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

[SlimKlim]

I'd agree on holding off on polishing, gives it a lot of character.

I've done a shit job of updating this thread with my activity. Here goes: 

Orient released a 'small seconds' version of its "Bambino" automatic dress watch line and I was totally smitten with this version with the champagne dial. The case size is a little large for my taste (40.5mm), and I think they could've done without the date window, or implemented it a little cleaner, but otherwise i LOVE this thing. Sunburst dial, beveled dauphine hands, hacking/handwinding automatic movement, display caseback, onion-ish style crown, top hat crystal, what more could you want in a <$200 watch?



One of my favorite little details is how the minute hand curves down at the end to follow the shape of the dial and crystal



Through an unexpected series of events I ended up with a Hamilton Khaki King earlier this summer.



It's a really well put together design. The bezel is polished to a perfect mirror finish but is intentionally left "soft" so you start putting "memories" in it as soon as you touch it. The dial has a nice mixture of levels and textures to give the watch some depth, and of course the main attraction is the full written day display at the top, sharing a window with the date display.

I poked around for a while looking for a fabric strap to pair it with and found a company called 210 East Oak that makes watch straps out of suit fabrics, I picked up a light brown herringbone one and love how it suits the watch. 



A couple of months ago I was bored and grabbed my quartz Tissot dress watch. I love how this watch fits but my watch nerd snobbery was preventing me from enjoying it because I had to watch the second hand slam from second to second like some kind of goddamn Casio or something. Compounding the problem was the fact that the hand didn't sync up with the indices on the dial, it would tick from 15 and 1/2 seconds to 16 and 1/2 rather than precisely landing on the 15 and 16 marks. Unacceptable. 

I disassembled the watch, unceremoniously ripped the second hand off and put it back together. It's still a cheap quartz dress watch, but now it looks like a very expensive manual wind watch. Very pleased with the results.

 

Once we started to approach the truly miserable part of summer I also grabbed a $15 perlon strap to throw this on. It makes the watch barely-there light and the near infinite adjustability is nice in the summer when your wrist can change 1/2" in diameter based on whether you're in air conditioning or not.



Lastly, I decided to sell my 1966 Seiko Sportsmatic and my Seiko Solar Chronograph because while I liked them, I just wasn't wearing them very much, if at all. A watch nerd co-worker bought the sportsmatic off of me so I still get to visit it, and the chrono sold within a few days on reddit.

I shopped around with the proceeds for a little while, just missed out on a slightly rough but well priced Omega Speedy Reduced, thought about waiting for another Halios Seaforth production run to open up, and was eyeballing some of the Steinhart Ocean One 39 diver models, which are also difficult to find in stock and impossible to backorder. I ended up signing up to be notified when the Ocean One 39 Pepsi bezel came back into stock at Gnomon, and ordered it without hesitating when I got the notification a week later. 

This is definitely the nicest watch I've owned so far. The retail price is within spitting distance of the Hamilton, but because it is from a microbrand struggling to meet demand, you can't pay less than retail for them, whereas the Hamilton is available from jomashop for 50% of retail all day everyday. 

It's a shameless homage to a Rolex 16710, but this brand has developed its own following for both its homage and non-homage styles. It's powered by an ETA GMT movement, 28,800bph, hacking, hand winding 300m water resistance, etc. The build quality is exceptional for the price, and I love how the reduced 39mm case size fits my skinny little wrist.