Have I Become a Watch Snob?

Sometimes, people who hate Rolex are referred to as as snobs.

I've never thought of myself as a watch snob -- for example, I completely agree with a lot of both the negative AND the positive things which are said about Invicta (negative: their marketing strategy of giving their watches MSRP's 4 times what they intend to sell the watch for, and then pretending that, TODAY ONLY, they're offering an incredible deal, when it's the everyday deal; and using way too much gold plating. 

 

Positive: making some watches which actually function pretty well, and drawing the attention of a lot of first-time watch owners to a wonderful hobby)  -- but it's very hard for me to imagine myself ever wearing a Rolex. I would much rather be seen wearing the garish Invicta in that photo. 

As loyal readers of this blog know, this represents a complete change from 5 years ago, when I lusted after the platinum Rolex Daytona. What happened in those 5 years? I've learned a lot about watches. I know Rolexes are good watches, but today, they're overpriced to the point where it seems to me that you either have not know very much about watches, or ignore a lot of what you know, in order to shell out that much for a Rolex, when you can always, ALWAYS get a far superior watch for the same money. I just can't separate my reaction to the marketing and the prices from my reaction to the actual watches.

If that means I'm a watch snob, well then, I supposed I've become a watch snob. Even though my annual income is less than the average selling price for an entry-level Rolex, which is much, much higher than the MSRP for that Rolex. 

I personally don't think it's snobbery, it's actually concern about people being ripped off, and people investing in a risky bubble -- assuming that the Rolex bubble actually will burst at some point. And of course, it's POSSIBLE that it actually will NEVER burst. Financial bubbles, by defintion, are built on irrationality, and irrationality has never run to a sensible timetable.

Rolex Watches are Ridiculously Overpriced

Rolex makes about a million watches a year. Their MSRP starts at around $6.000 a unit, unless they've raised prices lately, which is entirely possible, and goes up into 6 figures. Except that you can't get one for retail unless you get on a waiting list which is years long.

And they're all overpriced. Reasonable prices would start at around $1,500.

So. About a million purchases, every year, which can be put into 3 categories: 

1) People who think the watches are worth what they cost, and are getting ripped off, as badly as if they were buying Toyotas for Ferrari prices. Imagine people talking about how Toyotas were the greatest cars ever built, and showing off their Toyotas as the ultimate status symbol known to them. That's how absurd the Rolex situation is.

2) People who know watches, and know that Rolexes are ridiculously overpriced, but still, they like Rolexes, and they actually have enough money that the price doesn't matter to them.

3) People who don't know or care about watches, and who also don't know what a bubble is, and are buying Rolexes as investments. They buy the watches and put them in safes or safety-deposit boxes without even taking them out of the box once to look at them. Now and then they might flip one of the watches for a ridiculous profit, but they're holding the rest, assuming that they'll make the same kind of profit on all of them. 

I don't know whether there are more people in 1) or 3). I know that 2) is a much smaller group than 1) or 3). I know that a lot of the people in 1) and 3) have made a lot of money in other bubbles: Tesla, other EV companies, cryptocurrency, etc.

Celebrity Watches

It seems I'm a little bit behind the times. A few years ago, when I stopped watching videos about celebrities' watch collections, "celebrity" meant "a person with too much money who has only heard of one watch brand." I got tired of seeing another Rolex, and another Rolex, and another Rolex, and so I started watching other things. 

 

But the situation has completely changed! Today, "celebrity" means "person with too much money who may have heard of as many as five different watch brands"! Today, although the next watch will probably still be a Rolex, there's a chance that it may be a Patek Philippe, a Richard Mille, a Cartier or an Audemars Piguet.

I don't know whether these brands are giving watches to celebrities, offering deep discounts, or whether the chumps are actually paying regular-people prices -- and I also don't care!

Now, there are blogs and YouTube channels and books which are each only about one brand of watch, and that's okay, if the author or creator knows a lot about that brand.

And to me, knowing which movie and music stars wear which of those five brands, does not constitute knowing a lot about those brands. I know that some people disagree. 

For example, some prominent men's magazines have full-time, high-paid staffers whom they call "watch experts," who don't know anything about watches except which movie stars or music stars wear Rolex, Patek, Richard Mille, Cartier or Audemars Piguet. 

