Editor’s Picks: The Stories That Have Stuck With Us Over 10 Years

We’ve packed a lot of content into the last 10 years, and we hope you’ve enjoyed consuming it as much as we have enjoyed creating it. While our coverage has expanded quite a bit over the years, we hope that the way we talk about watches, and our enthusiasm for them, has remained the same as ever. The team’s grown in recent years, as you may have noticed, but we’ve all got our favorites, or have that one article that pulled us into Worn & Wound. 

In celebration, here are a selection of stories and reviews that have meant something to each of us, in some cases in a very personal way. Do you remember the first Worn & Wound article that meant something to you? If so, please share it with us in the comments section below, we’d love to hear from you.

Blake Malin

Looking back at 10 years of content on Worn & Wound, it’s kind of crazy to think that there’s that much to say about watches. The editorial team has published a lot of great pieces over the years, so it was hard to pick just one favorite. Ed’s piece from last year about affordable Casio’s included a Fishing Timer that might be the most charming watch I’ve ever seen. And Zach W’s article exposing a miscast watch in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood shows how hard it can be to get period watches right and how unforgiving a well-versed watch enthusiast can be.

That all said, the piece of content that stands out most to me is our look inside the Damasko manufacturing facility from 2019. 

This was our first really big video project and it was quite an undertaking. The team traveled out to Barbing, German, and spent about a week with the Damasko family, learning about their design and manufacturing process and documenting it all for Worn & Wound. I’m still impressed by the quality of the content Zach Weiss and Ilya Ryvin (former Managing Editor) were able to put together from that trip. On a more personal level, that whole experience stands out as something I’ll probably never forget.

Ed Jelley

Zach Weiss’ review of the Orient Bambino (seen here) is the first time I remember being actively enabled by reading a review. I didn’t even question it, I just smashed the “buy” button on Orient’s site and had a dressy watch with a faux alligator strap and rose gold accents on the way. It was totally outside of my comfort zone in terms of watches. My small collection at the time consisted of a Seiko SKX173, an oddball Bali Ha’i quartz diver in PVD/carbon, and a few cheap Timex Expeditions. The craziest thing was that I don’t even like rose gold, not even a little bit. It was just something about the way the review was presented combined with the “just-right” price of under $200 for the watch. I distinctly remember texting my girlfriend at the time that I just impulse bought a watch with rose gold accents, all the while questioning my taste and what I’ve become for buying a dressy watch. I suppose I was being a bit dramatic.

The watch ended up coming and I loved it. Zach’s review was spot-on. He mentioned in the review that the watch was still impressive two years after his initial impression — a good sign. It’s also a good sign when a review makes you immediately want something right away, and you don’t even have to question it. While the wacky micro brand quartz diver and Timex Expeditions have moved on, the Orient Bambino is still in my collection today. Remember how I texted my girlfriend about the impulse buy? Well, I ended up wearing the impulse purchased Orient Bambino at our wedding.

Brad Homes

A couple of my favourite articles are Hung Doan’s “Watch Photography 101” (part 1 and part 2) For many of us, watches and photography go hand in hand. We enjoy looking at our watches, and enjoy sharing our thoughts and feelings with others. Good photography is a great way to do that. I’m still learning the art of photography and I certainly found these two articles a great introduction to lighting, the exposure triangle and some tips for staging.

Whether you’re working with a DSLR, mirrorless or your phone camera, or anyone looking to up their watch photography game these articles are a must.

Zach Kazan

I have a small confession to make: I’ve never been one to rely too heavily on watch reviews in my own purchasing decisions. I figured out fairly quickly in this hobby that there’s no substitute for actually handling a watch yourself, and a careful study of measurements and photographs is often more helpful to me personally than another enthusiast’s subjective opinion. Now, that’s not to say I don’t immensely enjoy reading the reviews my colleagues at Worn & Wound and writers for other websites and blogs dutifully slave over. I’m always interested to hear someone’s take on a new (or old) watch, and enjoy reading reviews as part of a steady diet of watch related content that I consume on a daily basis. But just as a negative review of the new Fast and the Furious movie will never keep me away from the theater, positive reviews of watches rarely have me reaching for the credit card when I wouldn’t otherwise be predisposed to buying the thing. 

But there are exceptions to every rule, and Zach’s review of the Tudor Pelagos LHD in the spring of 2017 is one of them. Now, I was already thinking about buying this watch, having been a fan of the original Pelagos. As a lefty, the idea of a destro watch had always been appealing, and this review’s highlighting of all the downright strange quirks inherent with the LHD (the red text, the roulette date wheel, the numbered caseback) put me over the edge and it wasn’t long after reading it that I began searching for my own. I eventually found one, loved it, sold it, and bought it again. It’s on my wrist now as I type, and while I can’t guarantee it’ll be in my collection forever, it certainly speaks to what I enjoy about modern watches now, in 2021. It’s a solid and robust sports watch with a modern Swiss movement, and is just a little bit strange in its details. Oh, and a clasp with on-the-fly adjustment makes it perfect for hot summer days and high sodium meals. 

