I suspect we’d see an escalation in anti-counterfeiting technology, much like we see in currency.

To date, with a few minor exceptions, the chief anti-counterfeiting technology has been simply the difficulty of building something to that level of precision, finish, and design, but you’re right, the end of that may be coming soon.

The watch industry has faced that before and done some measures against it, first physical records, like certificates and serial numbers, then difficult to replicate features, like Rolex’s microprinting and micro laser engraving in the crystal, or their more recent rehaut engraving.

These measures largely rely on capital cost. The equipment to do them is expensive, but the cost per marking is small, so it makes it difficult to fake. But, tools and methods get cheaper all the time, and fakes are a big enough business to buy even expensive equipment.

Luxury brands have been working on this for a while. I did some work for a luxury brand group, which will remain nameless, nearly 15 years ago to produce some concepts and prototypes for authentication tech. I won’t go into the details, since I’m still contracturally obligated to not, but there are ways to embed codes into physical objects that are easy to scan for, if you know how they’re encoded, but nearly impossible to detect if you don’t. Not being able to even detect the security feature makes it pretty difficult to replicate it.

I expect things like this will become commonplace, and part of a brand’s value in the future will be how good their authentication tech is. The end consumer will have assurance that their item is the real deal, in seconds, just by stopping by any brand boutique and having it scanned. This could be combined with more visible markings or detectable codes, plus secure databases, etc., which, while not as counterfeit proof, can let the customers scan their item with their phone and get a positive hit, with return of their registered name, or code phrase, or whatever, from the company’s servers on a phone app, enabling the all-important “see, I told you it was real” bragging rights in social settings.

Very cool. That’s an interesting and good looking dial.

Traditionally there have been men’s, women’s and unisex watches, but it’s really just a matter of size, and sizes are a changing fashion. Of course there’s styles that may be considered more masculine or more feminine, with women’s watches traditionally emphasizing the jewelry aspect and men’s watches emphasizing function, but there’s plenty of overlap there. Just as in clothing, women generally have had more latitude in wearing “masculine” styles than men have had in wearing “feminine” styles, but that’s changing these days, too, and there are plenty of examples from history of “men’s” watches with floral designs engraved on the case, or gems set in the bezel, or whatnot, and many “women’s” watches with tough, utilitarian, oractical designs. Lately, some brands are dispensing with gendered descriptors altogether and grouping collections by small, mid , and large sizes.

So, really there’s only one rule: wear what you like and what fits you well, in both size and style.

Size trends currently are headed towards smaller watches after a couple decades of big watches being in fashion. There are a few measurements that sum up a watch and will give you an idea how it may fit, but just like clothing, the numbers don’t always catch all the details and aren’t a full replacement for trying it on.

The first will be case diameter/width. A pretty typical size for “large”, traditionally men’s watch is 40mm, but 38mm and 36mm are coming back into style. 33-34 is a typical mid-sized watch, and 28-31 mm for a small. These are typical sizes for round cases, square, rectangular, cushion, or tonneau cases “wear large” taking up more visual space for the same width, so they tend to be narrower. For example, if you look at one of the classic watch brands that has long produced both rectangular and round cased watches, Jaeger-LeCoultre, their traditionally fitting large round cased watches, the Master Control series, are 38-40mm wide, while their large rectangular cased watch, the Reverso, ranges from 28 to 30mm.

The next important measurement is lug to lug. This is the length from where the strap/bracelet connects on one side to where it connects on the other. This can be very variable and affect the overall fit as much or more than the diameter/width. Some makes are famous for “long lugs”, like Nomos, which, despite their typical smallish diameters, will fit a large wrist well or, conversely, a small wrist poorly, because of the large lug to lug size.

Finally there’s thickness. This is caseback to the highest point of the crystal thickness. Sport or utilitarian watches generally get away with being a bit on the thick side, emphasizing durability, weather resistance, or added functions, while dressier watches will work best if thinner, more discreet, and able to fit under your shirt cuff without binding. Diameter also comes into play here, since a 36mm watch that’s 13mm thick will seem a lot thicker than a 42mm watch that’s 13mm thick, simply due to proportions.

