Many of the knowledgeable folks I see around have mastered the intricacies of the watches in a relatively short time. Thanks to all the mall watch stores; you have such wonderful employees working for you. They make movements go so largely and wonderfully over the buyer’s head; or, they just ignore it altogether and draw a buyer’s attention only to the levels of aesthetics that come by. So these knowledgeable folks often boast about how Swiss they are compared to me the poor Jap-wearing chap and some of them even claimed to be wearing the best movements in the world. I don’t blame them; that’s what they had been told by the salesmen.
Growing weary of such one person’s repeated claims, I asked once if he could cite another movement/watch that comes close, if not equal. “Best has no equals” – sure that was witty, but foolish. The next part – “Why don’t you tell me?”- was plain hilarious. Obviously, a watch to this person is only the decoration it comes with, nothing more. Technicalities don’t even come near to a light-year’s reach to him and technical knowledge comes with experience and time. Sadly, I’m not going to make that long and even if I could, I wouldn’t go on telling him why I hold the Seiko Automatic Presage in higher regards than the Raymond Weil he spent a ton upon.
But, the challenge could be a better one. Say, like what to look for in a watch-movement? It’s pretty vague too but any time better than ramming down an opinion based on wispier facts. For, to choose a movement, you must know what you value in it, which I think, is hard for the fellow to comprehend. Gold and diamonds are not exactly what we understand as values in the watch-world. Neither jewels, but they are vital components that add value to a watch movement when used as and when required, in right numbers.
Why I claim the proposed question better is at least you get a lane for the conversation to proceed. For example, you may answer accuracy, or complication, or decoration or just all of them into one. It could be durability, shock-resistance – but then again, we are moving to the technical side of it, which I guess, is beyond comprehension of the inquirer; more so, for movements do not stop at mechanical but stretch to high-precision quartz, kinetic and meca-quartz (the kind that uses electrical power to run a completely mechanical setup inside). Else, he could pick the points one by one, lay down the movements side by side and run a comparison but then it would require watchmaking and engineering knowledge up to a serious level!
Watch(es) mentioned in this post are listed below. Click to see details and buy them:
