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Thread: Memory dump

  1. #1
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    Memory dump

    With Photobucket reconfigured as ransomware, I thought I'd download my albums and close my account. I only bought a digital camera because of watch forums, so the pictures are mostly of watches, going back to the start of my hobby. I hadn't actively used Photobucket for some time so it was like opening a time capsule.

    I hardly remember some of the watches, and most are remote from what I might buy today. The early ones are almost exclusively quartz. I was quite young when quartz came along and it was the equivalent of word processors and computers replacing typewriters. A smart young professional getting on in the world wouldn't wear mechanical... The jumping seconds hand was a symbol of certainty and accuracy, digital displays with counters even more so.

    I only reverted to watches with mechanical movements when watch companies began to reserve their most 'serious' designs for mechanical watches. In retrospect, I was being carried along by the manipulative force of the mechanical renaissance. I remember dragging my heels for a while by declining anything with a display back, which I found a bit trivial.

    Anyway, before consigning the images to a memory stick I thought I'd share a stroll down memory lane. I'll post a few a day as I dig through the albums.


    Name:  Benson 600.jpg
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    1950s Benson (Cyma movement). Terrible picture. It's actually quite handsome.


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    A bloke in a pub wanted to buy this because it was 'Series 1'. I thought he was mad. Somebody else asked if I bought it in a petrol station, which seemed closer to the mark.


    Name:  Swiss Army 600.jpg
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    Swiss Army Cavalry. I still like this one.


    These date from the 1980s - before the official commencement of my watch hobby. Two were presents from my wIfe - the Tag and the vintage Benson. I remember being amazed that she'd spent so much. The Tag had only just been released and originally had a red strap. The straps didn't last long and red ones were soon unavailable. I bought the Swiss Army on holiday in Stratford-upon-Avon, and straps were soon hard to get for that as well. This was before the internet - if jewellers didn't have a strap there was nowhere else to go. I don't think any of these watches were above 35mm but none seemed small. In fact, the Swiss Army felt big when I first had it. Maybe it was 36mm.

    I also remember a Swatch, a Casio world timer and a Rotary (when Rotary were the epitome of affordable conservatism on the British High Street). I still have the Benson - gommed up with solidified oil. The Tag and Swiss Army were sold on eBay a while back. I can't remember what I got for them but it was more than I was expecting.

    I really liked the Swiss Army. It had a nice gun-metal finish, and I'd be wearing it today as a beater, had I ever found a suitable strap for it. My liking for military style watches was there from the beginning, it seems.
    Last edited by tribe125; Oct 2, 2017 at 01:07 AM.

  2. #2
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    Then everything changed. I had been wearing the Rotary from about 2000 onwards, but broke the crystal when closing the boot of my car. Maybe I should have one of those G-Shocks. There were dozens and I couldn't tell them apart. I went on the internet and found myself on the G-Shock forum at Watchuseek. I joined up to seek advice. I discovered 'atomic solar', which was quite new. I was swept away and had one delivered to work. I remember sitting at my desk following the setup procedure in the manual. It synced immediately, right there in my hand. Wonderful! It was big, though - especially in comparison to the Benson that I was wearing. People might laugh. I carried on with my work, chatted to a few colleagues - nobody noticed.


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    GW-500


    It was meant to be my only watch, along with the Benson and two dead watches in a drawer. But I had joined a watch forum, and I found myself going back to it. After a while I was invited to become a moderator, and a while after that a Moderator at Large. Eventually, most of the MaLs became disenchanted with Watchuseek and set up IWL. So the broken Rotary and the GW-500 led to me becoming part-owner of a watch forum.

    From photo dates, it looks as though my watch hobby started in 2005.
    Last edited by tribe125; Oct 2, 2017 at 01:26 AM.

  3. #3
    Moderator - Central tribe125's Avatar
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    My wife was partly responsible for me progressing to multiple watch ownership. Some kind of guilt was holding me back, but there was a bright red G-Shock in the window of a Krakow shop. When I stopped to look at it for the third or fourth time, my wife said she was surprised I hadn't bought it. That was it - the flag was down and I was off and running.


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    DW-003


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    G-2310


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    DW-6900


    The G-2310 was a particular favourite. Years later I bought the updated version with atomic sync.
    Last edited by tribe125; Oct 2, 2017 at 01:28 AM.

  4. #4
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    On it went.


    Name:  GL-7500.jpg
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    GL-7500. Enormous. And red. It had a tide graph function - pretty essential in Watford.


    Name:  G-8000.jpg
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    G-8000. A favourite. One of the most fully-featured G-Shocks of the time. You can even see that I bought it on the 13th of May, 2006.


    Name:  G-8000 orange.jpg
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    So I bought another one - in marmalade. It was a free-spending day in Krakow. I asked my wife what she thought. "It's a bit orange..." It was, and it didn't last long.


