What other things do jacket junkies feel it's not ok to go for the cheapest option

[Edward]

There are people who really hate Rolex - my favourite line is Rolex make the best $1000 watch for $10,000.

Ha, yes... that was pretty much our family Jeweller's take on it. But then he also showed me another brand luxury watch that he'd gotten in for a special order for a client - terribly gaudy for my tastes, but I could see the skill involved in making it - gold, diamonds, the lot. £20K (this back in the nineties) wholesale. The Swiss movement was worth a tenner, and identical to another watch he had in stock at £100. I think that's where I struggle with high-end watch prices, in truth. You very quickly hit a plateau on the functional side, but the price keeps rising if you want to spend more. I wonder whether part of it is that I view a watch as a functional tool, for timekeeping; perhaps if I thought of it more as jewellery, I'd be more open to the bigger spends? In a similar fashion, I certainly wouldn't say no to a Mont Blanc fountain pen, but equally if you showed me a note I'd written six months later and asked whether I'd used a MB or my P51, I don't know that I would be able to tell you.

What really shocks me is the price of some Quartz- driven watches that comes close to Rolex money!

The current bunch of Rolex watches I have handled all look unbelievably well made and the bracelets are miracles of machining. I have nearly shelled out the money a couple of times but a little voice in my ear keeps stopping me. I would feel somehow that I have failed.

Certainly, whatever qualms I might have about the price, the Rolex models that appeal to my aesthetic I do find beautifully made.

I totally agree on the no date. The simple a a watch can be the better IMO.

Very much so. Ironically, one of my favourite things about the Submariner style is its simplicity; I'm also quite a fan of the Vostok military watches for much the same reasons. One of the things I would consider would be a used Tudor or Rolex with a badly damaged bracelet, actually, as I prefer to wear my Submariner homage on a nylon Nato/zulu strap, and would continue to do so with "the real thing", so a damaged bracelet could be a way of making it more affordable... Unlikely this side of the lottery win, though.

I didn't realise Starbucks made coffee.

Burn. I couldn't tell you, I never rink the stuff. Their tea is quite nice, but wildly overpriced.

I agree - I'm not into waiting. I understand that situation may not be the case at Rolex China, particularly if you spend over $50k.

I don't know, I bought my Chinese Rolex on a street market in Beijing and walked away with it same day....

Don’t you think many brands do this? I’d like to take the plunge into a RMC j-24 and can’t find one new in my size for anything. Clearly there is a market.
Anyhow, I consider my RMC problem very fortunate. I suspect that if i were to get one, like with Rolex, everything else would seem like a compromise.
Disclaimer. I’m not exclusively a Rolex fanboy. It is just the best watch at a price point i could stretch to. I don’t now, and never will, have Patek money.

Patek money really is crazy..... I always said they were for people with too much money and not enough imagination as to what to spend it on.

 

[Doctor Damage]

lately I question relation between what quality & construction that reflect on price that is claimed by general guide on internet vs my reality.

like shoe construction, everyone preach about goodyear welted because it is resoleable, more water proof etc, yeah but even cemented shoes is resoleable , and you might not need to resole ever if you just put on a rubber pad under your leather sole and just replace that pad every so often also made it water proof too. the idea of cemented sole is not resoleable is just pure internet lie, usually cemented shoes since they are cheap to begin with they are also not made from quality upper, it would breakdown evenly so probably when the sole is wornout the upper would look as wornout too, but companies cash on this misconception by making goodyear welt shoes using mediocre leather upper claiming it is the only way the shoes can be resoleable while their upper might crumble far before the over engineered sole construction, even more lie perhaps they even glue the outsole to midsole too just in case and using the sewing just more or less as decoration.

ha ha ha, I'm with you 100% on this! Goodyear welting is worshipped on other forums, but it's b.s. to claim that a pair of Aldens will last indefinitely. After all, if a re-soling requires you to strip off the soles, cork, and welts and then is re-lasted then you've removed half the shoe already and it's not really a re-soling it's basically a new build except for the uppers. "This car is all original, except it's got a new transmission and engine..." yeah whatever. Good quality cemented shoes (like high end slippers) are fine for the amount of walking most people do (with is very little).

or how about full grain leather, how many misleading cookie cutter articles about how sanding up a micron of leather would make quality so different?

