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The watch industry does have an unhealthy obsession with butts.
Heck... the most highly regarded type of leather for watch straps is horse arse leather. Go figure.
Posts by X2-Elijah
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Heck... the most highly regarded type of leather for watch straps is horse arse leather. Go figure.
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I'm 100% certain that there is a large enough market for watch straps made of "upcycled" leather thongs.
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Meh.
Another empty oversized post-modern dial.
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Wasn't that what the whole GTG event scene was all about?
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Truth. Underneath it all, we all just want a constant stream of "new" toys.
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That's a pretty extensive amount of customization. Extra cost?
Btw, am curious - is the caseback screw-on or snap-on? Doesn't look like it has any ridges or tool-sockets...
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Do it.
No money spent, less watches to take care of, it's a win-win.
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Yikes. That's a LOOOOOOT of duplicates you got there. And you already got them sorted... it looks like every box could pretty much be covered by a single watch per box.
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Dang. That's gotta be difficult.Could be worse. For years I couldn’t drink for medical reasons but got the all clear several years ago only for the liver nurse to tell me to cut out booze completely. “I only drink a couple of tins of cider a week” sez me - still too much for someone with a slightly fatty liver.
If you're mostly seeking the "flavors and tasting and varieties" aspect, you could try and jump into high-end tea / coffee (pick one); plenty of niche variations, techniques, even brewing gear etc. to pick up as a hobby. It might reasonably substitute the desire for different whiskeys or craft beers, at least on the novelty front.
If however you're missing the buzz, mmm then I don't know if there are any good options tbh.
Btw.. non-alco beers/wines/gins still suck. Imo not even worth trying... ofc ymmv but outlook is bleak there.
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Myeah, the bright blue variant of the Estoril is a bit better in that aspect. The 1st gen, dark blue and black dials were indeed too plain / matte.
Black dials are kind of weird like that. I don't know how exactly to quantify it, but you can have matte black dials that still pop, and you can have matte black dials that look cheap as chips. And I dont even mean the printing or indices, I mean literally the black surface itself. No clue why that is or what actually causes (maybe a crappy, cloudy sapphire is what dulls it?)
Personally I suspect (more and more as the years go by) that sapphire crystals vary more than we usually consider. It's not about the AR coatings, I genuinely think sapphire crystals can be more or less clear in and of themselves. Like clear vs. cloudy water - in a less extreme way. Unfortunately there is no way to find this out until you have the watch in hand.
Anyway.... When I had an esto 300, I liked that it was quite flat and thin (for that case style, at least). Also it was always a cheap watch (in the good meaning of the word - good value)... an estoril 300 for approx. $300 was a great deal, esp. when the helson was like twice as much.
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Here's the thing about grade 2 titanium.
It is softer than steel.
Why would that matter? Well... Do you like changing straps? If yes... what are springbars made of? Steel. The tips tend to be pretty hard, tbh. Now, consider - when changing a strap, and undoing a springbar - are you able to compress the springbar and pull it out in such a way that it doesn't scrape the inside of the lugs? That it doesn't slip into the springbar hole with a snick? Of course not. It will scrape, it will snick, it will scratch.
Over time, it will gouge out grooves. It will tear out the edges of the springbar holes in the lugs. Over time, springbars will start slipping and falling out, because the grade 2 titanium lugs will get chewed up from the inside.
I once got a used titanium grade 2 watch - a micro, one of the early full-titanium watches, around 2014/15 iirc. It was maybe a year old, afaik it had maybe 3-4 owners prior, and it was starting to show signs of lugs getting chewed out. I don't know if that watch survived past one or two more years. I'd guess not.
Bottom line... don't pick up a titanium watch if you plan on swapping straps often.
It is softer than steel.
Why would that matter? Well... Do you like changing straps? If yes... what are springbars made of? Steel. The tips tend to be pretty hard, tbh. Now, consider - when changing a strap, and undoing a springbar - are you able to compress the springbar and pull it out in such a way that it doesn't scrape the inside of the lugs? That it doesn't slip into the springbar hole with a snick? Of course not. It will scrape, it will snick, it will scratch.