    The GL-7500 was too big. The 'GL' indicated that it was from a sub-range intended for surf-boarders. Here I was, a determinedly inactive 51 year-old man... I don't think it stayed very long. The G-8000 was stolen after I contributed it to a Watchuseek 'Watch Travels' thread.


    As a bonus, here's the watch box I was using at the time - with what appears to be a PalmPilot on the right -


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    Last edited by tribe125; Oct 2, 2017 at 01:30 AM.

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    Name:  G-5600.jpg
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    G-5600. Japanese domestic model and possibly my favourite 5600. Quite smart and restrained for a G-Shock. The module was known for charging issues but I never experienced them. The jacket sleeve and Ministry of Justice document indicate that the photo was taken at work. It was a while before I felt able to take photos of my wrist at home...


    Name:  G2300DM-4V.jpg
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    Jesus wept. It's worth giving the complete serial number of this wrist lobster - G2300DM-4V. These were pretty rare - collector's items, really. But mainly it was red.

    It came on a chunky pull-through strap that lifted it even higher. Crazy thing.


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    Name:  G-9000 Mudman.jpg
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    G-9000 Mudman. Keeping out water is easy, but have you thought about mud? There you are, you see - Casio one step ahead again. Actually, there's a little bit of science related to pushers and abrasive mud. A membrane protected the pushers but made them a bit stiff.


    I was now importing from Japan. I was following tracking details, waiting for the postman before going to work. At times I wondered if my hobby was about parcels as much as watches.

    The import of the G-5600 from Boris HK took two attempts because the first parcel was empty. I have little doubt that it was stolen by an employee at the Parcelforce depot in north London. Boris thought so too, and stopped shipping to the UK. I switched to Seiya.

    Seiya was a saint. Actually, he did too much, running around to find rare and discontinued models. Once, when he was depressed and had to close for a while, the G-Shock forum bought him a Mont Blanc fountain pen to show him that he had friends all over the world.

    They were good days, helping Sjors run the G-Shock forum. I was barely conscious of other Watchuseek forums.
    Last edited by tribe125; Oct 2, 2017 at 01:32 AM.

  6. #6
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    The photo dates show that they were coming in at the rate of one or two a month. I don't know how quickly they were going out. I do remember realising that my prices were too low. I asked for fifty percent of what I paid, including postage to anywhere in the world, and they usually sold on the first day. They were second-hand for heaven's sake - how many people could be interested in something that had been worn? Besides, the G-Shock forum was like a club. You couldn't ask much selling to friends. I raised my prices to sixty percent.

    It still wasn't a year since I had broken through the one watch barrier.


    Name:  DW-5600B.jpg
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    DW-5600B. Quite possibly the worst G-Shock I had bought. I was probably standing under a fluorescent strip-light to make the display visible. The strap wasn't very nice. I don't know why I was buying 5600 variants but not a 5600.


    Name:  G-100.jpg
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    G-100. But this was a good one. Casio had been making it for almost as long as there had been G-Shocks. Nice size and a basic, no-nonsense character. The only drawback was needing the concentration of Gary Kasparov to set the hands. And it was analogue - or mostly analogue. Digits no longer mandatory. I'm still drawn to these - in fact, I think I've had two.


    Name:  G-9000 Mudman green.jpg
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    Another Mudman in a muddier colour. Slightly better reverse display than the 5600B, but why did I bother with another one? The answer may lay in the 'BER' on the display. I was in Krakow with hundreds of zlotys in my pocket.
    Last edited by tribe125; Oct 2, 2017 at 05:45 PM.

  7. #7
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    These three arrived within ten days of each other.


    Name:  AW-582.jpg
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    AW-582. Making a virtue out of polyamide resin by sculpting it. Hidden buttons. A second analogue.


    Name:  SKX-007.jpg
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    Mechanical!

    Like a wire walker, I had inched my way over to the Seiko forum. Entirely and conventionally predictable, in retrospect. This would have been my first mechanical watch for about twenty-five years.

    I didn't get along with it. You couldn't wind it, so it was often lifeless in the morning. I found myself swinging my arm about before going to bed. I wished I was Italian, illustrating every other word with gestures that would wind my watch. I bought a winder and didn't get along with that either. It was bad enough buying lots of watches, but then buying equipment to make them work? No, no, no. Watch and winder were sold. Mechanical renaissance aborted.


    Name:  G5600 - Black Viper.jpg
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    Two days later and back on surer ground with another G-5600. The green ones took a bit of tracking down. They came with a grey bezel and strap, but it looks as though I swapped to black. Models like this felt special because they could only be found in Japanese and eastern markets. Production runs were short, fuelling collector frenzy. The filename says 'Viper' but I no longer know why.
    Last edited by tribe125; Oct 2, 2017 at 10:36 PM.

