Lee's Watch Thread for MM'ers of Impeccable Taste

[WRXtranceformed]

Yesterday was a day of highs and lows (my wonderful wife had to talk me off of a ledge I was so mad). Let me explain:

The high: So I had pretty much written off the 1 of 50 "Bloody Morning" One Second Closer red skeleton casebacks I bought for my Seiko project and figured it got lost in the void of intercontinental travel and customs. Well over two months later, it shows up in my mailbox in a tattered and obviously torn open envelope! I emailed the guy and sent him his money back again (he had already refunded me through Paypal). A cool "unboxing" surprise waited for me:






I decided to have my local guy do the work instead of waiting and paying for shipping to NEWW, and it turned out great:



It's a tiny bit thicker than the OEM caseback so it wears a little higher on the wrist and I had to move out one of the microadjustments on the clasp, but it is very comfortable. I love how it shows off the new movement. It's kind of like a clear engine cover, it's very cool to see the mainspring, rotor and everything working together to power the watch.

The low: While I was at my guy, my Aurora was running about 15 seconds fast so I figured I would leave it with him to regulate it. It should be an easy job. I pick it up right before he's closed for the weekend, give it a quick wipe down and it looked fine but then after a thorough cleaning at home I notice a significant ding right on the side/front corner of the case (the worst place to get a ding) and scratches on both sides of the polished case sides. It almost looks like he dropped / scraped it against something hard. I took pics and emailed him, he took credit for the scratches due to the timing machine but told me that the ding was already there. Mistake. Those who know me well know that I notice literally everything about the condition of what I own. He offered to fix it next week, but I am out of town and there's no chance he's touching any of my timepieces again.
There are two schools of though on watch condition, some feel that dings and scratches add character and others want to keep their them as flawless as possible for as long as possible. I think it's pretty clear what category I fall in and I'm not going to argue my point as to why because if you aren't OCD about taking care of your things like me you won't get it. I have "tool watches" that I don't mind getting blemishes on as well but this wasn't one of them...and if it's going to happen I prefer to be the one who did it. I actually got a hold of Jake at Dagaz to see if he had any additional cases I could buy to swap since I don't think it can be completely fixed, he did not and told me that I shouldn't worry about dings and scratches and how he has a Submariner he wears everyday that's beat to hell. That's fine for you but that's like saying that I should be fine with a door ding that a soccer mom just put in the door of my car. Those types of people & attitudes are why I park my cars way out at the edge of parking lots.

So not sure what I will do about it, will probably research a better jeweler to see if I can find someone that can restore it to at least not stand out as much. The silver lining in it is that I had planned on taking my Rolex in the future (whenever that is) to him to get serviced, I just learned a lot less expensive lesson to pay the price and only trust the Rolex factory for white glove service.

Back on a positive note, it was fun to assemble the Guardians and take a pic of the collection as it sits right now!



These two don't get a ton of wrist time, but the Freestyle I bought as a display model from a shop on our honeymoon and the Protrek PRG130Y is an Asia-spec doomsday watch that I wear when we go hiking / do outdoors stuff


From top left to bottom right, the Nighthawk I just acquired, the Tissot that's for sale, the damaged Dagaz Aurora, a Citizen Eco-Drive that I wore on our wedding day, the Seiko project and Air Blue Navigator / Navitimer homage:


Steinhart Ocean Forty-Four GMT and Deep Blue Daynight T100 tritium diver:


My 1920s Elgin railroad grade pocket watch: