The Iron Snail’s Watch Obsession (And Why I’m Selling It All)

Hi there. The Casio F91W is one of the most famous watches that you could possibly get for $16. I have another Casio F91W, but it’s more than 10 times the price, and it has none of the features. None. You can’t even change the time or the battery. If it’s wrong, it’s wrong. And it’s actually wrong for like 8 months out of the year because of daylight saving time. Very cool.

And you can’t take that watch away from me because I’m in love with it. But it is essentially infinitely waterproof, which I do find very cool. With all that, welcome to my watch collection.

Zenith is the company that made the brains that went inside a very famous Rolex watch. This watch, if you saw just the back of it, you’d assume it’s a Rolex. And if you saw just the side of it, you’d also assume it’s a Rolex. But it’s not. There are 13 watches in this Filson bathroom sack.

And this is the story of my entire sack. And then two watches that made me realize I need to sell every single thing in here, take a break, and reconsider some things. This article is going to be split up into different sections, getting greater and greater and greater until we hit the big bad boys at the end.

The Sentimental Cheap Watches

Good day! How are you? Hope you’re doing well. Check this out. Another article in under a month. Isn’t that so cool? We’re back on track, finally, after all this time. Anyways, though, I hope you’re doing well.

Starting off with a very sentimental watch in my collection. This is the Casio F108 WHC-7B. That name has to hurt its sales. My friend Danny got me this watch.

We lived together in Taunton, Massachusetts, shortly after graduating from college, in an apartment with no doors. We would often get pizza and sit, playing video games, in our early 20s, immediately after graduation.

And so he got me this for my birthday, and then he got me a Buck 110 knife for my next birthday, and then I moved out. Who knows what he would have gotten me for my other birthday. And this is the watch I think of when I think of that time. So I love this watch. I’ll never sell it.

Before I got that watch, though, in my college days, there was the G-Shock Square, the D5600 series in general. There’s another one we’ll talk about in a second.

Hit this watch with a baseball bat. Go scuba diving. Go to the moon. It’s approved for that. It’s the greatest watch in the entire world. It has all these fun modes. It makes all these beeps. I used to always have the hour chime on. My computer science professor used to be like, “Michael, turn the chime off.”

You want me to turn the chime off my G-Shock? No way. No way, man. You sound nuts. You sound so nuts right now. I’m keeping it on.

And then following that, as some of you probably know, I worked in the watch world for like 10 to 12 years, probably 10 years at this time. And one day, ring ring, ring, who’s on the phone? Casio.

What do they say? “Hey, Michael. How’s it going? Do you want a watch?” And I said, “Yeah.” They said, “Which one?” I said, “Well, I guess it’d have to be the tough solar model of the DW5600.” Boom.

The Casio GWM5610 was delivered to me personally by G-Shock. This one has two really cool features. The first one, multiband 6. So, I can press a button, it will check from radio towers and sync the watch to an atomic clock to make sure that it’s as accurate as it can possibly be. But what I really like about it is tough solar.

The Watch Funeral: Rip Hamilton

Okay. And now, welcome to a watch funeral. Picture this: really sad music and rain and just terrible stuff going on.

Somewhere in Maine lies my Hamilton Pilot Pioneer. I had a Pilot Pioneer, and I lost it on the move to Maine. It’s because that was the watch I was wearing the most. So, I took that watch off and I put it somewhere and said, “I’ll never lose it here.”

RP to the Hamilton Pilot Pioneer. We will forever miss you.

The Vintage Collection: Stepping It Up

We’re not at the big boys yet, but we’re getting very close to the big boys. These are the vintage boys, but they’re also kind of big.

So, this is the Omega 147001SC from 1962. I used to sell a bunch of watches that I would find, and Vintage Omega was like the keystone of that.

And it was just so cool to get all these cool watches in. I would write pages and pages and pages about them on Reddit and sell them. I had a ton of them in college, and they feel like that was the last time in my life where things were much simpler, and I miss that a lot.

So Omega is also very important to this article because it’s one of the two watches that made me realize I needed to sell everything.

I gave it to one of my best friends, named Ronnie. What is it called? When you speak at someone’s wedding? I was like, “You may now kiss Amelia.” Anywho, I got him that watch. He’ll come up again in a little bit. But that was a very important, very important watch.

Okay, this next watch. This might be the greatest watch that we’re going to see today. Maybe, depending on whether you like vintage watches or not.

This was always the watch I was like, “Ah, that’s my watch. It’s a sunny day, and I’m drinking tea with my girlfriend, Taylor. Or I’m sitting in a field with all of my friends in college.”

Tudor was founded by the Rolex founder, Hans Wilsdorf, in the 1920s. It didn’t become a real thing, I think, until the 19 late 40s or 50s. Either way, Hans Wildorf, the founder, had that sauce.

The point of Tudor was to be a more affordable brand than Rolex, but still, really, really good quality. So, they used to use at least literally the exact same parts.

So, this case is a Rolex case. The crown is a Rolex crown, except the dial was different, and then the movement on the inside was different.

So, that way it could be more affordable, but still great quality, and utilize Rolex’s Oyster case. Personally, I think the Rose at 12 o’clock is just one of the most beautiful things that has ever been put on a watch.

There’s so much cool stuff about this watch that I just really, really like. But obviously, the rose is the big thing. These are hard to find so if you see one, snag it up!

The Big Boy Collection: Serious Watches

First on the big boy list is my Rolex Explorer 2, which we recently wrote about, so I won’t elaborate on it much. It’s very new to the collection, so I don’t really have a lot of memories with it right now.

Right now, it reminds me of folding laundry and the fact that I burnt the watch at 6.