There's an an extraordinary amount of confusion and ignorance out there about this and I gave up trying to tell anyone anything a long time ago. Not all corrected grain leather looks like plastic, and not all supposedly full grain leather is all that good.

in my belief internet feed us BS mostly, I read them for entertainment not for fact or education

The interweb is a mixed bag... lots of good porn, though.

 

[Doctor Damage]

I think that's where I struggle with high-end watch prices, in truth. You very quickly hit a plateau on the functional side, but the price keeps rising if you want to spend more. I wonder whether part of it is that I view a watch as a functional tool, for timekeeping; perhaps if I thought of it more as jewellery, I'd be more open to the bigger spends?

Men shouldn't wear jewellry and I consider watches part of that. Also, who needs to know the exact time at any given moment? Thor is probably the only member here who needs to know the time instantly but even he probably has a huge clock in his wheelhouse, and he's often bundled up so can't just quickly look at a wristwatch. 99.9999% of people sit in an office and don't need to know the time. So it's just jewellry and/or status symbol stuff, and therefore pointless and not really a manly thing in my opinion.

 

[Doctor Damage]

I tend to find the higher end jeans also require more careful handling, more "fragile." So they tend not to get used as much as the Wrangler Cowbuy cut 5-pocket deniums I typically wear.

That's fine and practical, but if you're ever at a pop-up store for some hipster brand of moustache wax someplace in Brooklyn the Wrangler's just won't cut it and you'll be laughed out of the place.

 

[Bfd70]

Men shouldn't wear jewellry and I consider watches part of that. Also, who needs to know the exact time at any given moment? Thor is probably the only member here who needs to know the time instantly but even he probably has a huge clock in his wheelhouse, and he's often bundled up so can't just quickly look at a wristwatch. 99.9999% of people sit in an office and don't need to know the time. So it's just jewellry and/or status symbol stuff, and therefore pointless and not really a manly thing in my opinion.

Well, as The Dude said “that’s just like your opinion man.”

I use my watch all the time. I’m not scheduling trains, but need to know when it’s time to do things throughout the day. Sure i could look at my iphone. I could also spend every day in track pants and a NF puffer jacket.

Besides, i get a kick outta the fact that a couple hundred little parts packed in a small case maintain an accuracy within 4/86400 seconds.

 

[Big J]

@zebedee,
Was it Baudrillard who made the comment about people behaving like adults at Disney land and children in the real world? I don't remember, but it always stuck with me as being accurate.

 

[Fonzie]

Well, as The Dude said “that’s just like your opinion man.”.

That’s one of the best lines in a movie ever and that movie is a masterpiece.

 

[Seb Lucas]

Men shouldn't wear jewellry and I consider watches part of that. Also, who needs to know the exact time at any given moment? Thor is probably the only member here who needs to know the time instantly but even he probably has a huge clock in his wheelhouse, and he's often bundled up so can't just quickly look at a wristwatch. 99.9999% of people sit in an office and don't need to know the time. So it's just jewellry and/or status symbol stuff, and therefore pointless and not really a manly thing in my opinion.

You seem a bit hung up on manliness there Damage. Why is jewellery unmanly, I don't follow.

 

[GHT]

Men shouldn't wear jewellry and I consider watches part of that..

Like most folks I've made a few stupid mistakes in my life, but asking the lady who accepted my proposal of marriage was not one of them. My wedding ring, which I wear with pride, is an outward symbol of the love and loyalty that we have shared for more than 50 years.

 

[Seb Lucas]

What really shocks me is the price of some Quartz- driven watches that comes close to Rolex money!

