Hi, first post here but long time lurker. As the title says, what’s a sentimental timepiece to you?
For me it’s an old Seiko quartz from the 80s given to me by my father. It was a gift from his parents to him after he graduated high school. He’s since upgraded to a Rolex submariner and passed the Seiko onto me.
It’s a thin, small watch with only a case size of about 34 mm. Definitely an adjustment to the large men’s watches of today, but it quickly grew on me and became one of my most worn pieces. I like to wear it on days where I’m nervous, such as the an important presentation or the start to something new. I feel it brings me luck, in addition to being an elegant piece.
If anyone is curious, I’d happily include an image of it or it’s reference number.
What about you? Which one is special to you?
F91W story time: I was having a particularly bad day about 8 years ago (recent break up, shitty day at work, just generally languishing away in my late 20s career latter type shit etc) when I found an F91W just sitting in the middle of the road leading to the parking lot at my job. I didn’t really know anything about watches at the time beyond Rolex = good. It was clearly dead and the resin strap was torn across the notch that the previous owner most likely wore it on. Case was actually not in terrible shape even though it was probably run over by a car. Anyway I put it in my pocket thinking I would turn it in somewhere at work it or fix it some day. I stopped into a CVS to get a drink and thought, hey might as well check what battery this thing takes, and I took it home and swapped the battery. To my surprise this stupid piece of shit powered on and is still running to this very day. I did wear it for a while until I kinda stopped wearing watches then moved to an Apple Watch before getting into mechanical watches again more recently and buying a watch box. It just looks comically small on my 7.5 inch wrists and the poop green NATO strap doesn’t help.
Maybe the previous owner cast it away because the battery died and they couldn’t be bothered, or maybe the strap was on its last legs and they got unlucky, losing a good friend that day. Now I have a good job, happy family and overall fulfilling life. The joy this little plastic bastard brings my 3 year old is priceless. He runs into my closet and yells “TICK TICK TICK TICK” until I bring down my watch box so he can fish it out and wear it around. The F91W represents a lot things to a lot of people (Al Quada, Nico Leonard making a career out of screaming dumb shit like “GOD TIER” and “PURE CLASS” into your face, how far $10 can still go etc etc) but to me it represents resilience.
Just keep ticking you beautiful fucker.