picture: gizmodo.com // the flintstones

About a year ago I discovered my passion for wristwatches and decided that I wanted to start collecting them. I found a perfect niche to occupy as a more targeted collector. I’m a tech enthusiast, so it was clear that digital watches were the way to go. In addition to my cross-over interest in both technology and watches, I thought that there was a good chance to quickly assemble a decent collection. In the frame of general horology, digital watches are a recent movement that has just started being developed. There is a limited amount of really iconic watches in the niche, and I would be able to acquire them all quite quickly. And what’s more important, it also seemed to me like an affordable hobby: comparatively new watches are not as scarce as antique ones, and should be available for much cheaper.

This was true. You can get the first Casio G-Shock DW-5000C-1A for about $500-$600. Bulova Accutron with tuning fork movement — the predecessor of the first quartz movement and the timepiece that joined Omega Speedmaster on a space trip, albeit in the form of a wall clock — goes for about $1K in good condition. There is also this watch, once owned by Joe DiMaggio, that has placed a pre-sale estimate of $2000-$4000. A splurge, but not out of reach.

In addition to their cost, digital watches are also supposed to last longer, since they are being produced by other machines on a large scale and errors in the manufacturing process are supposed to be rare.

By deciding to dedicate my collection to digital watches, I was right and wrong at the same time. It was not just affordable to buy them but also cheap to own them, I didn’t need to service a digital watch as often as a mechanical one, just change the batteries and enjoy.

But there also turned out to be a downside to collecting digital watches. They have a long lifespan but that doesn’t reflect on their resale value: considering that some are mass produced, digital watches don’t really appreciate with time. I decided that I was going to collect them for myself, for pleasure. I guess some of them will last another 40–50 years, — about the time I expect to remain alive myself. So the resale value will not really be an issue. And in the end of the day, I’m just interested in technology and want to take a snapshot of its evolution, to preserve a part of its history.