At least -- they never SAY, or write, anything else about watches. Not even to mention Vacheron Constantine, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Breguet, Zenith, Omega, Grand Seiko, G-Shock, Hublot, A Lange & Soehne, Nomos, Glashuette Original, IWC, Piaget, Longines, Bell & Ross, Panerai, Parmigiani Fleurier, Vostok, Breitling, Citizen, Orient, TAG Heuer, Tudor or any one of the many, many other watch brands which are worth mentioning for some reason or other besides being worn by movie stars and music stars. 

You know what? When I want to know something about movies or music, I don't confine myself to asking watch aficionados about them. Call me crazy.

Celebrities and Rolex

Just because you have a wonderful talent for acting or singing, or playing the baritone sax, or cooking while talking to cameras about cooking, or even all of the above, there's no guarantee that you will know much at all about any other given thing. Luxury watches, for example. Ask the average person to list as many brands of luxury watches as they can, and they'll say: "Rolex... Uhhhh... Ummmm..."

And celebrities seem to be pretty average when it comes to watches. Over and over again, a headline about some celebrity's watch collection leads to a story about a collection of Rolexes (also known as "the genuine fake Timexes"), or a collection of mostly Rolexes. Over and over again, some person whose talents apart from the world of watches impresses me very much, has disappointed me in this way. I'm just about all out of hope. 

I don't have a lot of room to complain here. Faithful readers of this blog may recall that after suddenly developing a fascination with watches around 2010, and before reaching a certain level of sophistication in my knowledge of watches more recently, I myself, for a couple of years, was fascinated by, indeed, somewhat obsessed with, a certain Rolex model, the platinum Daytona on a platinum bracelet:

Which is a perfectly fine watch. All Rolexes are very high-quality, very dependable and accurate timepieces. Rolex is also an extremely conservative brand, to the point of being boring, with very slight changes in styling and function coming only once in a great while. Also, a Rolex typically will cost about twice as much as an Omega made from comparable materials, with comparable function and quality.

And some might argue that Omegas, too, are somewhat overpriced, because, although, as I mentioned above, Rolex is the only luxury watch brand of which many people have heard, if they've heard of two, there's a good chance that the second brand is Omega, so that their prices may be due more to marketing than to any inherent quality in their products.

Now let's compare this to the point of view of someone who actually knows a bit about luxury watches. Among real connoisseurs, there are three Swiss brands which for decades have been considered the pinnacle of watchmaking: Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet and Vacheron Constantine. Apart from things like very small specialty brands who turn out one custom-made hand-made watch every several years at a price of several million dollars, these three brands have widely been considered to be the very best there is. Although recently, some would say that a fourth Swiss brand, Jaeger-LeCoultre, should be considered alongside or even above the Holy Trinity, and some would say that the German manufacturer A Lange & Soehne is right up there, and others would say Grand Seiko, which recently split off from the Japanese brand Seiko.

All of the brands mentioned so far are relatively conservative in styling. Two Swiss brands which are definitely outside the box with their designs, but which still don't seem to offend the snobs, are MB&F and Urwerk. Two brands which are way outside of the box, which definitely DO offend snobs, are Hublot and Richard Mille. In my opinion, with watches as with anything else, I think that if you give any weight to the opinions and nasty remarks of snobs, it's a real shame. 

But anyway, Rolex is just not in that upper echelon. Someone who really knows about all of those other brands may sneer at you for wearing a Rolex, or make some nasty remark about Rolex being God's way of marking fools who until recently had too much money. Or, if they're nice, they might say that if you're sure you can afford it, and you're sure that it's really really the watch you want, then a Rolex is a fine watch. (And they wouldn't be lying.) But they also might urge you to shop around a little in the other brands I've mentioned, and there are still others that could be mentioned, dozens of brands which are just as good as, if not better than Rolex.

So, why is Rolex so much more well-known? It's rather mysterious. It's as if Mercedes-Benz were the only luxury auto brand people had ever heard of -- unless maybe they'd also heard of BMW (in analogy to Omega).

Many watch brands, including Rolex, have what are known as "brand ambassadors," famous people who wear their watches in public in exchanges for free watches, or money, or both. Rolex has brand ambassadors -- perhaps it won't shock you to learn that Jack Nicklaus is one -- and they have ads in fancy magazines. But not enough of either one to explain their complete world domination. Not enough to explain why there are waiting lists years long for the choicest Rolex models.