Then there’s technology. Quartz remains a highly accurate, and generally lower cost, technology, but there’s a world of difference between low cost quartz and high quality quartz. Quartz is often seen as “soulless” simply because it works, with no fuss, and little need for interaction, while mechanical watches have a fair amount of “care and feeding” instructions that come with them. Plus mechanical comes with a rich and interesting history, and often a transparent caseback, known as a “display” or “exhibition” back, which gives you a view of the visibly energetic work going on inside, which is always fun.

Basically, mechanical watches are not just time telling devices, they’re also sort of a Tamagotchi, the “virtual pet” toys that were popular in the 90s that required interaction to keep them “alive”.

Within the realm of mechanical watches, there’s manual and automatic watches, with a manual (sometimes referred to as just “mechanical”) requiring regular winding by hand to add power to the mainspring, while automatics use an autowind device, a rotating mass (the “rotor”) and gearing to harvest energy from normal arm movement and store it in the mainspring. There are positives to be said for both. I enjoy a nice manual since wearing one let’s me start the day with a few tens of seconds spent winding it until it’s full, meaning I get to check an item off my “to do” list without even getting out of bed. Plus, they tend to be thinner since the addition of the autowind device adds to the bulk of the movement. But, there are some very thin autos out there. On the plus side for autos, you have the added complexity of the device, which can add appeal for a gearhead, plus the convenience of not having to wind it up every day. And, with the vast majority of autos, you can wind them by hand if you want, adding extra power. This is useful if you’re a relatively sedentary person, since if you’re not active, it won’t be able to harvest enough energy to keep running.

Mesh bracelets, also called Milanese bracelets since this method of interlocking wire coils to form a flexible mesh originated in the city of Milan, are a great choice, and one of my favorite bracelet styles. But, quality really matters for Milanese bracelets, and with heavier watches you want a thicker mesh to give some mass to the bracelet to act as a counterweight, keeping your watch nicely centered and located on your wrist without having to wear the bracelet too tight. A well-balanced and well-fitting mesh bracelet is very comfortable.

Mesh bracelets, owing to their straight ends, can usually be fitted to most watches, and there are a few makers of Milanese bracelets which excellent bracelets, with good adjustability, so if a watch is not offered with a mesh bracelet as original equipment, it’s usually easy to add one. My favorite mesh bands are the German made Staib bracelets. They’re very supple, nicely finished, and just all around solidly made.

So, that’s some basics.

The main shortcoming, in terms of durability, of pocket watches were water resistance and lack of shock protection. Both of these are easily solved now with screw together cases, gaskets, and antishock devices.

As others have said, Tissot makes pocket watches that pretty much fit the bill.

One thing I don’t think I’ve seen on modern pocket watches which I think would be interesting if you wanted to up the resisyance a bit would be a screw down crown. You also rarely see them in steel cases. But, this could easily be done. Take basically any modern ETA/Unitas cal 6497/6498 based watch design, delete ths lugs, add a threaded case tube and screw down crown, add a suspension bow, and you’d have a burly modern pocket watch.

This part is called “the crystal”.

Acrylic is actually a great material for this. It’s better, in my opinion, than glass, albeit not as good as synthetic sapphire, the other popular, but more costly, material used for watch crystals.

The reason I like acrylic better than glass is that while it scratches more easily, it’s also repolished more easily. There’s a polishing paste made just for acrylic, called Polywatch, which works great. Glass is harder, but once it scratches you can’t remove those scratches. Acrylic can also handle sharp blows pretty well, since it can flex a bit. Sapphire, of course, isn’t something you can readily polish at home, but since it’s much, much harder than even hardened glass, it’s virtually scratch proof, but glass is sort of a bad in-between where it’s soft enough it can scratch, but too hard to easily restore.