I like that it’s a two time zone watch. I like that it has a 24-hour dial, and it just feels like a watch you can just wear every day and beat up, cuz that’s exactly what it is.

The Zenith: My Coolest But Most Depressing Watch

And this just might be the coolest watch in my collection. Has my favorite complication on it, the chronograph. This is the Zenith Revival Chronom Master Shadow. Very cool watch.

Highbeat chronograph. So, when I start the chronograph, you’ll see it’s very, very smooth there. It’s cuz it’s ticking very, very fast.

Part of the reason I always wanted a chronograph, I just like the fact that I can do more with my watch, but also Taylor was living in Denmark at the time, and I’d visit her kind of intermittently, and whenever we were there, she would cook big things, and I was always picturing myself sitting on a chair, we’re chatting, and she’s like, “Set a timer for 10 minutes.”

And I’m like, “No problem. Got it. Bam.” The problem that we ran into, though, was that you need a timer for those things, not necessarily a stopwatch, because then you still have to remember to look down at the right time.

So Taylor would be like, “How long has it been?” And I’d be like, “15 minutes. Why?” The problem with this watch, though, even though it’s one of the coolest watches that I’ve ever owned in my life, is that I just bought it during one of the worst periods of my life.

So there was a point in my life when I was living in Brooklyn that I was essentially working four jobs at the same time, and I was just dying out there.

And I would work till like really super late at night, and I’d get like nauseous and this weird awful feeling of like I’m gonna fall out of my body. And I remember that my friends would call me or come over, and I would just say, “Guys, I’m sorry. I got nothing. I don’t know what to say or where to start or where to end.”

And then I had Christmas with my family, and they were all looking at me, horrified. They’re like, “Are you okay, dude? Like you, what is happening in your life right now?” And that’s kind of how I got this watch.

The Explorer 1: The Baby’s Inheritance

And finally, one of the greatest watches ever made, and one that if I were to sell all except one, I couldn’t sell this one. So maybe this is the one I’m forced to keep.

There’s a great story behind it that ends with me owing this watch to a baby. An actual, you know, tiny little baby that doesn’t know what a watch is. Actually, he’s not even born yet.

This is the Rolex Explorer 1. Probably one of my favorite style watches ever made. I think it’s absolutely beautiful and very utilitarian and simple.

My good friend Ronnie, the same guy who I uh, shoot, what is that thing I did at his wedding? Orchestrated it, talked about it. You know what I’m saying?

I bought this watch first, and went on a bunch of journeys with it. Then Ronnie bought it from me and rode a huge race in it. And then he sold it back to me. And then he said, “Hey, can I buy that watch again? I want to give it to my son.”

And I said, “Yeah, sure.” And then he said, “Actually, what the heck am I doing buying a watch when I’m going to have a son?” So now it’s left to me. I have once again been given Frodo’s ring.

I haven’t finished The Lord of the Rings yet. I’m sure no evil will befall upon Frodo and his trusty, loyal companions. But this watch and all the other watches that we talked about today, and even the one that I gave to Ronnie on his wedding day, are not the reason that I want to sell my watches.

The Real Reason I’m Selling My Collection

There is one more watch, and that is the watch that I got for my dad. I’m definitely not like I used to be when I first bought the Zenith, just working so much that I was going to vomit. But I still definitely am working a lot right now. Around 7 days a week, 13 hours a day. I try to take some time to, you know, dinner with Taylor. We go get coffee sometimes.

But that is what I do every single day. Day in and day out. I work as hard as I possibly can cuz one, I feel like I have the greatest job in the world. But two, at the same time, I would like to create the greatest clothing brand on the face of the planet.

No doubt, no lie. So, it’s very exciting stuff. I’m not like drudging through it. I wake up every morning and run to the computer. But sometimes, you know, I look at my sack and it’s full of amazing watches and I’m like, that’s definitely not why I’m working as hard as I possibly can.

And it’s like you’re running a marathon. And then not even like a quarter way through the marathon, I’m like, “Oh, I’m doing so good. I should drink a giant Mountain Dew and eat donuts.” My dad has been a career fisherman for 50-plus years.

So, I got him a Rolex Sea Dweller when he turned 70 as just a, you know, saying thank you for everything that he’s ever done, because if I think I worked hard, that man lapped me 50 times over.

My mom, too. She’s just not as old as my dad. So, she’s going to get something, but you know, she’s not at that point yet. Trying to get rid of everything.

I do not want to ever get rid of that watch. The watch that I gave to my dad to say, “Thank you for absolutely everything.” It’s incredible.

And what I noticed is a significant gap in happy memories associated with the watches I got when I started working like crazy. I’m like, “Oh, this is the watch I wore outside with my friends on a sunny day, and this is the watch I bought at 5 a.m. after I felt like I was going to throw up for 6 hours.”

And since everything changed and started to get crazy, the watches that I have the most pride about, that I’m the happiest about, the best memories I have about are the watch that I got Ronnie for his wedding, and the watch that I got my dad.

So, I think sadly the twist of this article is that I’m going to rid myself of my entire watch collection.

My main focus right now is spending more time with Taylor, doing things as best as I can, and then when the time comes and I see a shiny new watch and I’m like, “Yeah, I want that watch.” and I’m doing all these other things that are making me happy, I’ll start again. So, as much as it pains me to do this, it’s time to say goodbye to my watches.

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Wrap Up & Next Time

Okay, that is about it. Thank you so much for watching. I will see you next week!

This article was adapted from Michael Kristy’s video on The Iron Snail, with edits from FashionBeans, and was reviewed by Michael to ensure the integrity of his original content. Watch the full video here.