Every Watch Collector Dreams of Losing His Collection

I’ve been obsessing over watches for more than twenty years. During that time I’ve come to know hundreds of fellow obsessives, and I’ve learned that we all suffer from the same peculiar affliction.

Many of us eventually assemble collections that should, by any reasonable standard, satisfy us. Mine certainly should. I own watches I genuinely love and wear regularly. The hunt is largely over.

Or so it would seem.

Because every serious collector eventually asks the same deliciously irrational question.

What if I had to start over?

Suppose I came home from work and discovered that an earthquake, a burglary, or perhaps the Rapture had removed every watch from my collection. My watch box sat open like an abandoned nest.

Tabula rasa.

Nothing remained.

What would I buy first?

Among watch enthusiasts, this thought experiment produces an excitement that borders on religious ecstasy. It is Dorothy taking her first step onto the Yellow Brick Road. The adventure begins anew.

The appeal isn’t difficult to explain.

You would have the opportunity to lose your mind all over again.

You could experience, for a second time, the exquisite madness of becoming a watch collector.

When you were young in the hobby, you complained endlessly about the obsession. The endless research. The sleepless nights. The compulsive buying and selling. The dopamine dripping from every incoming package and every outgoing shipment.

You called it addiction.

You called it insanity.

You swore that one day you would finally reach contentment.

Then contentment arrived.

And quietly, almost shamefully, you began missing the insanity.

The seasoned collector sometimes resembles Neddy Merrill in John Cheever’s “The Swimmer.” Like Neddy, he imagines himself younger than he really is, setting out once more on an impossible journey, convinced that somewhere ahead waits the exhilaration of youth. Not because youth was wiser—it certainly wasn’t—but because everything still shimmered with possibility.

That is what the empty watch box promises.

Possibility.

So what would I do if fate forced me to begin again?

I’d like to think experience has made me wiser.

I’d probably abandon mechanical watches altogether. I’d pursue precision instead of romance.

Every watch would be solar-powered.

Every watch would synchronize itself through atomic radio signals or GPS satellites.

No winding.

No battery changes.

No time drift.

Just effortless perfection beneath the endless Southern California sun.

The collection might include several digital G-Shocks, unquestionably a Frogman, a couple of Citizen Promasters, one or two Citizen Attesas, and perhaps a pair of Seiko Astrons.

On paper, it sounds almost ideal.

Until I imagine living with it.

Then the doubts begin.

I’d miss my Seiko mechanical divers.

I’d miss my quartz Tuna.

I’d miss the gentle sweep of a mechanical seconds hand doing absolutely nothing more accurately than a quartz movement while somehow feeling infinitely more alive.

Before long, I’d find myself rebuilding almost exactly the collection I own today.

That’s when the embarrassing truth becomes impossible to ignore.

The exercise was never about watches.

It was about the rabbit hole.

Collectors often imagine they’re addicted to acquiring things.

I don’t think that’s quite right.

We’re addicted to anticipation.

To research.

To comparison charts.

To late-night YouTube reviews.

To convincing ourselves that the next purchase will finally resolve the argument raging inside our heads.

The object merely gives the obsession somewhere to land.

Take away the watches, and we’d simply begin manufacturing another fantasy.

The empty watch box isn’t appealing because it contains nothing.

It’s appealing because it gives us permission to become beautifully irrational one more time.

That is the secret longing of the seasoned collector.

Not another watch.

Another chance to go gloriously, ecstatically, and completely mad.