There's this YouTube channel called The Mad Watch Collector, which I recommend very highly. A nice and very talented British bloke hosts it. He knows a lot about watches, and he throws in a lot of wacky humor. Top-notch.
Which doesn't mean that I always agree with him. Take the Casio A100WE,
a recent release which The Mad Watch Collector just reviewed. Because he knows his stuff and because his reviews are very thorough, he explained to me in his latest video that this is a $10 watch which Casio is selling for $40 and up, depending on the trim, because it looks very much like the F100, the watch Sigourney Weaver wore in Alien, which Casio discontinued long ago, and which, according to The Mad Watch Collector, is now worth several hundred British pounds to collectors.
The Mad Watch Collector is not the only one who loves Casios from the 70's and 80's -- obviously, or the original Ripley watch (Sigourney Weaver's character in Alien was named Ripley), the F100, would not be selling for hundreds of dollars or pounds if you can find one, and the different Casio she wore in Aliens would not be hugely popular, but it is.
Okay, I understand, the wrist wants what it wants. But I really don't understand. There's another $10 Casio watch, the F91W, which Casio released in 1989 and which they're still making, and which, unlike the A100WE, actually sells for around $10, does about as much as the A100WE, and has the buttons on the sides, because they work better there, which is why Casio have sold tons of F91W's. Not only is The Mad Watch collector perfectly happy to pay $40 and up for what he knows is a $10 watch, because it has the buttons in front just like the one Sigourney wore in Alien -- not only that, he actually calls the A100WE "The best Casio Release of 2021." That's the name of the You Tube video where he reviews it.
The best Casio release of 2021? I mean, I ask rhetorically, has he ever actually seen a G-Shock? I ask rhetorically, because he probably knows more about G-Shocks than I do. G-Shocks can actually do all sorts of things, not to mention being almost literally as tough as nails, and besides all of that, some of therm are also very, very sparkly and pretty in a completely up-to-date way.
Ah, but then, I'm pretty sure that the most popular type of G-Shock these days are the 2100 line, first released in 2019 and better known as Casioaks, because their 8-sides cases mimic the look of the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak, a Swiss watch introduced in the early 1970's which is still very popular, and which retails for around $20,000 and up -- WAY up. Many of the Casioaks can be had for under $100. And although they are G-Shocks, I have still not begun to understand their appeal.
No, that's not stating it nearly strongly enough; I find the popularity of the 2100's to be downright bizarre. Why? Because a G-Shock, like a genuine Audemars Piguet Royal Oak, is a classic, a watch which has no need to copy any other watch, and which, in my humble opinion, ought to concentrate on being itself and letting others copy it, if they don't happen to have come up with their own stone classic. Casio should take the attitude that, if a movie star wants to wear one of their watches in a movie, it makes the movie cooler. The watch already had it. The watch never need any help in the cool department.
Well, I have to remind myself that I'm still just a little bit new to watches and watch culture. But that doesn't necessarily mean I'm wrong.
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