in the middle of the quartz crisis someone bought a manual wind mechanical watch, not trusting the new way of doing things. They kept it old school.
Then 5 decades passed and it went through whoever’s hands that it did. Maybe the original owner’s children, before finding its way into the back of a draw and eventually ebay.
Maybe it ended up in portobello market and got picked up by a tourist before travelling the world.
We don’t know, we will never know and it quite frankly would never matter if we do. As no matter who’s wrist it ended up on, the watch carries their story. Each as powerful and important to our wider world, each have our role to play.
Sonder is the realisation that every person you meet, every passerby see, has a life as complex and vivid, and unique as your own.
And that’s as beautiful, as beguilling as the sweeping seconds hand of any watch.
Every time you wind the crown, you bring life back to the days and lives this watch has lived. Whether you know what they are or not.
And that means a watch doesn’t have to be a marketed heirloom to tell us what has happened in the world.
Nor does it have to feature a high end movement, a precious metal case or a story tied to a major epoch.
It simply needs to be built with enough quality to last generations and Patek never had a monopoly on that.
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