I hear you but I own one of those watches and I love it. People often adopt a kind of romanticism when it comes to mechanical watches, but I see no difference in quartz versus mechanical other than quartz is more robust and more accurate and, in the case of my F9 quartz movement, probably won't need servicing for 40-50 years. It is a beautifully made quartz movement and the case/bracelet is stunning.

I am sick of paying watchmakers $150 to $400 every 5 or 6 years to keep a mechanical watch going. If you can do it yourself, fine. If you have a cut rate buddy in the watchmaking business, fine. But I simply find it a drag to send the things away for 4 to 12 weeks and then pay (in the case of my affordable mechanicals) more than they cost to purchase in service costs.

There's a common prejudice against quartz and a kind of watch snobbery which I understand but don't accept myself.

But what shocks me is $6000 luxury watches with the same unremarkable ETA mechanical movement you might find in a $600 Hamilton.

 

[zebedee]

@Big J I remember the great line about Salt Lake City having Jesus statues that all looked like Bjorn Borg. My current kick is J.G. Ballard's 'Kingdom Come' (which is both a more incisive and a more repetitive statement of his central themes). This gem: '...parking was well on the way to becoming the British population's greatest spiritual need' gets truer every day.

 

[dudewuttheheck]

Interestingly enough, many Americans who have tried Turkish coffee shared the same sentiment. I'd make it all the time when I was there. People couldn't get enough of it.

But Starbucks... I mean, taste is subjective so ignoring my dislike with it, what baffles me most is that doesn't taste like bad coffee - it just doesn't taste like coffee at all! I don't know what that taste is even supposed to be.

Which reminds me I gotta make some.

I'm not much of a coffee expert, so I can't explain too well why I dislike Starbucks so much. It's overly dark, yet also bland simultaneously. That's the best way I can describe the taste or lack thereof.

 

[Edward]

I hear you but I own one of those watches and I love it. People often adopt a kind of romanticism when it comes to mechanical watches, but I see no difference in quartz versus mechanical other than quartz is more robust and more accurate and, in the case of my F9 quartz movement, probably won't need servicing for 40-50 years. It is a beautifully made quartz movement and the case/bracelet is stunning.

I made a very deliberate move away from Quartz some years ago. Don't like the idea of being dependent on a battery; I do like the idea that it's a mechanical device that is repairable, and can keep going on its own. Inevitably, there's an air of romanticisation about it, of course, and I'm well aware that the quartz will always keep better time, but.... eh. I always felt wasteful throwing out batteries, even if it was only every couple of years. I do have one of those Citizen eco-drive watches somewhere that I received as a gift some years ago. It's a good compromise from pov of the environmental aspect, though it doesn't appeal to the romantic / less rational reasons I like mechanicals.

There's a common prejudice against quartz and a kind of watch snobbery which I understand but don't accept myself.

But what shocks me is $6000 luxury watches with the same unremarkable ETA mechanical movement you might find in a $600 Hamilton.

Completely. That's also what bothers me about high end quartz: I can accept that (up to a ceiling, of course) spending more on a mechanical watch on the basis that that's something that can be refined, improved, whereas any such differences in movements seem less pronounced with quartz, amplifying the "well, what am I paying for?" factor. Again, I think that may be influenced by the fact that I wear a watch as a timepiece rather than as jewellery (which is not to say that how it looks doesn't matter: I'm fussy about how my glasses look, but if I didn't need them to see, I wouldn't be wearing them at all). If I was looking at it more from the perspective of the quality / value of the casing, it would be a different matter, I'm sure.

 

[Edward]

Men shouldn't wear jewellry and I consider watches part of that. Also, who needs to know the exact time at any given moment? Thor is probably the only member here who needs to know the time instantly but even he probably has a huge clock in his wheelhouse, and he's often bundled up so can't just quickly look at a wristwatch. 99.9999% of people sit in an office and don't need to know the time. So it's just jewellry and/or status symbol stuff, and therefore pointless and not really a manly thing in my opinion.