So, watch crystal materials in order of my preference are sapphire, then acrylic, and then glass bringing up a distant third. If you can’t be so hard as to be nearly invincible, the next best thing is to be soft enough to absorb blows and be readily restored. And, should it take too much damage, acrylic is inexpensive to have replaced with a new acrylic crystal.

So, I wouldn’t worry about it. I have 50 year old watches that still have their original acrylic crystals, they just need a light polish now and then, maybe once every several years, to keep them clear and easy to read.

That sounds like the worst thing ever.

Nomos is a good suggestion. Older ones would fit that price band, and, although not regularly fitted with display backs, they’re not uncommonly found with them.

To go a very different direction, what about a mid 90s to early 00s Zenith El Primero Prime? This is the cal 420 hand winding version of their 36kvph chronograph, smaller and thinner than most modern chronos, in a 38mm case and 11 mm thick. It’s a bit of an oddity to have a movement famous for being among the first automatic chronographs in a manual version, but it makes for a nice view of the movement and a much thinner, dressier watch, if a chronograph can be considered “dressy”. Here’s a good write up on the model.

Yeah, if you stop to think about it, it’s not surprising, but it wouldn’t have been my first thought on the spur of the moment. Your skin will reflect a lot of light, plus has the ability to disperse a lot of energy without changing temperature much, so it becomes more about total energy delivered rather than peak power. The thin film coatings on the crystal and dial can’t disperse much heat energy, so they’re much more sensitive to peak pulsed power. The flash doesn’t deliver a whole lot of energy total since the pulse is short, but the peak power of that pulse is quite high. Basically, it’s like passing your hand quickly through a flame. You might feel a little warm, but if you’re quick it’s not damaging. But, if you pass a thin bit of paper through the same flame at the same speed, it’s going to burn.

Wow, I would not have expected that.

What sort of flash was this? Xenon flash tube based?

I don’t see anything that looks like radium lume there.

Generally, radium paint materials will be whitish and thickly printed, or seen as a fill material in hour markers and hands, or small round dots next to hour markers. With age, it will darken, so sometimes it’s now tan or grey-green, but it will be a light color, and often looks chalky.

The radium paint itself is a mixture of a zinc sulphide based phosphor, radium salts, and organic paint binders, like an oil paint. The bulk of it is zinc sulphide, which is a white, chalky-looking material, so that’s what the paint looks like. To make zinc sulphide into a radioluminescent phosphor, it’s chemically altered with a trace amount of either silver or copper. Copper based phosphor can age greenish, but a lot also depends on how the paint binders age. Being organic compounds, and exposed to a lot of radiation from the radium content, they usually darken or yellow, just like old lacquer exposes to direct sunlight, resulting in a light brown color for the aged radium paint. The zinc sulphide itself breaks down from the radiation, so it stops glowing even though the radium salts remain radioactive.

Exactly like that? No. But, it definitely borrows a bit from vintage Eterna Kontikiand and vintage Zodiac Sea Wolf dials.

A parts watch may or may not do you much good. It will have aged a bit, too, plus being out of original packaging it’s now subject to humidity, electrostatic discharge, ionic contaminants, etc. The ideal thing would be a NOS replacement circuit board in electrostatic dispersive original packaging, sealed and packed with dessicant, as circuit boards are usually packed. Keep that in a cool, dry place, and it’s basically a whole new life for a quartz watch, sitting there ready to go. It will have some age related degradation of the plastic bits, that can’t be entirely stopped, but it should keep for a few decades pretty well.

Putting a new movement in is pretty much making it another watch, in my opinion. I buy watches mostly for the movements, not the case or dial. I find movements interesting. If there’s no NOS parts, or a well preserved donor movement that could be sealed away in an electrostatic dispersive bag with dessicant, it’s just going to live until it dies, and that’s it. But, if it’s something like an unexceptional three hand quartz movement in a nicely finished gold case, it can often be replaced with any old current model quartz movement, and keep the watch functional. I tend to think of this as a sort of reanimated zombie, but I tend not to be interested in watches that are primarily jewelry pieces that just happen to tell time.

