Friday evening fantasy

A friend of mine, who is starting on the slippery slope of watch collecting despite my warnings, recently set me the following thought experiment and I thought I would share my thinking with you and then open it up to see what you lot would come up with. I don’t think we have had one of these threads for a while and, if anything, it might be a nice distraction from what whoever is in charge of the remote has you sitting in front of. So, here goes:

Which three watches would you buy if you had a maximum budget of £1,500 per watch? He clarified that the watches could be could be used or new.

I took this up with some gusto as I haven’t really done something like this before. I mean, I do have a fantasy watch collection but I never really approached the decisions with some idea of a budget. I quickly looked up the prices on some of this collection and realised that this was going to be more difficult than I first thought. It turns out the £1,500 is a really difficult sum. It is more (in some circumstances a lot more) than many of the microbrand offerings so, if I went down that route, I would end up not making the most of the budget. On the other hand £2,000 seems to be the minimum level at which really interesting watches start at (those with perhaps an unusual complication or a striking dial). Decisions, decisions.

I tried trawling through sites like Chrono24 with the filter set to £1,500 to see what, out of the tens of thousands of watches available, caught my eye but after about fifteen minutes I gave up. I realised I needed to take a bit more of a targeted approach. So, having spent far too much time over the years analysing the Friday thread, I started looking through those timepieces which had caught my eye and finally I was getting somewhere. After about a weeks worth of winnowing I was able to answer my friend and here are the results.

A simple, hard wearing watch for everyday use – Damasko DS30 – green

https://www.damasko-watches.com/en/DS30/SW10177.4

We are all fairly familiar with this so I won’t go into much detail except that I have always admired these watches for their simplicity, pop of colour and the colour matched date wheel.

Next up something vintage – Seiko Silverwave with starbust dial

https://adventuresinamateurwatchfett…iver-from-1964

Since I first read about these watches they struck a chord with me (I like the whimsical name, the style, the history) and this version is the stand out of the six originals which were made. Legibility may be rubbish but that is by the by. £1,500 should get me a decent example.

And finally something a little different. This was the really difficult one. For me 80% of the attraction of a watch is the dial however watches with really interesting dials don’t really kick in until around the £2,000 mark and then rapidly accelerate upwards for ever more. I found myself going through the list of exhibitors from the recent British Watchmakers’ Day and recognised one of them from a Friday thread. I went straight to their website and there I had my final watch. A Moels 369, probably with the Emerald Forest dial but I could be tempted by the Tortuga Bay (ideally I’d like to see the two side by side).

https://moelsandco.com/shop/p/369-emeraldforest

This to me has the right balance of interesting dial, minimalist styling and being slightly different. It also has more than a hint of a Moser Streamliner.

This is by no means an exercise in achieving a three watch collection (but it would be a good one) as I have plenty of watches which I like and don’t see the need to move on. However they do represent a fantasy collection that may one day be obtainable.

Now, over to you guys. What would you chose?