Over time, it will gouge out grooves. It will tear out the edges of the springbar holes in the lugs. Over time, springbars will start slipping and falling out, because the grade 2 titanium lugs will get chewed up from the inside.
I once got a used titanium grade 2 watch - a micro, one of the early full-titanium watches, around 2014/15 iirc. It was maybe a year old, afaik it had maybe 3-4 owners prior, and it was starting to show signs of lugs getting chewed out. I don't know if that watch survived past one or two more years. I'd guess not.
Bottom line... don't pick up a titanium watch if you plan on swapping straps often.
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Nice date window.
Tiny number? check.
Alignment? check, check and check. What's the window at... 4:23? The crown is at... 4:07? Well at least the hour marker is aligned at 4:00, guess we have to be thankful for that much, at least.
If you do buy it, at least try and buy it in person, to make sure you get one from those c.a. 10% Seikos with everything properly aligned, not the 90% that have some or other problem.
P.S. Gonna be honest, I've seen way way way too many seiko-style homage watches (armidas and so many others) using that case, dial, handset combo (date and brand name aside). I don't really find anything remarkable in that watch, it's all much of the same.
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Some more thoughts on that Seiko...
1) It has Diashield coating on the case, like most other Seiko divers in the pricerange. Now... this might be a good thing for you. If so, great. For me, it's a negative, for one (admittedly subjective) reason.
The surface feel. With a normal steel case, you touch it and you feel it as a metal surface. It has texture, it has edges and brushing - all of that feels good, feels the way it should feel. You see metal, you touch metal, you sense "yes, this is metal".
With diashield.. you basically have a lacquer coating over the metal. That's what Diashield is. Thin transparent lacquer coating. And when you touch it, it feels like a slippery, plasticky surface. There is no texture, no edges, no brushing - by feel, it's just a smooth featureless surface. You see metal, you touch metal, you feel plastic. For me, that disconnect is bothersome.
Also - maybe it's just me - but in my experience, Diashield-coated watches pick up fingerprints and smudges more easily than non-coated steel watches.
Like I said. Maybe a minor concern, and maybe for you the bonus of having a protective coating is more important. For me- when I had the SBDC053, the way the diashield case felt on touch was a significant reason was a constant irritation.
2) This is a much more impersonal and facetious reason, that I kinda mentioned beforehand. Idk if this will ring true or not for you, but worth a shot. Basically... by no fault of seiko's own (well... mostly)... this seiko looks generic as hell, because a) there are so so so many seiko divers out there with similar case shape, with similar dials, with similar hands. And b), there are countless non-Seiko homages that also sport that case shape, that kind of dial, that kind of hands. This design - admittedly, yes, Seiko's own - has been watered down so much by Seiko and others, that the watch itself now looks indistinct.
3) Now, in all fairness... I had joked about the alignment, but honestly I do like the date at 4:30, because the date numbers are still the right way up. Imo that's better than a slanted date in place of the 4 o-clock index.
The only real problem is... a round date-wheel cutout means the number has to be small. Especially with double-digit dates (10 to 31), the number will be tiny. It's kind of like trying to squeeze a date window at 6 o'clock position - you know full well how tight the numbers become there - but at 4 o-clock you have less vertical space to use, so the number is squeezed horizontally and vertically.
1) It has Diashield coating on the case, like most other Seiko divers in the pricerange. Now... this might be a good thing for you. If so, great. For me, it's a negative, for one (admittedly subjective) reason.
The surface feel. With a normal steel case, you touch it and you feel it as a metal surface. It has texture, it has edges and brushing - all of that feels good, feels the way it should feel. You see metal, you touch metal, you sense "yes, this is metal".
With diashield.. you basically have a lacquer coating over the metal. That's what Diashield is. Thin transparent lacquer coating. And when you touch it, it feels like a slippery, plasticky surface. There is no texture, no edges, no brushing - by feel, it's just a smooth featureless surface. You see metal, you touch metal, you feel plastic. For me, that disconnect is bothersome.