High quality quartz movements, like the Rolex Oysterquartz, the Grand Seiko 9F, or the JLC cal 631, will have better lifespans for the mechanical parts, and may even have better quality circuit boards than cheaper quartz, but they still have ICs and circuit boards which will age faster than mechanical parts. Usually, though, this grade of quartz movements is better supported with replacement parts, as well as being designed to be maintained, not just disposed of. Plus, they’re actually fairly beautifully made, and for the JLC and Grand Seiko, sometimes found in watches with exhibition backs showing off what a quartz device can look like if you aren’t worried too much about cutting costs.

It’s a sound argument. Microchips will die, as will the circuit board they’re attached to. Even with lightly stressed electronics, you’ll see an ~80-90% death rate by about 40-50 years. Sure, there’s lots of 1970s quartz watches still around, but those are the survivors. It’s not like there’s a hard expiration date, it’s just a matter of statistics, so some will keep on going, just like there are 100 year old humans out there.

The difference for mechanical watches is that mechanical parts can be remade. Pivots can be repolished, a whole new balance arbor can be made by someone with a lathe, cracked jewel bearings can be pressed out and the holes refitted with new ones, and you can even oversize them a bit if needed to get a secure fit, and so on. Even a custom.hairspring or mainspring can be made from a coil of suitable spring material. Basically, all components can be made or remanufactured by a single skilled person, so it becomes a question of whether it’s worth repairing, not a question of can it be repaired.

Quartz can, to a degree, be repaired similarly, coild can.be replaced, mechanical parts fixed, a new circuit board, if stock is available, installed, but the similarity ends with the microchip. Even with advances in semiconductor manufacturing, we’re not at the point where someone can reverse engineer and duplicate a simple microchip using a workbench full of tools. It takes a factory with tens of millions to billions of dollars worth of equipment. We’re probably close to the point where someone could mount a chipscale packaged small microcontroller on a small custom-made interposer and program it to act like the original chip, but even that would be more expensive and difficult to do than making a custom balance arbor.

I’ve worked 30 years in the semiconductor and photonics world, developing devices, processes, and equipment used to make chips, supervising the torture testing and lifetime/reliability of chips, and so on. Chips all die at some point. They start un-making themselves the instant you power them on. Non-integrated electronics, like the single transistor circuit in an old Accutron, can potentially be repaired with alternate components, since there’s always going to be an assortment of individual transistors, diodes, capacitors, and whatnot made. It might be difficult and require experimentation to get a sufficient match, and there’s no clear replacement for things like the coils, but, overall, they’re much less stressed due to relatively large circuits handling relatively small amounts of power, so they’ll live longer to begin with, and they’re made of simple enough parts that are human replaceable, so they might be with us longer than early quartz of the same era. But, still, electronics die, and they die in non-repairable ways. Integrated circuits, like those in quartz modules, die faster due to being smaller structures handling similar power levels.

Mechanical systems do more or less the same thing, un-making themselves in the act of operating. But, their scale is much larger relative to the power they handle, so they live longer. But, they do accumulate wear, and will fail in time, plus the can be damaged in specific ways, like water, or a good hard knock. However, precision shaping of small mechanical components can be done by a single person with benchtop tools, making them repairable, and a microchip can’t, at least not yet.

That’s the wildcard here. Is it possible to imagine a benchtop tool set that would allow simple microchips to be made by a solo engineer? Absolutely. But what’s the market demand? Is it worth the billions to develop such hardware to sell a few $50k tools to weird hobbyists? Probably not. But, it’s possible that a weird hobbyist builds such capability on their own. There’s a lot of talented hardware hackers out there, like Sam Zeloof, who, a few years ago, managed to do just what I’m describing, assembling his own basic chip making capability in his garage, ultimately producing a handful of DIY versions on Intel’s 4004 CPU from the 1970s. That’s a hell of a feat. But, drivers/counters for quartz watches are a different story. The 4004 was well documented and was made in large quantities, so he had a lot of reference material to work from. This may not be true for many quartz timer controllers.

