Blog

When is Too Many?

When is too many?

Sitting down to lunch the other day with one of my great mates and after the general chit chat about the weather we got onto watches.  Swiss mechanical watches as you know are a passion of mine and now are a passion of my mates.  Now for years I had tried to convince my friends to get an automatic Swiss watch, he would always come back and tell me that is Casio digital could do everything, stop watch, different time zones, alarm clock, I sure if I let him keep on talking that watch could also land a jumbo jet.  I had very little come back part from yeah but you need an Oris cause of the pure style.  This back and forth went on for a couple of years till finally his wife bought him a Breitling (he does have a pilot’s licenses so I let this one go through to the keeper). 

Now we had something to talk about, I told him that now he would start the second half of his life, his pre-mechanical watch and now the rest of his life.  I pointed out also that once you get one watch it’s hard to stop at that.  Six months later he hit me up for an Oris (he finally saw the light) and now has just purchased a Panerai all within a year of his first mechanical watch.  Just thinking about his quick growth into the world of mechanical watches got me thinking how many watches is too many?

Now it is very easy to work out how few it too few and that is none, so once you have that first mechanical watch when do you stop.  I’m sure there is some justification for a watch on each wrist at the same time so that allows you to have two.  Another theory is then that you only wear one watch at a time but there are seven days in the week so therefore you can confidently argue that you need a collection of seven different watches to really fill the week.  Of cause a cheaper argument for this changing of the watches is to simply change the straps on a daily basis as my good friend Jeff does.

But truly after seven watches what are you doing?  Is this an obsession or something a lot worse or better for that matter?  Maybe I need to get my collection above seven watches and then into uncharted territory to really feel what is it like and determine if there is such a thing as too many?