Watch Meetups are (Finally!) Back

During the pandemic, there were three things that completely stopped for me that I couldn’t wait to get back to once it was deemed safe. After a nice Mother’s Day celebration with family in May, and stuffing popcorn into my face during a Friday night screening of Those Who Wish Me Dead at the local multiplex, one pandemic bucket list item remained. My local watch collectors group, Booze & Bezels, hadn’t met for over a year. For me, our monthly watch meetups were always a highlight, and helped make this hobby seem “real” in a way that browsing forums and classified listings, or even working in the industry, can’t. When you get together with friends to talk watches, it’s just more immediate and satisfying. 

It’s easy to think of watch collecting as a solitary pursuit. In many important ways, it absolutely is, and indeed that’s part of the appeal. There’s something inherently private about watch collecting. Watches are a thing you wear on your body, after all, and the things that make us like any particular watch are incredibly personal. They involve our subjective taste, which we often have a hard time articulating, and play on our ideas of the past, and nostalgia, connected as they are to history or milestone events in our own lives. To an outside observer who is already confused about how a site like Worn & Wound can even exist or why someone would collect these things in the first place, the idea of getting together in a group to discuss watches, try them on, and commiserate about our experiences buying, selling, and collecting, must seem downright strange. 

But if you’ve ever been to a watch collecting event, you know how special they can be, and why they’re so important to feeding our interest in the hobby. Forget the fact, for a moment, that these events present an opportunity to handle and try on the physical objects we’ve become obsessed with. That’s an obvious and surface level reason that collector events are so much fun. The real magic is in the power of getting a bunch of people with the same exceedingly strange interest as yourself in close proximity. Nobody should be surprised that the common bond of carrying the watch collecting gene makes these people particularly agreeable. Take it from a certified introvert: you’ll like the people you meet at a watch meetup. 

That’s not to say that a watch collector’s meetup is going to be filled with a bunch of people who are all carbon copies of each other. Booze & Bezels attendees come from all walks of life – if there are twenty people in attendance, it’s quite possible that 20 different professions will be represented. Millennials, Gen-X’ers, and Boomers attend our meetings. And the watches that show up are every bit as varied as the people. We have collectors who are mainly into micro brands, serious Seiko collectors, representation from members of the Holy Trinity, and vintage watch experts who are absolute fountains of knowledge on the most esoteric references. Best of all, most of us are affected by the disease in such a way that we continue to shuffle our collections around, adding new pieces with a startling frequency, so there are always new things to see at any given meeting.

There’s a rhythm to our meetings that repeats itself month after month, and was quick to reappear even after a full year away. The unspooling of the watch rolls as you arrive, and nonchalantly taking each piece out of its sleeve and on display for anyone to see, touch, and try on is the first act. You look around the room to see who’s there, ask about who isn’t, and mourn the fact that your buddy with the new addition you were hoping to see for the first time won’t be there. Maybe next month. And then it’s a lot of schmoozing with beer in hand as you make the rounds, checking out watches and the partial collections represented, and reconnecting with friends. Some leave early, and the small group that’s left tends to focus like a laser on a specific topic as things wind down and we realize that all the watches have been seen. By the end it’s not always watch related, but sometimes it is. Like I said, you’ll like these people, so the conversation is easy and fun. 

Having a meetup under my belt after a long hiatus feels great, and makes me realize how crucial they are to my own experience in the hobby. It makes me wonder, in fact, whether or not I’d be as seriously interested in watches if it wasn’t for the support of the community around me. Now that I work in the watch industry, the hobby is tied to my livelihood in a way that it wasn’t for most of the time I’ve been involved in it, so it’s one of those impossible thought experiments. But I know without a doubt that my experience in a watch collecting group has made me appreciative of every aspect of watch collecting, especially, of course, the social aspect, and the camaraderie of those of us who are deeply involved. 

So, this summer, as you re-enter the world after a period of being isolated, or just see new options available to you that haven’t been in play for many, many months, consider becoming a part of a watch collecting group. RedBar is an obvious and great option if you’re lucky enough to have a chapter near you, but if you’re like me, and live in a place that’s a bit beyond RedBar’s reach, think about starting your own group, if you can. Social media makes it easy to connect with people locally, and you might be surprised how many might be craving exactly this kind of social interaction. (One of my favorite things that’s happened in my experience with B&B is to be contacted by Instagram followers, LinkedIn contacts, and random people who happen to find my writing who are somewhat local to me, and inviting them to a meeting. The collectors are out there, waiting.) If you’ve only experienced watches as an individual endeavor, and you’re still here reading Worn & Wound, you’re going to love it when you realize it’s a team sport. 

Lead image credit: Booze & Bezels