In any case, it’s speculatively possible that, in the future, it could be easy and commonplace to remake old chips using readily available technology, but I wouldn’t count on it, and without that, vintage quartz movements are doomed to fade away and become inert antiques at some point. Of course, this is true of mechanical watches, too. Many become not worth fixing at some point, or are so difficult to fix that you don’t use them for fear of something terrible going wrong. I have a couple of old, late 1700s, verge fusee watches that sort of run. If you wind them, they’ll tick for an hour or two. But I won’t bother fixing them. They’re not exceptional examples of their type, and would be expensive and difficult to repair. The pivots are worn, as are the simple metal bearings, the mainsprings are old and have “set”, no longer producing much torque, and so on. Plus, my wardrobe is entirely lacking in embroidered waistcoats and powdered wigs, so I have nothing to wear with one. They’re better as curios on the bookshelf than they are as functional watches.

So, quartz has, for a number of reasons, a shorter fuse to its existence than most mechanical watches, but every technology, whether silicon or metal based, ends up no longer functional someday. As with us, so with our creations: ashes to ashes, dust to dust, sand to sand, rust to rust.

It’s a cheap fake, one so bad that it’s obvious at a glance even in a poor quality photo.

Aside from the Rolex oyster case, a few others had really pretty decent water resistance, such as the Mido Multifort, but it was, by far, less common than simple snap together cases. But, these are far more water resistant than most people realize. I wear a lot of 30s and 40s watches, and don’t hesitate to wear them walking in the rain, or worry about them when washing my hands. They’re fine for anything that doesn’t involve absolutely drenching them or complete immersion.

I’ve never been a fan of titanium watches specifically because lightweight metals feel insubstantial and “cheap” to me, plus it doesn’t seem to age gracefully, at least not from titanium items I’ve worked with. I honestly don’t understand the watch industry’s love for the material. Sure, its yield strength is on par with steel, but its density only about 60% of steel, which is nice if I’m designing a rocket or a missile. But I’m not trying to put my watch into orbit, so that’s not really that important to me. Instead, I’m more worried about dents and dings, and that’s where the inferior Rockwell hardness of titanium when compared to most stainless steels becomes a negative. Add to this the psychological perception of lighter objects as less substantial, whether that’s true or not, and I’ve just never liked titanium watches. I don’t even like the usual darker grey color.

So, it’s got some cool engineering properties, even beyond the strength to weight ratio, such as it being a good CTE match for some ceramics. So, if I need a strong, but light, metal insert to braze to an alumina component, that needs to not induce excess strain on the ceramic even though temperature ranges from -100 to 200 C, I might propose titanium for that component, but that doesn’t mean I want a watch made out of it.

Rising sea levels, maybe?

I’d say anything steel, but on the dressy end of the spectrum, and particularly anything that comes on an alligator strap, is usually the most dramatically and successfully “transformed” by a strap change. Many steel “dress” watches can readily become “sport” watches if paired with a steel bracelet.

Typically it’s on the inside of the caseback.

I definitely have watches that are collection pieces, not wearable watches, but these are all vintage to antique, and mostly pocket watches. Pocket watches are great for this since they can make interesting display pieces, especially if shown under glass with the case opened to display the movement, and this is true even if they are inoperable.

But, otherwise, I tend to wear my watches, even ones from as far back as the 1930s, albeit sparingly. I can think of cases where it’s reasonable to wear, for example, a tiny 1930s Harwood Automatic, but I’ve never had reason to wear an 18th century pair cased verge fusee on an ornate chatelaine. My wardrobe is entirely lacking in embroidered waistcoats and powdered wigs, so I just don’t have anything that would go with it, but it’s makes for a fascinating display piece.