Also - maybe it's just me - but in my experience, Diashield-coated watches pick up fingerprints and smudges more easily than non-coated steel watches.
Like I said. Maybe a minor concern, and maybe for you the bonus of having a protective coating is more important. For me- when I had the SBDC053, the way the diashield case felt on touch was a significant reason was a constant irritation.
2) This is a much more impersonal and facetious reason, that I kinda mentioned beforehand. Idk if this will ring true or not for you, but worth a shot. Basically... by no fault of seiko's own (well... mostly)... this seiko looks generic as hell, because a) there are so so so many seiko divers out there with similar case shape, with similar dials, with similar hands. And b), there are countless non-Seiko homages that also sport that case shape, that kind of dial, that kind of hands. This design - admittedly, yes, Seiko's own - has been watered down so much by Seiko and others, that the watch itself now looks indistinct.
3) Now, in all fairness... I had joked about the alignment, but honestly I do like the date at 4:30, because the date numbers are still the right way up. Imo that's better than a slanted date in place of the 4 o-clock index.
The only real problem is... a round date-wheel cutout means the number has to be small. Especially with double-digit dates (10 to 31), the number will be tiny. It's kind of like trying to squeeze a date window at 6 o'clock position - you know full well how tight the numbers become there - but at 4 o-clock you have less vertical space to use, so the number is squeezed horizontally and vertically.
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Heh.
Mmmm no, for two reasons.
1) Europe is going to become apolcayptic this winter. Proper Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, Mad Max type of stuff (except no crazy cars - this isn't the australian outback! - we'll have mobs of gangs and leather-clad rough types on fixie bikes instead). At a time where even real estate brokers will be out for blood and brains (yum), you do not want to show off anything that looks sellable or edible.
2) Because of no gas, this winter is gonna be cold. (that's how global warming works, no gas to warm the globe means arctic winter temperatures). When it's real cold out there, you don't want gloves that are tight to your skin; you need a good amount of internal insulation and padding. Those omega gloves are just a skintight layer of plain leather. Skintight leather maybe is good for a certain type of overnight party, but it'll be real bad to wear out in the (urban) wilds.
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Aye, it's certainly not priced like one That's kind of the problem, it seems just about cheap enough to "just yolo it" without much consideration...
But tbh, it kind of checks a whole lot of boxes for me, for a grab-and-go-beater... quartz movement with several-ticks-per-second seconds hand, relatively large dial, box/domed sapphire crystal, nice colourway (either this white or the orange model), thin case, standard lug width, decently finished steel case, looks nice overall...
And, well, yeah, at the moment, the fact that it doesn't look like a seiko prospex or a rolex sub or a tudor sub (or whatever tudor calls their submariners) is a plus. I've had a bunch of sub styled watches and sub homages - from nth-es to san martins and so on... I'm so over that style of watch. And this one looks different enough to trigger all kinds of "ooh shiny me want" impulses.
That's kind of the problem, it seems just about cheap enough to "just yolo it" without much consideration...But tbh, it kind of checks a whole lot of boxes for me, for a grab-and-go-beater... quartz movement with several-ticks-per-second seconds hand, relatively large dial, box/domed sapphire crystal, nice colourway (either this white or the orange model), thin case, standard lug width, decently finished steel case, looks nice overall...
And, well, yeah, at the moment, the fact that it doesn't look like a seiko prospex or a rolex sub or a tudor sub (or whatever tudor calls their submariners) is a plus. I've had a bunch of sub styled watches and sub homages - from nth-es to san martins and so on... I'm so over that style of watch. And this one looks different enough to trigger all kinds of "ooh shiny me want" impulses.
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Heh. Well, yeah.. Apple's presentation on the new iPhone and Watch was very heavy on the subconscious messaging of "either buy this new phone and watch... or go die" and "well buy one for your mom too!". That must have raised some hackles round these parts
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