Pocket Watches and Waistcoats

[User]

I like pocket watches from a stylistic standpoint. But these days I wear a health tracker with a clock, and it makes wearing a pocket watch superfluous. Who knows, maybe I'll pick one up again some day.

I let my last one go after the watch face began to tarnish excessively. I live in a very dry climate. Maybe it was from body moisture.

[spr0k3t]

I let my last one go after the watch face began to tarnish excessively. I live in a very dry climate. Maybe it was from body moisture.

That is exactly what happens to my silver one. It gets spotty whenever I wear it from the oils in my hands. When I polish it, that one goes back under the hermetically sealed glass case. I don't like wearing that one, but it's more ornate than the smoothie Omega. The one I linked to is 14K etched next to the makers mark and serial, so barely any polish is ever needed.

[Troglodyte]

Like Jock, I am a life-long user of pocket watches - not that I have anything against wrist-watches except they irritate my skin if worn for any length of time.

As for time-keeping, my watches all seem to be accurate to a couple of seconds a week - which is close enough, as time of day tends to be an approximate thing anyway. You might look at your watch and see it is just coming upto twenty-past - the need to know that it is 18 minutes, 53.7 seconds past is rare.

As for aesthetics, chains or straps are both functional and decorative - they secure the watch and give the option for keeping your latch-key, cigar-cutter, pipe-reamer, penknife, whatever, nice and handy at the other end. Plus, a watch-chain fills the void that is the front of a waistcoat - which always looks better with a chain across it.

Having a selection to choose from is a good thing, too. I find I might wake up one bright and sunny morning and think to myself 'Ah, yes. This feels like a gold half-hunter day...' Other days might be silver open-face skeleton, or...

I would like every day to be a gold hunter-cased perpetual calendar moon-phase minute repeater kind of day, but I've never been lucky enough on that score.

[Troglodyte]

I’ve had an old fob watch I inherited sitting in the draw for a number of years. It did work but stopped so I took it to the local watch dealer in Blairgowrie to see what they could do. There was an old gent there who was one of the last in the country that still services them.

He did a fine job and in doing so, I learnt a little more about it. Dated 1870, it was made in Auchterarder and so is local and a rarity to boot. It had a chunky non-silver chain on it but he had a lovely old one that he was prepared to sell me. Not quite as old, it is 1896 and every link and the bar are stamped with the Birmingham assay mark. I’m very pleased with the upgrade and look forward to an opportunity to wear it.

Alas, the gentleman recently retired and the shop has closed, so I got in just in time.

Attachment 44269

I know who you mean.

He came into the museum a little while ago, and I spend an hour or two chatting about clocks and watches. I have a feeling his son has taken over from him.

[stickman]

I had a very nice pocket watch. I took it to a jeweler for repair. Next thing I know the shop is gone... and so was my watch.

Know what you mean about losing your watch. I bought a really nice watch in China instead of numbers for the hours it had the Chinese zodiac. Well I broke the glass and took it to a jewelry repair. No problem the guy said it’ll take about a week I’ll have to order a new glass. When I went to pick up my watch it was gone. Someone needed it more than me. Then he tried to give me some cheap watch. I said no you will give me what the watch cost me and you will give me this watch, pointing out a much better watch. So I got my money back and a decent watch, but not like the one that disappeared. Now I am afraid to take my grandfathers watch in for repair.

[jsrnephdoc]

Know what you mean about losing your watch. I bought a really nice watch in China instead of numbers for the hours it had the Chinese zodiac.

Similar (but very different) story: In my working career I was a nephrologist (kidney doctor). In the USA, permanent kidney failure entitled one to our "age-based" variety of National Health Insurance, beginning in 1973 because of the enormous cost of permanent hemodialysis treatments and kidney transplantation. Payments to the facilities that provided the treatments were too generous, and the Stanford University-trained people who ran some of the first non-hospital based dialysis centers came up with novel ways to benefit the patients. For example, travel was virtually impossible for those folks, because they needed the lengthy treatments 3 times weekly. The idealistic center operators negotiated special deals with cruise ship companies to allow their clients to take cruises to Caribbean islands and Alaska (they could do their treatments on the ships but have free time on the visited islands). I provided the medical care services for a few of those trips, and during one, the battery on my "el-cheapo" Timex calculator watch died, meaning I couldn't count pulse rates/heart rates. So, on Grand Cayman Island (tax haven) I went into a watch shop and asked for a battery change. "SIR!!!" announced the haughty salesperson; "we do NOT deal with toys!"

I was raised in Michigan's VERY rural "Upper Peninsula," > 300 miles from the nearest large city. My mom grew up on a Nebraska farm, but loved her own time in that big city (Chicago) so much that she longed for cosmopolitan cultural exposure. She had a subscription to The New Yorker, and by the time I was five I would page through each week's issue, reading virtually nothing, but marveling at full-page ads for the bizarre (the original VW Beetle), the enormously expensive (Rolls Royce and Bentley sedans), incredibly expensive but elegant clothing (Brooks Brothers), and the Swiss "Movado Museum Watch" (incredibly thin, with NO numerals or characters on its face, just gold filling on the two hands, NO second hand, and a gold dot at 12 o'clock) Supposedly, they called it the "Museum Watch" because one was displayed in New York's Museum of Modern Art).

Fast forward almost 30 years, and in that shop where I was treated with such disdain, I actually SAW one of those watches. I was immediately smitten, and bought one. It was essentially useless in patient care (no second hand), and back home, I wore it rarely (too expensive; perhaps once a year I'd pull it out for some formal occasion, and on those rare occasions, IT required a new battery; they were rare AND expensive. And, eventually it required a new movement. The per-cost wearing was extraordinary.

Fast forward another 40 years, and I was walking with my son in Midtown Manhattan, by now attempting to learn about Highland Clothing and tartan, and we encountered a "Brooks Brothers" storefront. "HEY!" I said to my son. "We HAVE to go in there. They have their own TARTAN, designed expressly for them and listed in the Scottish Registry of Tartans. So, in we went. Essentially NO ONE in the store had a clue what I was asking. The explanation? Brooks Brothers was no longer the exclusive retailer of bespoke clothing it had been in the 1950s; it's name was all that remained, and even THAT had been sold a few times in just the previous year or three.

I still HAVE that watch, but it still hides in a drawer far more often than I wear it.