My new Swiss-influenced hobby: mechanical watches under five figures

It’s happened: I am now interested in watches. Since Switzerland is the quality watchmaking capital of the world, I guess it was inevitable that I would start hankering for a nice watch.

Source: ochsundjunior.ch via Virginia on Pinterest

Luckily for my budget, for now I’m content to merely learn about watches and discover what my tastes are. As a graphic designer, it’s no surprise that I like watches with sleek, modern styling. I also like retro touches if they don’t interfere with clean lines. And I’ve also come to find that I love the idea of mechanical, not Quartz movements. I like the old-fashioned technology of mechanical watches, where the movement is winding a spring. Good-quality, modern mechanical movements are actually very reliable, especially Swiss-made ones. And while Switzerland is world-famous for amazing/crazy watches costing five figures, they also make movements used in watches priced as low as 500 dollars/Swiss francs.

Source: abartwatches.com via Virginia on Pinterest

Source: xetum.com via Virginia on Pinterest

A great blog I’ve discovered for my hobby is Wrist Watch Review, a new site for lovers of mechanical wristwatches of all kinds (plus some digital watches too). The editor is the well-known tech writer John Biggs, who says their goal is to:

open a forum of discussion about what William Gibson calls “the very finest fossils of the pre-digital age” and to bring our own experiences and intellect to bear on what, thus far, has been a closed cabal of high-end wristwatch manufacturers ($21,000 bling-bling anyone?) and, to some extent, high-end watch consumers who value flash over elegence and ultility. Why do I love wristwatches and where did my particular, and very recent, obsession begin to surface? Mechanical watches were the high tech of their age. The sheer complexity of involved in creating a small, perfectly functioning timepiece in a case the size of a few quarters stacked is amazing on many levels. To engineer, and eventually collect, a fine timepiece or even one that wouldn’t normally be considered a “quality” piece requires precision, intelligence, and a flair for the somewhat quixotic.

And by the way, you may have noticed that I’ve pulled the watch photos in this post from Pinterest, which is an awesome and fun website for collecting and sharing links. If you haven’t tried it yet, you should check it out. And if you’ve got a Pinterest account already, it would be fun to connect and follow each other.