  8. #8
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    Something had changed. I was about a year into my hobby and was now as likely to buy a Seiko as a G-Shock, and an analogue as a digital.


    Name:  Sawtooth.jpg
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    This was called a Sawtooth and it was horrible. I hadn't completely forgotten about it, but it was still a shock when it came onto my computer screen. I can remember what I liked about most of these watches - but this one? My mind's a blank.


    Name:  Tuna.jpg
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    But this was a serious watch.

    I don't know which model it was - whichever quartz Tuna was current in late 2006. I think I had this for a while, and it may even have been my 'best' watch. One day I looked at it and thought: 'It's too tall' - and sold it.

    I wouldn't mind having this one back, if only briefly, to remind myself what it was like.


    Name:  DW-9052.jpg
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    DW-9052. Still keen on G-Shocks, though. I remember being on a quest to find the 'best basic' (all the basic functions but no solar, no atomic). This was a contender. There was a photo of French military divers equipped with these.
    Last edited by tribe125; Oct 2, 2017 at 11:04 PM.

  9. #9
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    Brace yourselves.


    Name:  DW-8150.jpg
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    Name:  DW-8300.jpg
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    Name:  DW-8150 profile.jpg
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    Name:  Tuna-Slot Machine 2.jpg
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    What was I saying about the Tuna being too tall?


    If Seiko was establishing a foothold in my collection, this was Casio parking its tanks on Seiko's lawn.

    These clanking leviathans were the DW-8150 and DW-8300, and they were known as 'Gundams'. They dated from the mid-1990s, and somewhere, God knows where, I found two of them, still in their factory wrapping. Unlikely, I know...

    One of them had a 'slot machine' game activated by the light button.

    Now these weren't serious purchases. I wasn't going to wear them to a wedding - but I do remember wearing one to work. I worked in psychiatry rather than a merchant bank, but even so, I was a senior manager and most senior managers didn't wear things like this. My boss wore a Cartier Tank, for example, and I can remember meeting with him one day, thinking my Gundam was a little... prominent.

    Sometimes you just had to have these things in your hands. And there are comparable monsters today, some of them at the 'haute' end of things.

    The beauty of Casio is that it can be seriously practical and seriously wacky. There's nobody like Casio, and Kikuo Ibe has been one of the industry's most significant figures, these last thirty-four years.
    Last edited by tribe125; Oct 2, 2017 at 11:09 PM.

  10. #10
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    Twenty days between these.


    Name:  DW-5600E.jpg
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    At last, the iconic DW-5600E, direct descendant of the first G-Shock. What took me so long? Initially, I was fascinated by the wizardry of atomic-solar. Then, by the look of previous watches, I went after rarities and oddities. In time, I became ambivalent about atomic-solar. I was ready to take my G-Shocks neat. I've had two 5600s, and not many months pass without me being close to buying another.


    Name:  Broadarrow PRS-3.jpg
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    Broadarrow PRS-3

    I'm spreading my wings. I think I know how it happened, and again it's related to that first watch, the GW-500. I sold it, and the buyer said he had references on TZ-UK. I didn't bother much with references - and on this occasion, the buyer's wife worked in a flower shop near my office - but I went to look at TZ-UK. It's the forum attached to Eddie Platt's Timefactors website.

    Eddie Platts was a pioneer, and... a character. He could lay claim to founding the first boutique watch company, and his 'Dreadnought' created the market for chunky divers with plongeur hands. Most of his watches were re-creations of British military watches, like the PRS-3. Except for the orange - the military didn't do orange. Experts will recognise the ubiquitous 'Monnin' case that was used by many watch companies, including Heuer and CWC.

    A note on the Broadarrow brand. It was named after the pheon arrow, used to mark British government property. The Swatch Group claimed that 'Broad' plus 'arrow' was synonymous with 'Omega'. Which is absolute bollocks. Eddie couldn't afford to argue the case in court so the Broadarrow brand was no more.

    Broadarrow watches are sought-after these days, especially the orange PRS-3. Around seventy-five were made.


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    Precista PRS-17Q

    Timefactors again. I had a fresh seam to mine, and close to home this time.

    Eddie Platts wasn't going to get caught again, after the Omega business. He bought the rights to Precista, a defunct company that once supplied watches to the British military - including this one. The 17Q was a funky and characterful thing, chunky but not big. Only one problem - the date wasn't neatly aligned on the quartz model. You could see the start of the next date, as if it was about to change over. A shame, but these are sought-after too.

    It came on a NATO, but I see that I later fitted a 'lumpy'. I was quite the forum monkey by now, with my aftermarket straps and lumpies.

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    The military thing, there at the start with the Swiss Army (and even earlier with a boyhood 'Services') was coming to the fore. Analogue was consolidating its recent gains. Mechanical watches were still in the doghouse.
    Last edited by tribe125; Oct 4, 2017 at 01:12 AM.

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