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“Watches are made to be worn” is a mantra repeated frequently by people like me. To own a watch and not wear it in our community is borderline shameful. As enthusiasts, we take pleasure in the little scratches and signs of wear that a well worn watch picks up, and many of us adhere to the principle that if a watch isn’t being worn regularly, it’s time to move it along, list it on the forums, and replace it with another that hopefully finds a more regular role in the rotation.
I’m a believer in wearing watches – that should go without saying. I have a watch box full of watches that I genuinely enjoy having on my wrist. At this point it’s a well cultivated collection that, I think, reflects my taste and personality, and I’m lucky enough to own a handful of watches that give me a real sense of pride in ownership when I put them on. I’m not one to baby my watches or only bring certain pieces out on special occasions, and I certainly don’t have a Safe Queen, which I have to admit is one of my favorite terms of art in our hobby. Alas, I’ve never purchased a watch purely for investment purposes and dropped it off at the bank, with promises to visit around the holidays, or maybe for an anniversary.
But I do want to normalize the idea that we can own and enjoy watches that we would never think of wearing. I think most collectors, if they gave it some thought, would be able to identify a watch or two (or more) in their collection that they don’t wear – would maybe never even think of wearing – for one reason or another, that they also can’t imagine ever parting with. Let’s take a moment to celebrate the watches we don’t wear, but we love anyway.
A brief aside: this isn’t a plea for collectors to identify these watches and actually start wearing them. You’ll see no wrist shots among the photos accompanying this piece. For me, the value of these watches is in their role as desk objects, reminders of life events, and, well, for lack of a better word, decor. I know it’s sacrilegious to embrace and promote the idea of not wearing a watch, but I can’t imagine that wearing these watches would be nearly as fulfilling as simply keeping them in my line of sight during my working hours.
There are two watches, specifically, that inspired this train of thought. The first is a mustard yellow Casio, apparently a precursor to the famed F91 (this one has all the functionality of that watch, but does not have the model name signed on the dial). This Casio has not worked for years. I suppose a battery replacement could solve that, but I’ve simply never felt motivated. I think the reason for that is because as long as the watch has been in my possession, I’ve never worn it. It lived on my golf bag for years, strapped to one of its loops or hidden in a pocket, available to me when I needed it to check the time during a round in my adolescence. When I played a lot of golf as a kid, my parents (or a friend’s parents) would pick me and my golf obsessed friends up at the course at the end of a summer day, and having a watch on the course in that pre cell phone era was genuinely helpful to make sure we were on time.
I never wore the watch because it frankly seemed absurd to wear one while playing. As a kid, I never encountered adult golfers wearing watches. In fact, I clearly remember them removing their watches, and placing them in their bags or their lockers before a round. The recent emergence of the sub-genre of golf themed watches has never made sense to me because I’ve never known a serious golfer to wear a watch during play. With vanishingly few exceptions, touring pros sponsored by watch brands tend to remove their watches while actually playing as well. Maybe norms have changed relatively recently (I’ve been out of the game for some time) but it never would have occurred to me to wear this on my wrist.
Another contributing factor to me not wearing this watch: in the back of my head, I always recognized that it wasn’t actually mine to wear. I’m virtually positive that I came into possession of this Casio through theft. More specifically, I stole this watch from my mother. Weirdly, I don’t remember her wearing it either – she left it sitting in a little decorative bowl on a windowsill in the kitchen. Maybe some watches truly aren’t meant to be worn?
The other watch I vehemently refuse to wear but will likely never part with is made by a brand called MCE. The case is gold plated steel, quite poorly machined, has an aperture on the dial at 6:00 meant to evoke a tourbillon, and the case shape and dial treatment of a Patek Philippe Nautilus. Everything about it is gross.
I acquired this watch two years ago as part of a tradition that has come to mean a lot to me: the annual Booze & Bezels Yankee Swap. Each holiday season, the local watch meetup group that I’m a part of gets together for a holiday dinner and everyone brings a wrapped, watch related “gift” as part of a Yankee Swap. For those unfamiliar with a Yankee Swap, it’s a gift exchange tradition that rewards real conniving malevolence, with opportunities to trade or “steal” gifts from your counterparts as everyone takes their turn. In short, it’s right up my alley.
The watch themed items exchanged at these things tend to either be in the “joke gift” category or an item that is simply being re-gifted. I tend to bring something that falls into the latter column – this is a great opportunity to clean out the watch SWAG drawer. The MCE, I think, was meant as a joke. I mean, how could it not be? When I wound up with it, I think the expectation was that I’d trade it away for something more desirable, but I knew immediately that it would be a hilarious thing to have on my desk, draped on my ceramic kangaroo (yes, I found the Pulp Fiction kangaroo on eBay).
I look at both of these watches every single day, and they bring me a certain amount of happiness everytime I see them because of what they remind me of. I don’t think wearing them would make them feel any more special. So the next time you hear a watch media type or an influencer tell you that watches are meant to be worn, remember that somewhere in New Hampshire, I’ve got a cheap knock off Nautilus on my desk that connects me more firmly to the community I’m a part of than any single watch I might choose to wear, while admiring it as an object. Also, wearing that watch might require a tetanus booster.
