My personal story with watches is similar to many others' stories, but I'll recount it here for the sake of context for the rest of this site. (A full list of the watches I own or have owned can be found here.)
As it was for so many, my earliest watch was a Mickey Mouse watch (probably Timex), bought for me as a reward when I first learned to tell time by an analog clock. This was followed by a few Fossil models in high school and college. This was at the peak of Fossil's popularity -- just before cell phones became ubiquitous so everyone still needed a watch, while Fossil's designs and price point made them the choice of most folks in my age range at the time.
My Fossils remained my time-telling tools until a job change early in my professional career required me to overhaul my wardrobe. While I was upgrading and adding to my closet, watches (not surprisingly) came along for the ride. A Timex Weekender, that versatile fabric-strapped staple of the prep set, was the first addition, quickly followed by my first mechanical and automatic, the Vostok Amphibia featured in Life Aquatic. Unsurprisingly for a new enthusiast, I next added a skeleton automatic (a Fossil, as that attachment lingered). This was followed by a Seiko 5 and Orient Mako as I quickly and completely entered the affordable watch community. A regulator and mecha-quartz chronograph were also added, until my first collecting phase ended with my first Kickstarter backing (and first sapphire crystal watch) and that favorite of the affordable men's style and watch communities: the Maratac Pilot.
My collection remained fairly stable for a few years while other matters required priority, but once things settled down and I turned my attention back to watch acquisition I had been bitten by the Swiss bug. In particular, I was attracted to Hamilton watches -- their American pedigree coupled with their new(er) Swiss incarnation. The Jazzmaster had caught my eye for some time, and thus it was that a Viewmatic became my first Swiss watch. Of course, I soon also gave vintage the requisite try, adding a 1960's Omega Geneve. My affinity for Filson's brand led me to add a couple of their models via firesales. Around this time, after having realized how large my collection was growing, I discovered the joys of flipping, and thus over the period of the next several months over 20 watches were added or sold from my collection, including the sale of many of the watches I acquired during the first period of my collection. Toward the end of this period, a consolidation bug hit me, and so I sold off as many of my watches as I could bear, whether recently acquired or still left from the first period, and put that money into acquiring a Tudor Black Bay Heritage 36, which provided a hard stop to the second period of my collection. While the flurry of buying and selling was exhausting, it had the benefit of letting me try many different types and brands of watches within a relatively short period of time, and it has left me in a place where my collection has been battle-tested against many other watches and has emerged better and more stable for it. There is a definite Hamilton slant to it -- with three Hammy models -- but I now have a core of six solid timepieces (along with a few beaters or sentimental pieces) that I hope will usher in a new period of stability.
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