The aspect of this review that really struck me back in 2017, and still resonates, is the photography. Specifically, it was the fact that this was the first time I had seen good photos of the Pelagos LHD on the rubber strap. I confess to not wearing the watch a whole lot on rubber, but the way it was captured without it’s bracelet in those review images really highlights the case lines in a way that hadn’t been presented to me before, and it made the whole package a lot more appealing. That’s a thread that I see run through so many Worn & Wound reviews: this publication really understands that images are part of the review, and go hand in hand with how a writer tells the story of a watch. 

It’s also written from the point of view of an enthusiast who understands that a watch at a roughly $4,000 price point is a major purchase not to be taken lightly, and that’s a perspective I always felt was missing from watch media at around this time, Worn & Wound being the notable exception. I’ve always felt a sense reading Worn & Wound reviews that they’re written by normal people who simply love watches and are ready to approach each timepiece on its own terms, regardless of price point. That’s important, because watches are uniquely weird in that something with an exceptionally high price doesn’t always equal a product of correspondingly high quality, and the inverse is obviously true as well. Frank and honest appraisals of a watch in my mind are a Worn & Wound hallmark, and I can see that in the Pelagos LHD review, and so many others. 

Zach Weiss

Picking a favorite article is like picking a favorite child. Or so I would imagine if I had children (and over 3,000 at that). Nevertheless, here I am, and I do, in fact, have an article that, while I’m hesitant to call my one-and-only-true-favorite, I do like an awful lot. That article is Chronography 5: the Valjoux 7750. Elegantly worded by Mark McArthur-Christie back in 2016, it tells the tale of a movement that we all likely take for granted.

Though we often talk about brands and iconic watches, it’s easy to forget that the majority of the watches on the market are powered by only a handful of movements. We tend to give more credit to the skins around these machines than the machines themselves, ultimately forgetting that they are doing all the hard work. This is the story of just one movement, but one that we’ve likely all come across, if not have in our watch box (or some variation thereof). The 7750 is the standard for automatic chronographs. Robust, reliable, and ubiquitous. It wobbles just a little to let you know it’s winding up, and it does its job well. Mark tells us about the young gentleman who not just created the movement using cutting-edge technology of the day, but also had to rescue it from his short-sighted superiors.

Perhaps after reading this article, flip over your nearest watch with a display case-back, take a look inside, and think about the unsung-heroes who designed and engineered the machine within. You might not know their names, but they deserve a thanks.

Blake Buettner

Shortly after taking up my post here at Worn & Wound I found myself working with (one of) our UK based contributor, Brad Homes on a piece he had written titled: What makes an Heirloom Watch? It’s an article that still sticks with me due to the personal nature of the story, and having similar thoughts about my own relationship with these things, and how it might be viewed through the eyes of my offspring in years to come. 

This article still resonates with me, capturing my views on creating new history with my watches and how my collecting might influence another generation of enthusiasm. Between review units and my own collection, my son is exposed to a lot of watches, and he notices them all. I take time to explain neat features, and, at bedtime, I charge the lume so we can enjoy it with all the lights out. These little rituals have come to mean a lot to me, and my hope is that they continue to drive his curiosity, whether he ends up actually wearing a watch or not. 

As Brad puts it, “these things can’t be forced” and you only realize the impact long after the fact. It’s not about the rare or expensive watches, it’s about the items we use everyday with the people we love that end up leaving a lasting impression. Brad captures some beautiful sentiment here and I’d encourage you to take a moment to read it if you missed it the first time around.

Christoph McNeil

Ten years for Worn & Wound….wow! Amazing and huge milestone for one of the best watch sites out there. Trying to parse out my favorite article out of the multitude is a tough task, but here goes. I’m going to cheat and pick two. Way back in 2014 I had the distinct pleasure of joining the W&W team writing about vintage watches. My first article was on the iconic Seiko 6105-8911X diver. I’m not trying to toot my own horn, but this article was significant to me in that it marked the beginning of my time here at W&W as well as the beginning of my writing about watches. It allowed me to meet so many great folks at W&W and beyond, and really vaulted my watch collecting hobby to the proverbial next level. I’ve learned a lot along the way, and truly enjoyed the journey so far. 

Now, while scanning back through the W&W archives, I came across one of the first articles that really caught my attention was the one introducing the Nezumi Voiture chronograph. At the time I hadn’t really been paying much attention to what a lot of the newer micro brands were doing (except some of the micro divers). This introduction article showed me a watch that had super cool vintage style, but was still thoroughly modern. I immediately fell in love with the design and the idea of a modern watch that still felt vintage. This to me is one of the great things about Worn & Wound, introducing people to watches that they might not have even heard of, let alone considered. Sadly, I learned shortly that this watch has a quartz movement. I’m down for quartz if it’s a digital watch, but I still have a hang up about regular watches using quartz movements. I just can’t abide. Still, this article opened my eyes to what Worn & Wound can bring to the watch community and I remember it to this day.