I just had a sinister idea. The fact that most celebrities who collect watches, collect Rolexes and not much else, is tremendous advertising for Rolex. Maybe Rolex has many more brand ambassadors than they admit. Maybe they have shadowy agents everywhere in the world of fame. Whenever a performer or athlete seems about to break through into fame, perhaps the anonymous Rolex guy appears and says, "Hey, Rolex admires what you do. And we'd like you to have a Rolex on us -- Hell, take two, they're small! Heh heh heh. Yeah, there are some vintage watches in there with the new ones. You could mix it up. New is interesting. Old is interesting in a different way. We'd just ask one favor: don't tell anybody that Rolex gave these watches to you. Let people think that you bought them. And then maybe I'll come around to visit you on a regular basis."

Yes, that's a rather extreme speculation of mendacity. But Rolex has a rather extreme position in the watch market. It's extremely difficult to explain.

Should I Buy A Rolex as an Investment?

No! You should not buy any watches as investments. Watches are not a sound investment. Real estate and mutual funds are. The only sensible reason to buy a watch is because you want to have that watch. This is especially important if it's going to be the only watch you own, or if you're going to wear it almost every day. If there's something on your wrist between 8 and 24 hours a day which makes you happy every time you look at it, that's a very significant thing. Some people like very light watches, so light that you can barely feel it there on your wrist; some people, like me, go completely the other way, and think that heavier is better. The watch you wear should give YOU pleasure. If you got a certain watch because certain other people like it, but it's not the kind that YOU like, well, then, in my opinion, that's just sad. Life's too short to go around trying to impress air-headed fashion-mongers.

(I should certainly hope that it goes without saying that if you don't care about watches at all, the most sensible thing would be not to wear a watch, and to read things like this post because my writing style is gorgeous.)

True, Rolex tends to hold its value better than other brands, but that's only because of the Rolex snobs and the lack of knowledge about other brands. It was not so long ago that, if you asked many people in the US to name luxury watch brands, they'd say, "Rolex..." and then go completely blank. That's beginning to change.

Rolex makes fine watches, there's nothing at all wrong with them, but as the watch-buying public becomes better informed about Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin, Audemars Piguet, Jaeger-LeCoultre, A Laenge & Soehne, Omega, Breguet, MB&F, URWERK, Ulysse Nardin, IWC, Chopard, Blancpain, Panerai, Grand Seiko, Piaget, Girard Perregaux and the other high-quality brands which have been there all along, then most likely Rolex watches will no longer be unique in the way they hold their market value over time.

But there's no guarantee about that, either. Watch prices, like the prices of any other luxury goods, have to do above all with the psychology of the people who buy them. People's attitudes about watches, and the inherent quality of those watches, are two separate things.

If you listen to people who say that watches are a good investment, you're likely to hear some irrational statements. Like saying that some watches are "worth what I paid for them," when someone paid $5000 for a watch in 1960 which is worth $5000 today. (If he had spent that $5000 on a house in 1960, depending on its location, he might be able to rent it for 3 months for $5000 today.) Or that "some Rolex watches have risen spectacularly in value over time," ignoring the way that other Rolex watches have not. Not to mention the way that some non-Rolex models have risen spectacularly in value over time.

Still -- to repeat what I said above -- if you really, really want a Rolex, if wearing one makes you happy, and you can afford one -- buy it! Buy it, wear it and let it make you happy! Even if you're surrounded by non-Rolex snobs who wear Pateks or AP's and sneer at your Rolex. Screw them!

There probably are a few people out there who actually can make a living by buying and selling old watches. But they're about as rare as people who can make a good living playing poker. And, unfortunately, like the poker players, the watch dealers often depend on meeting a lot of suckers who think they're good at the game, when they're not.

If I Were King Of The Forest --

In the preface to a book on Ottoman history written in English, the author assures the reader that, "because of the book's target audience," (with very few exceptions) the bibliography contains only items written in English. In the very same paragraph he lavishes praise on the extraordinary multilingualism of some of the bibliographies of the items in his bibliography and urges the reader to check them out.

No book or article was ever improved by taking footnotes out or restricting the bibliography along linguistic lines. Just one example: suppose a student whose first language was French took a college course in which this book was read, and that many of the items the authors eliminated from his bibliography were in French. I'm telling you, both of those things are not just supposin', they're both pretty much guaranteed, and it makes me sad.

A headline says that while Pearl Jam may not be cool, they're great. I'm so uncool that I never until now suspected that Pearl Jam was anything other than possibly too cool.

After 14 pages (6 pages of preface and 8 pages of Chapter 1), a book claiming to be an introduction to information theory explains what information theory is. I'm thinking this explanation belongs right at the beginning of the preface, since this is (supposedly) a book for people who haven't yet been introduced to information theory.

