Category: Toys

Sufficiency

Guy Stuff, Lifestyle, Toys

I was watching this podcast, and one of the statements (made at about the 41-minute mark) resonated with me.  It was this:

“For me, cars and watches are a similar thing, because at a very early accessible price point, they both fulfill their brief.  So telling the time and getting from A to B, happens with an Apple watch and a Dacia Sandero.  If you’re concerned about the functionality of a car, anything after that is led by the heart.”  [And the ego.]

It’s been a constant struggle for me and I think, for many.

I know I’m always going on about luxury stuff, and I think almost every argument on this website has revolved around where your own limits are on the price : quality scale — because in almost every case, we’ve established the functionality of the thing early on.

Hence cars:  functionality is achieved with, say, a Honda Civic.  Then, if you want a little more speed to go with your functionality, you move on to the excellent Civic Si or even to the Civic R.  But you also have a desire for a little more luxury than a standard Honda’s offering, so you look at… an Acura Integra Model S?  (Same car as the Civic, more or less the same performance, but with a tad more luxury and a higher price point.)  But come on, you say, an Acura?  Why not (say) a Mercedes CLA 35 AMG at pretty much the same price point, but with Merc luxury (better than any Acura’s)?  (Here’s a comparison.)  And then on and on you go, until you start getting serious about all those things that make your parts tingle until you end up looking at stupid money for a product that is completely over the top by any standards (hello Ferrari or similar).  (And in SUVs, you start off with a Toyota RAV4 and end up with a Maybach 600.)

Then watches.  Functionality is simple:  Casio F91-W ($30).  Okay, you don’t want a digital watch, so a more manly Invicta Pro Diver ($60).  You all know where this is going:  up the scale with Timex, Tissot, Seiko, Grand Seiko, Longines, Omega… until you get to Rolex, Ulysse Nardin, Audemars Piguet and thence to the stratosphere where you can spend literally hundreds of thousands of dollars… on a watch that is functionally little better than that Casio, Invicta or Timex.

With watches, I have my Tissot Heritage and I really don’t feel the need for any other.  Maybe if I had some budget I’d consider a Longines Master or even an Omega Railmaster (which makes me tingle, bigly) but beyond that it’s more ego than I care to indulge myself.  Unless I went all eclectic on y’all.  As with cars with manual transmissions, my timepiece choices are somewhat narrowed by my insistence on manually-wound actions, but there ya go.

Of course, there are guns.  Confining ourselves to double-barrel over/under shotguns, we start off with Gforce (never heard of them) for under $400, and while this may be a piece of junk — not judging, just acknowledging that to produce this kind of gun at that particular price point, compromises must be made — there’s no doubt that it’s at least a Timex shotgun, so to speak.  Then I guess you’d go on to the Turkish-made CZ Drake, then up the food chain to Browning Cynergy,  Beretta Silver Pigeon, Rizzini BR110… and we all know where this ends, don’t we?

I have to confess that my mood swings wildly when it comes to this stuff.  On the one hand, I’m perfectly comfortable driving my 150,000-mile Tiguan.  But if I had to get a new car and had any kind of budget, given my circumstances, I’d probably consider that Honda Si (decent reliability, performance and above all, manual transmission).  After that, I’d need more budget, maybe a great deal more budget to get a car I’d really like to drive for pretty much the rest of my life.  While I’m not really brand-conscious (in terms of impressing others), I’d rather drive something that has some kind of heritage — but forget the boutique stuff like Ferrari, no matter how much budget I have.  And whatever, it has to have a stick shift.

I’m pretty sure you all know where I stand on guns.  I carry either Springfield or Colt 1911s, wouldn’t dream of carrying a Nighthawk or Ed Brown 1911, hate plastic guns of any caliber, and prefer shooting revolvers anyway.  And that’s just handguns.  Rifles?  I’m a Mauser man — actual Mausers as opposed to John Rigby’s exotic Mausers — and while I might be tempted on occasion to look at a custom rifle (purely based on its appearance), I’m just as happy shooting a .30-30 lever action.  And finally, when it comes to shotguns I prefer the old-fashioned — that is to say, side-by-side barrels and double triggers — and regard pump-actions as I would hammers or drills:  pure tools, nothing more.

