Casios and Coolness

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.

What's the Perfect Size For a Wristwatch?

 Are you already way ahead of me?

Grown men -- mostly men. Men are to watches as women are to shoes: the primary market, dwarfing the volume sold to the other gender. Or maybe an apter comparison is jewelry: there are many sorts of jewelry made for women, and for men, mostly one kind is made: watches -- spend a lot of time and energy debating whether this watch or that watch is too big or too small.

By far, most of the comments on this subject seem to be made by men with slender wrists. I don't know how many times I've read a comment saying "I have slender wrists" and going on to say that they're glad that the newest model of this watch is smaller, or that they're disappointed that that watch is so big. I can't recall one single guy saying that he had big wrists and that this or that watch was too small.

I've seen I don't know how many debates of this sort, over a period of years. And not just random guys on the Internet participate in the debates, so do the most highly-respected journalists who specialize in watches, and so do the most highly-respected watch designers. And among watch enthusiasts, you don't get more highly respected than the top watch designers. 

Let's take the case of the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak, one of the most highly-esteemed of all long-running watch models, designed by Gerald Genta, as well-respected as they come, introduced in 1972 and still, apparently, easily selling as many as Audemars Piguet can make. Royal Oaks are probably most well-known for being worn by several of the characters in the HBO series "Entourage." I haven't seen the whole series, but if I've got this straight, Ari Gold, the Hollywood  super-agent played by Jeremy Piven, is given a gift of a Royal Oak by a beloved mentor who tells him it's the best watch in the world. Ari is awestruck by the gift, and soon several of his friends and acquaintances are also wearing Royal Oaks.  

The thing is, there have been many different models of the Royal Oak made since 1972. The original one was 39 millimeters wide -- big for 1972, smallish today. It was just 7 millimeters thick: very thin, for any era. And its case and bracelet -- watch guys refer to metal watch bands as bracelets. Bands made of soft material such as leather or rubber are called straps -- were made of stainless steel. This caused a sensation In 1972, luxury watches usually had cases and bracelets of gold or platinum, and Audemars Piquet has always been a luxury brand. Now, steel is not unusual at any price point. The Royal Oak is the watch which made that change.

But today, you can get a Royal Oak with a case made of gold, or platinum, or titanium, or still other materials besides steel. And steel is also still available. And straps are available as well as bracelets.

In 1992, to celebrate the Royal Oak's 20th anniversary, Audemars Piguet unveiled the Royal Oak Offshore. The original Royal Oak, as I mentioned, is 39 millimeters wide. The Royal Oak Offshore, or the ROO, as fans sometimes call it, is 41 millimeters wide. 

Might not seem like such a big difference. I know of men's wristwatches for sale today as small as 33 mm and as big as 50 mm. But making a new variant of the Royal Oak in 1992 which was 2 mm bigger than the original was enough to cause the designer of the original, Gerald Genta, to storm Audemars Piguet's booth at the Basel watch show where the ROO was introduced, shouting that his creation had been destroyed.  

So. Yes. People not only debate about the proper size of watches, they sometimes even fight about it. Even about differences in sizes which might be barely perceptible to most people. Is Ari wearing a conventional 39 mm Royal Oak in that picture above, or a 41 mm ROO? I don't have the slightest idea.

And then a couple of days ago, it finally struck me that the debate is absurd. Few if any people, I'm nearly 100% certain, have ever earnestly argued that a certain size of shoe, or belt, is correct, and that other sizes are either too big or too small. No, we realize that people come in all different sizes and that one size does not fit all. Similarly, a guy with a slender wrist might look best with a watch which is 37 mm wide (considered smallish today), while a much bigger man with huge wrists might be best suited with a watch 42 mm wide or even larger. It's just about as simple as that. It couldn't be clearer.

And yet the debate will continue. I'm sure of that. I don't know why it ever existed at all, I don't know why it will continue, but I know it will. Maybe it's no more or less than sneakiness on the part of watchmakers, selling more watches by making the newest ones bigger or smaller the way fashion designers sell more clothes by making the fashionable hemlines higher and the lower and then higher again.