"The Day-Date continues to be the watch par excellence of influential people." Actual quote from rolex.com. I'm thinking that would be more accurate if "influential" was replaced with "insecure." For a lot of Rolex wearers, if the people they're trying to impress don't know how much their Rolex cost, or, worse, don't even notice at all that they're wearing Rolexes, then all of that money was pretty much wasted.

On the other hand, some people laugh at Rolex wearers for only wearing Rolexes to try to impress others, but they secretly want a Rolex so bad, and the only reason they don't have one is they're afraid of being laughed at by watch snobs like themselves, and that's even sillier than wearing a watch only to impress others. (The only sane reason to wear any watch: because you -- not anybody else at all. YOU -- like it. Because YOU think the watch is cool. That's the only sane reason amid all of this madness.)

I'm beginning to think that there may be very few people who share my literary and artistic tastes and my political views and my interests in watches. It might be fewer than few, maybe no-one shares all that with me. I noticed this year that the Leipzig Book Fair and Baselworld overlapped for a couple of days. The more I look into these things, the harder it is to imagine anyone excited by one of these events who has even heard of the other. Oh well, someone's got to be first at everything. Give me a Nobel Prize please, thank you.

Sports Illustrated On LeBron James

"LeBron never owed Cleveland a debt, yet he repaid it anyway -- with backbreaking interest."

Yeah, the safety pin is good. I don't know him personally, but from some things I hear, LeBron James may be a Truly Nice Person.

The part about LeBron repaying a debt he never owed, "with backbreaking interest" -- excuse me, but you must give me a moment to look away and roll my eyes. The Cavs are paying him over $30 million a year. That's $30 million a year just from the Cavs. That's before we get to Audemars Piguet (a top-end Swiss watchmaker. The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak is available in many different configurations and materials. I believe LeBron's wearing a Royal Oak on that Sports Illustrated cover. Wonder whether Audemars Piguet paid him for that. Ari Gold, the fictional character on "Entourage," could sometimes be seen wearing a Royal Oak with a gold case and a leather strap. The heaviest one you can get, with 18k gold case, band and bezel, is reputed to be one of the very heaviest wristwatches on the market. Almost one pound. About $60,000, unless you know a guy),

Coca-Cola, Dunkin' Donuts, McDonald's, Nike, State Farm Insurance, Samsung and other companies whose products James promotes. I don't begrudge him the cheddar. My point is only that he's hardly a self-sacrificing hero along the lines of, say, Joan of Arc. And the strange institution known as the salary cap means that other players are paying part of LeBron's salary, and isn't it interesting how sports teams' owners don't get their finances in the headlines as if it were actually someone's business? Great scam they've got going, the team owner billionaires, distracting people from their wealth by publicizing millionaire players, without whom they wouldn't have their lucrative sports business.

To be honest with you, I got completely sidetracked thinking about watches I can't afford. To be perfectly honest, I don't care all that much about anything to do with sports or Sports Illustrated. Not the way that I care about fine men's watches. An all-gold, almost-one-pound Audemars Piguet Royal Oak is not the one single wristwatch I would most like to have -- that would still be the platinum Rolex Daytona with the ice-blue dial, in case you're thinking of going all-out when you get me a Christmas present this year --

-- but the all-gold, heavy-as-possible Royal Oak would also be very, very nice. I'm approximately... let's see... I'm about $60,000 short of being able to get a Royal Oak like that for myself. The Rolex costs about the same.

Hey, an Omega would be very nice. They're much less expensive than Rolexes and Audemars Piguets and Patek Phillippes of comparable quality and material.

Patek Phillippe, Bell & Ross and Tissot all make very nice pocket watches which I can't afford. I definitely prefer open-face pocket watches to the kind with a metal lid which snaps closed, making the watch unreadable. A new top-end pocket watch -- top-end -- will have a crystal made of sapphire which is very tough, in addition to the watch's movement being very accurate and precise (they're two different things) and reliable and tough, which is especially nice for a butterfingers like me.

No pressure!

Apparently Some Of You Still Need Some Convincing That I Deserve The Nobel Prize In Literature

(It seems it's "in Liturature," not "for Literature." "In Literature" sounds strange to me -- but that's okay, it's their prize and they can call it whatever they want. Just seems kinda strange.)

