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In today’s installment of My Year in Watches, Media Manager Devin Pennypacker writes about making a big move, acquiring a long sought after dive watch, and the creative energy of New York City.
I know it’s a cliche, but to say my year in watches has been eventful would be a great understatement. I had the opportunity to work on some of the most personally fulfilling content I have ever created, made the jump from one large watch media company over to another, uprooted my entire life to pursue new opportunities, and refined my watch collection in the pursuit of finally checking off pieces from the wishlist. Along the way, I met so many amazing people, making new connections all based on our shared weird obsessions. It has been quite the year.
Earlier this year, I was working behind the scenes making the occasional cameo here and there for Teddy Baldassarre. With an amazingly talented team around me, we created content at a pace that most people could not fathom, launched a retail store that had been in the works behind the scenes for quite some time, and made waves in the industry that have yet to settle. While I was and remain incredibly proud of the content I helped create and am very appreciative of the knowledge, skills, and connections gained through that experience, when the opportunity arose for me to take on a new challenge while putting my name out there a bit more, I took it. Since joining the Worn & Wound team, I have had the opportunity to meet many of you at our various events as well as interact virtually, and am just so grateful for this community.
This professional change brought with it an environmental one as well, moving me from my home city of Cleveland, Ohio to my new home in Brooklyn, NY. The pace of the city, the drive of the people, and the abundance of opportunities are both intoxicating and exhausting. Working in a creative capacity can be tough, seeing waves of inspiration crushed by periods of tough droughts. So far, New York has been all go, no slow. When an oncoming dry spell starts to threaten my forward momentum, a new event, new release, or new project springs up. I recently created my first piece of short content for Worn & Wound, visiting the JLC popup event in Hudson Yards, while spinning up new video content for the Windup Watch Shop, filling me with chaotic excitement. There will be more to come as hopefully I can share moments with our audience that they otherwise might not have access to. New York is where it all seems to be happening and I am excited to finally be in the middle of it all.
My watch taste and collection took a turn this year that I would not have predicted going into 2024. I finally decided to cull the herd, selling or trading off a large part of my collection that was not getting the wrist time it deserved. As the saying goes, out with the old and in with the new. Most notably, I added a first-generation Omega Planet Ocean to my collection. On my list for quite some time, the original Planet Ocean caught my eye early on as it graced the wrist of two of my favorite on-screen personalities, Daniel Craig’s James Bond and Jeremy Clarkson from Top Gear/The Grand Tour. It is the first time that my extra large wrist proved to be a positive, handling the large 45.5mm case diameter as well as any. I am still firmly in the honeymoon phase with this watch, finding it painful to take off when working with another watch for a new piece of content. Other pieces from my collection have now been relegated to the watch box, and are threatened with the same axe that swung and missed them last time.
Potentially a byproduct of constant change, I found myself hyperfocused on new releases earlier in the year only to have the more recent slate of new watches pass me by with only an interested glance. The silver-toned Seamaster is outstanding, but more recent releases in the watch world would grab my attention immediately only to see it dissipate just as quickly. Maybe this marks a moment in my collecting journey where my taste has been refined to a point where I know exactly what I am looking for or maybe I just have not had the same time to pour over the details, but it is certainly a shift. As I write this I fully realize that in just a few months we will see an onslaught of new novelties that will once again spark a fever, but for now, I am happy to settle in and play the observer.
It looks like 2025 is shaping up to be a massive year. New content, new opportunities, and of course, new watches. I will of course be sharing the journey with all of you through various social platforms and in person. There is a short list of targeted acquisitions for the coming year, but for now, I will keep those to myself.