Lifestyle choices:  budgets, compromises, ego, practicality, dreams… we all have them.

My Ideal Watch Collection

Toys

…as defined by this week’s Chewsday Challenge.

The problem with limiting yourself to one brand with a price ceiling is that few watchmakers offer much in style variation.  To be frank, all Rolex watches look pretty much the same to me.  And just offering the same watch with different face colors or metals (gold, steel whatever) doesn’t really qualify as variation, as such.

Vacheron Constantin, for example, has several lovely watch types and variations, but only if you’re not averse to having your nose suddenly start bleeding.

So here’s my choice of watch brand:  Omega — specifically, these variations, all of which are available new, i.e. unworn:

I am somewhat constrained by my unshakable insistence on manual-wind operation, and it seems that for watches costing less than $25,000 (much less, in Omega’s case, bless ’em), there are precious few choices of brand.  Sure, most offer many variations, except for that manual-wind thing.

Still, the above three are nice-looking and of decent quality, and I’d be happy to wear any one of them on my wrist.

Incidentally, if I were to go for used (secondhand [sic]), there’s always Patek Philipe:

…each of which is so beautiful they make my mouth water.  I don’t even want to think what they would cost new — assuming Patek even still made them with manual-winding operation, that is.

And there you have it.  My (post-Lotto) watch collection(s).

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Chewsday Challenge

Guy Stuff, Toys

Following on from Saturday’s post about beautiful watches, here’s today’s challenge:

You’re given a large gift certificate worth $75,000 which can only be redeemed at a store which sells watches.  The conditions attached to the certificate are:  only three watches (price is limited to $25,000 each, or less), but all three must come from a single brand (Tudor, Tissot, Longines, Citizen, whatever).  It’s a “use it or lose it” kind of thing:  if you can only find three desirable watches whose total value is $5,000, then that’s what you get.

Which brand would you go with?  (If you want to explore your options, here’s Chrono24.  You can get new or used watches, to beat the “cap”.)

My choice will appear tomorrow.

And once again:  I don’t care if you’re only interested in wearing one Casio digital for the rest of your life.  If that’s your bag, don’t bother to play the game, and please spare us your opinion about how silly this all is.

Consolidation

Marketing / Advertising, Retailing, Toys

According to this rather lengthy video, Rolex is dropping hundreds of smaller Rolex “dealer” outlets and instead creating Rolex megastores in “prime” locations such as London (!!!) and Manhattan (!!!).

It would appear that the main reason behind this is that Rolex wants to protect their brand by limiting the number of outlets, dropping smaller stores (regardless of relationship longevity) so that they can control the whole “Rolex buying experience” and provide their customers with the proper treatment with fine ambience, better-trained staff and so on.  Also, these larger stores can carry the extensive Rolex range that a smaller store couldn’t.

It all sounds well and good, except that the actual reason, it seems to me, is that during the sales spike caused largely by the Great Covid Panic of 2020, the people who really made money weren’t Rolex themselves but the profiteers who bought their watches and resold them on the “grey” market — and Rolex, like Ferrari, wants to keep as much of the market to themselves.  (Same tactics, different product.)

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with what they’re doing. As long as there are people willing to pay the inflated prices of their products, then good luck to them.

My own personal take on the thing is that I’m indifferent because (regardless of any lottery winning) I would never be a Rolex  sucker  buyer in the same way as Ferrari would forever be outside my list of automotive choices (except maybe a Dino, although given the current price list of same… nah, never mind).  Sorry, I’m no longer impressed by brand names, especially when the brand’s “value” is artificially pumped up by fools and suckers with more money than sense.  And even more so when the brand operates in a commodity category like watches.

And finally, I happen to think that those big, blocky things like the Submariner are just… ugly.  I’m not a scuba diver so I’ll never need one, and anyway, there are other watches just as good for half the price and a tenth of the Rolex attitude (once again, see:  Ferrari dealers).

A pox on all their houses.