Why do you still need convincing? *turning toward those of you who are convinced* I know! Good question! *turning back toward the general readership* Whatever the bizarre reasons may be, I've examined the stats for this blog, and some of you aren't yet convinced -- because if you were, you'd be excitedly talking non-stop about how awesome I am and how deserving of the Nobel Prize, and linking my blog and tweeting and emailing about it and putting the blog's address in print ads and billboards and so forth, and if all of you were doing that, it would show in the stats. If Oprah and Chris Matthews and Larry King and David Letterman and Harold Bloom and Conan O'Brien and Rachel Maddow and GA Wells and Bruce Springsteen and William H Gass and Barack Obama had all given my blog rave reviews on the same day, it would have shown in the stats. That's all I'm going to say about the stats right now because the stats are the confidential bidniss of me and Blogspot, and our bidniss ain't yo bidniss. No offense. It's gist bidniss.

Anyway -- the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature will be awarded 5 months from now, maybe even a little bit less than 5 months, and I've examined the statistics for this blog concerning the volume of my readership, and if current trends continue, I will have to be considered a dark horse for this year's literature prize. It's not that more popular = more likely to win the Nobel. Don't worry, Dan Brown will never win it. Neither will Stephen King or John Grisham or any of those other Bozos who can't write worth a tiny speck of poop and are always clogging up the bestseller lists, making the interaction between good writers and discerning readers much, much more difficult than it should be. Only a handful of people need to be aware that my writing exists in order for me to be awarded the Nobel -- the handful of people who actually award the prize. But getting those people to read this blog and/or the manuscripts of my 2 complete and still-unpublished novels is easier said than done. I've researched the award process a little in the past 2 months, since I published the post Let's Get Serious And Get Me The 2015 Nobel Prize For Literature, and it appears that literary editors of leading publications, and maybe also some people such as prominent critics, give some input to the Nobel folks as to who they think is worthy, among the writers of their particular country. Makes sense: it's a big world, hundreds of countries in it, the Nobel people need some help organizing the competition. And of course Nobel laureates of previous years also have a big say in each new prize. And as I mentioned back in March in that previous post, most winners have already been at least somewhat famous before they win. A few of them have been among those rare birds, bestselling authors who also don't stink as writers.

I don't know any Nobel laureates personally. Nor am I personally acquainted with the editors of The New Yorker or the Kenyon Review. Obviously: if those folks were aware of my existence, they would be clamoring to publish my work, and as yet they are not. I need to get some people's attention. I need to get onto their radar.

The way I've imagined this happening is that my blog would go viral, and become one of the most widely-visited blogs of all time, and far and away the most popular one in the history-philosophy-belles-lettres category. I'd go to bed one night, sleep the sleep of the just for having written well and done other good and noble deeds all day, and rise the next morning to find that I'd become famous overnight, that my blog had broken the Internet and that so much media would be camped out on my street, hoping for a snapshot of me or a word with me, that the police would have to be called just to unblock the street enough that it would be possible for my neighbors to drive on it and get to their jobs or wherever they needed to be.

For the sake of sanity on my block, I would have to move out. Luxury hotels would be jostling each other for the opportunity to comp me, Rolex and Omega would each try to outdo the other in giving me a greater number of gold and platinum watches, in the hope of it being more likely that one of their watches would be seen on my wrist than one of the competition's watches. Same with free clothes and many other items. And of course the quantity of free books, every publisher going all-out hoping for a blurb -- the quantity of books would be simply cuckoo.

But not nearly as crazy as the bidding war between publishers for the right to publish my works. Even before I had an agent, headlines would claim that the bidding had reached 8 figures -- and those headlines would be accurate.

And so forth. I'd be so famous that I'd be famous just for how famous I was, like Dan Brown or Justin Bieber, and just as in their cases, that would make me even more famous.

That's how I picture this going, but of course that's not the only way it could go. The editors at the Kenyon Review or The New Yorker or whatever, the people at some other rag could find out about me before I'm completely famous, and they could be a part of the process of making me famous, rather than my blog just going viral before any of them have a chance to act.

There are various ways this could go. I could actually get published by means of a publisher or periodical or agent getting back to me about one of my submissions or queries. Anything's possible.

But again: we've got 5 months to make this happen, people! 5 months or maybe even a little bit less. Talk, tweet, email, link, go, go, go!!!

