One thing I’ve enjoyed is a focus on just a couple of brands of old watches. I have about 10 Enicar watches; they made everything from simple hand-wind no-date watches (my favorite) to complex chronographs. They have a whimsical logo (a shark jumping at Jupiter) that matches the whimsy of their founder - his name was Racine, but he had an uncle in the watch business with that name, so he spelt it backwards.
Exactly this. There are tons of essentially new old stock mechanical watches from all over the world (Vostok and other similar brands) that can be had in the $100 range, and the $300-500 range has lots of solid watches (maybe also Hamilton?).
I'd take an equally functional and/or reliable Japanese movement over an ETA that is used in the "luxury" categories where you're just paying for the label on the watch.
But quartz watches (~90% of my collection) are way more practical. They last longer (most mechanical watches need servicing every 5 years at $150+ per pop), keep better time, can be picked up and put on without setting if not worn every day and are only like $3 to swap out a battery. The key is finding a neat "gimmick" with quartz watches from quality brands. Things like Tritium luminescence are good if you like field watches. Or Citizen/Casio atomic watches that are super accurate through the use of the WWVB signal. Or "other uses" -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casio_F-91W#Usage_in_terrorism
My first mechanical watch was a Seiko SKX007. I wore it almost everyday for ~10 years and it was a complete delight. There is something so wonderful about having something on your wrist that feels like magical engineering.
I have a sexy 70s quartz omega, but my daily watch is an orient ray raven II. I've regulated it myself, so its now about +- 35 seconds a month (which is better than most rolexes.....)
even cheaper are pocket watches, and they are much larger and easier to play with.
I'm a big fan of Hamilton watches. I like the simple design and the one I have is amazingly accurate, like within seconds of NTP over weeks when the weather and temperature are ideal. They definitely don't break the bank.
I've got two boxes of watches, one contains old soviet pieces from the 60s onwards. Each of those watches probably cost no more than €100, and usually they're far cheaper than that. (I buy them used.)
If you want to look at that kind of thing I wrote a comment here showing the process I use, roughly, to find them:
Sure my second watch box has a few more expensive pieces in it, but you don't need to spend money if you like the form, history, and utility of the other pieces.
I started to get in to watches but then I got an Apple watch for fitness tracking and I just never wear any of my other watches because I love having the features of the AW more. Feels kind of like I wasted my money on the other watches.
Glad I'm not the only one. It was one of my ways of coping with the pandemic. For me it gave me an incentive to take care of myself and get dressed every day even though I wasn't leaving the house. You?