Personally, I've never understood why anyone gives two hoots about whether something is 'manly' or not. IT's a weird thing to get hung up on. Ditto odd "rules" that flow from it. I mean, do people seriously look at a nice ring and think "Oh, I like that, but I can't wear it because I'm a man"? Or is it a case of "I don't like jewellery, and I'm a man, so it must be wrong for Real Men to wear it"? It's like saying women shouldn't wear jeans, or anyone who didn't fly a Mustang in WW2 shouldn't wear an A2. I find the utitility / decorative distinction artificial too: pretty much anything can be both. If that were impossible, this place simply wouldn't exist, and we'd all be wearing functional onesies in various layers, and beanie hats when it got cold. Suffice it to say, with due and proper deference to employers and acquaintances as appropriate, a man should do as he damn well pleases and not be beholden to odd 'rules' about what he Must Not Wear.

I've never really thought of wearing a watch as jewellery - most of the time, it's tucked under my sleeve, so not on show - but it certainly could be classifiable as 'decorative': the reason I wear a watch is for function, but the reason I wear my particular watch is because I like how it looks. I rely quite heavily on it for a timepiece. There are times the smartphone goes down - and in a pocket, it's less accessible that the watch. I use my watch as a primary time-keeping tool in meeting, travelling between buildings / rooms / campuses, and most particularly as a time-keeping tool when I'm delivering a lecture or running a tutorial during my classroom hours, which are a significant proportion of my week. Socially, if I'm headed to the theatre or cinema, I often prefer to leave the phone at home, in which case the watch is not only the most convenient means of telling the time, but the only one.

Like most folks I've made a few stupid mistakes in my life, but asking the lady who accepted my proposal of marriage was not one of them. My wedding ring, which I wear with pride, is an outward symbol of the love and loyalty that we have shared for more than 50 years.

I will have one of those over the next eighteen months. For now, I make do with my other rings, some of which have a greater meaning than others, none of which have ever cause me to question my gender identity, oddly enough.

 

[red devil]

Interesting to see where this conversation is going

I have gotten used to checking the time on my phone because my first mechanical watch kept going late... quite ironic isn't it? On the topic of watches, I have always that one day I would get into it seriously, even asked advice about how to get about it to knowledgeable people but have jumped yet. Not sure where this is going for now.

On the topic of manliness, I guess it comes from within. Historically great warriors have enjoyed looking good, from the Vikings who took care of their beard and hair, European knights who enjoyed precious furs and jewellery, Samurai who would dye the hair before going to battle.

So in this case, does the dress really make the monk?

 

[navetsea]

in my mind, I like to wear accessories (cheap cool things) rather than jewelries (show off wealth trough rock and precious metal)

 

[handymike]

I like a bit of bling...but not a lot I'll wear some beads or a navajo cuff with my watch sometimes.

 

[Colin G]

To me a watch is a tool and not jewelry. I use my watch daily. I got rid of the cell phone so I need to tell time somehow and a good mechanical watch is how I choose to do it.

 

[Beast]

To get back to the original question. I don't like to splurge on anything but I am always looking for the item that gives me the most bang for the buck. (side joke: how was copperwire invented? Two dutchmen were fighting over a penny). What i tend to do is to search for the cheapest item that satisfies my needs and then look for the item that is quality and pricewise one or two steps above that and still within budget. That way, I'll get what i need, rather than splurging on something like a brand name or on pointless features. If I'm really lucky, the cheapest item also happens to be the best item/choice for me, if not, moving one/two steps up in quality provides me with a great item. Downside of this all is that i can spend a lot of time searching

 

[Seb Lucas]

To get back to the original question. I don't like to splurge on anything but I am always looking for the item that gives me the most bang for the buck. (side joke: how was copperwire invented? Two dutchmen were fighting over a penny).

All those anti-Dutch jokes (eg Dutch courage, etc) stem from the time the English were at war with the Dutch and were used to dehumanize. I'm not keen on them as they are discriminatory. I'm from a Dutch background too.