Daydreaming About Extremely Expensive Watches

Lately I've been looking at pictures of expensive mechanical (that is: wind-up, no battery) watches and daydreaming about being rich enough to afford one. Just today I was looking at some of these pictures, looking at the ways some of these watches have of showing the time in more than 1 time zone at once. Looking at these pictures on my laptop.

And it occurred to me that a mechanical, no-electricity computer wouldn't be able to do very much. At all. Certainly wouldn't be able to show me pictures of watches costing more than I've ever made in a year. Gross. And my laptop, about as simple as new ones come, can show me the time in all time zones, and that's just a teeny-tiny part of a small fraction of what it can do. And then it occurred to me: the most advanced current mechanical computers: that's more or less what extremely-expensive watches are. Plus a lot of gold or platinum in many cases.

As regular readers of this blog know: I'm a pocket watch enthusiast. Not particularly interested in putting a watch on my wrist. I have an automatic (self-winding, no battery) Timex that I bought at a yard sale for 2 bucks, and I've occasionally worn that on my wrist, but never for as long as a day all day long. It's just uncomfortable to me. I don't know whether this is a neurological issue related to my autism. I also don't wear rings.

Not very long ago, all the extra features which often come with expensive watches, like multiple dials and stopwatches and whatnot, didn't interest me much. I just wanted big Arabic numerals, 12 of them on one dial and no Roman numerals or dashes or dots referring to numbers, and of course I wanted extremely accurate and precise and durable and rugged timekeeping. Basically, I wanted a Hamilton 992B,

but as far as I know, no 992B's have been made in the past 45 years. I started researching expensive new pocket watches, and I haven't been able to find many new high-end ones. Patek Philippe offers a couple of gold pocket watches in the $30,000 - $40,000 price range, and Bell & Ross

makes a few that sell for around $2000-$4000, and other than that, I don't know of any really good new pocket watches. The selection of good new ones, as far as I know, isn't vast. There is a vast selection of other new pocket watches, and in the case of some of those I'm not at all sure how well they're made, and in the cases of many others, I'm quite sure that they're cheap crap. It seems that there is this thing called steampunk, whose adherents often carry hideous-looking cheap wind-up watches which are meant to evoke the Victorian ("steam-powered") era. They don't evoke it for me. Generally speaking, watches which were actually made in the Victorian era look much better to me, and a lot of them are still running and keep better time than a lot of this new stuff. Anyway, because of steampunk and maybe because of other factors too, suddenly there are many new wind-up pocket watches for sale, some in the grotesque steampunk style and some which much more closely resemble regular watches. Some have a few superficial resemblances in appearance to things like the 992B, but they gain or lose more than 30 seconds a day. (That's not good. Less than 30 seconds every 6 months, when we spring forward or fall back, would be more like it.)

I must underscore that I'm not really well-informed about all of the new inexpensive ($10 to $500 dollars or so, that's not a typo, it's 10 with 1 zero) watches. I don't know whether there is inexpensive quality stuff somewhere in there amongst the dreck. One can only hope. [PS, 2017: Among other quality low-priced watches, there is the Seiko 5, widely regarded as the most watch per dollar or Euro that a person can get these days.]

Back to me daydreaming about being rich and able to afford a top-notch new gold or platinum watch.

Since there are so few high-end new pocket watches, I've been looking at high-end wristwatches. And I've actually begun to grow intrigued by all the fancy stuff which didn't appeal to me not long ago. Fancy stuff referred to as "complications" by the makers of extremely-expensive watches. Lately, to my own surprise, the complications and offbeat designs have begun to intrigue me. Accuracy, precision and reliability continue to be what I want most, but I'm changing to an attitude where I might actually like some complications too.

And more recently than that it occurred to me that just because a big heavy gold or platinum wristwatch has a band, it doesn't mean that I would have to wear it on my wrist instead of carrying it in my pocket. Of course I could carry a big heavy hunk of precious metal and precision horology in my pocket if I felt like it, even if it came with a big glorious heavy precious-metal band usually used to wear it on one's wrist.

If I could afford such a thing, that is. So let's keep talking me up for that Nobel Prize, everyone, shall we? Thank you! You know, once I'm a Nobel Prize winner, and able to actually buy a gold Omega watch (or platinum? Does Omega make platinum watches? I'm having trouble finding them if they do), I might not have to buy one. Because of the Tom Petty Ab.So.Lute.Ly Backwards Law of Microeconomics, winning a Nobel Prize might actually make me rich and famous enough that Omega would give me a new gold or platinum watch.

And wouldn't that be cool beans with awesome sauce.