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I’ve never really paid much attention to wrist watches, until crushing disappointments in 2019 changed my opinion.
You got to love a wrist watch. Haven’t you?
Like most people, I’ve owned a wrist watch or two in the past. Well, we had to, as smartphones weren’t invented, so we had to tell the time somehow! For the greater majority of the time (ha!) I never really wore one. Being an engineering apprentice, and then moving on to an engineering career for a bit didn’t present an environment that was both safe, or good for wearing a watch.
I either caught them on something, smashed them against something, or filled them up with cutting fluid. I learnt rather rapidly that they didn’t last long – and so I stopped wearing them.
When I changed careers to an office based one I still didn’t wear a watch that often. Considering the career I chose was involved with computers, the time was there in view all of the time (ha! Again!), so I didn’t need to wear a watch.
2016
By 2016 I owned two wrist watches. One was an old Rotary Swiss Commando GS3003 that I’d (probably) bought myself at some point. The battery was dead in it and I hadn’t worn it for quite a while. The other was a Citizen E100-S006957 Eco-Drive watch that I’d been bought as a Christmas present. That was the one that I wore whenever I wore one (mainly because it was the only one that worked!) and is still running today. They’re only supposed to work for 10 years, but this watch is over 17 years old now and still runs like a… er… watch.
One day in 2016, I ended up talking (at length) with some work colleagues about watches. I confessed I didn’t know that much about them, and I only owned one that worked. We chatted about different (well-known) brands, such as Casio, Seiko, Timex and Citizen. The conversation we had prompted me to go and look on the internet for a new watch. Not something mainstream though. Oh no. It had to be something a bit more esoteric than a bog standard wrist watch. Why? No idea. 🤷
The hunt was on!
I spent a bit of time looking at watches – a few days at least.
I’ll freely admit that I didn’t really know what I was looking for: I just wanted something that looked a bit different from what I already owned. I thought I found it, when I stumbled across the website of MVMT Watches.
MVMT Watches
I visited and re-visited the MVMT website quite a few times over the period of a few days throughout February and March 2016. The range wasn’t extensive at that time, but I quite liked the watches they had for sale. I liked the website too – I thought it quite nice looking. I liked their watch designs, I liked their website: I liked the cut of their jib, so to speak.
It’s an American company: co-founded in June 2013 by college dropouts Jake Kassan and Kramer LaPlante. They raised more than $290,000 for MVMT through two crowdfunding campaigns on Indiegogo – and they shipped the UK.
I’m in! I shouted 👍
In retrospect, the alarm bells should have rung just that little bit louder.
I bought one of their watches
As previously mentioned, the range of goods was not extensive, but they had a big (45mm) all-black chunky steel-braceleted watch that caught my eye. It was the most I’d ever paid for a watch at the time, ringing in at $140 USD. That translated to £98 of your finest English pounds at the time. I waited. It arrived. I was very impressed with it. It was heavy, chunky and very, very black. So black, I had difficulty reading the hands. Hmm. Within an instant, it brought to mind the control panel inside Hotblack Desatio’s Black Ship: black buttons and black gauges, black writing on a black background. It did look good, however.
Some time passed
No pun intended (this time!). Spurred on by what I thought was a good watch purchase (and continuing previous watch-related research), I started looking at other brands of watches. I was after something different and ended up on eBay. In April 2019, I placed bids on several Oris watches – and won one. I paid £44 for (what I thought was) a genuine Oris watch. It arrived. it looked like an Oris (because it has the word “Oris” on the face).
I had a conversation
A few days later, I’m having a conversation about watches with the same colleagues in the office. We’re discussing watches and watch movements, manufacturers and batteries etc. It triggered a thought in my slow brain. I wonder if I should check out that genuine Oris watch (we’d discussed Oris watches in the office, determining them to be bloody expensive!) and whilst I’m at it, have a look at the movement of the MVMT quartz watch.
Tools for the job
I didn’t have much in the way of equipment for doing watch work, so decided to invest in some cheap tools. A small watch vice, some screwdrivers and tools for opening the backs of watches were the main bits of equipment I bought. A bit later on, I’d add plastic tweezers and a watch press (a tool for pressing watch backs, or watch crystals into place).
The Polish man
A quick diversion. During my apprenticeship (many years ago in the 1970’s) I worked with many talented engineers. One of those was an older Polish chap, who would do watch work on the side for cash. Things like replacing watch batteries, or replacement straps, that sort of thing. He would usually do the work in the factory workshop at his workbench.
He would clamp the watch in his 6″ Stanley vice and open the back of the watch with a cold chisel and hammer! I’d never seen anything like it – and never have since. He never had any complaints, so he must have done a decent job.
I vowed at the time in 1979, never to do that. Proper tools for the job and I’ve stuck with that ethos ever since. Well, mostly.
Private Investigations
Back to 2019. The investigation commenced: whipped the back off the Oris… and lo and behold – it’s not an Oris! It’s some unbranded automatic movement. It was a fake – somebody had printed up a watch face to look like an Oris and put it in an unbranded case with an unbranded movement. That was crushing disappointment number one.
I did a lot more research into watch movements – both mechanical and digital, just to get some information. In the meantime – disgusted with my fake Oris – I threw it away in a fit of pique. In retrospect I wish I hadn’t, it might have kept decent time!!
My “watch colleagues” at work laughed (but they were sympathetic). It was £44 and not £440 or £4400, so I wasn’t overly angry. Just disgruntled at my own stupidity, mainly. But it was a lesson learnt.
Further spurred by that discovery, I whipped the back off the chunky black Hotblack Desatio MVMT watch. It turned out that the movement inside was a quartz Miyoto movement. A replacement movement (should I want to buy one) cost just under £7 at the time. Given that I’d paid £98 for the watch, that meant £91 of it was the case, the dial and the strap. I didn’t think those were worth £91 – crushing disappointment number two.
It wasn’t that the movement was cheap, it was the fact that MVMT didn’t tell people (at the time) they were using “cost-effective” movements and charging what I would consider to be an “outrageous amount” just for the look and the design.
Sidebar - Miyoto are owned by Citizen watches, manufacturer of "proper" and "real" watches. Citizen created Miyoto initially for their own products but they decided (I assume) it was a lucrative game and started selling the movements to other watch retailers. Miyoto movements aren't bad, or lacking in quality - in fact completely the opposite.
A resolution of sorts
I did get irritated with the fake Oris, however the MVMT (although it cost more!) wasn’t as great a disappointment. I still have the watch because, well, it does look bloody good to be fair. I still have difficulty reading the black letters on the black background 😁
A resolution was made. Before purchasing a watch I would perform a good deal more due diligence before doing so. With mainstream brands in the affordable (for me, anyway) market like Citizen, Casio, Timex, Seiko and Accurist, the amount of due diligence is likely to be less than some non-brand on Etsy or eBay. But due diligence must be performed before a purchase.
It doesn’t – and won’t – stop me from buying crap, I just need to be aware that I am buying crap before I knowingly spend the money.
And Finally
A final word before ending: timekeeping.
I like an accurate watch. Unfortunately there aren’t that many that are (unless you buy a GPS or a chronometer watch). Digital watches are meant to keep better time than their mechanical counterparts, and that’s reflected in their specifications. A digital will fluctuate +/- 5 seconds per day, a mechanical +/- 20 seconds per day.
Most of my digital watches fall within (or less than) the +/- 5 seconds per day (if the battery is good). The mechanicals not so much. The worst one is a Rotary 1895 that I bought on a cruise “duty free”. That one loses 20 seconds per day easily 😡and I can’t be bothered to get it serviced.
The best timekeeper I have (that’s not a GPS or Chronometer) is the Hotblack Desatio MVMT watch of all things. It keeps almost perfect time, losing just two seconds in six months. Given that I thought I’d purchased a donkey, it was quite the revelation to discover the £7 Miyoto movement is outstanding!
The irony of that is not lost on me. I now own some much more expensive watches that are less accurate!
TL;DR
I bought some watches, found out that I’d been fleeced. As a result of that, decided to be more careful when spending my hard-earned money on watches. But I still buy crap sometimes, although I make sure that I am fully aware of it.
