Over time, I’ve come to realize that my favorite emotion to experience in this hobby is surprise. That could be because I work in the watch industry and am therefore exposed to so many watches that are the opposite of surprising. Predictability, in any job, leads to a certain amount of drudgery. But those moments of surprise, seeing or reading about a watch that you didn’t expect or couldn’t have conceived of, more than make up for it.
By the same token, I understand that for some in our community, surprise or any rocking of the boat is less desirable. If you view watches from a strictly classicist perspective, you might roll your eyes at purely adventurous designs in the same way I do at watches that seem to just be repeating what has come before. Part of me, I have to admit, envies the watch enthusiasts who can see a vintage inspired, black dialed dive watch and be ready to throw the rest of it away. There’s an idea that I keep turning around in my head, that watches were never really intended to be “collected,” that one good one is all anyone really needs, so there’s something correct about seeing a watch like a Tudor Black Bay (a watch I own and love, and even won a Thunderdome with) and feeling like you’ve just a met a watch that will be with you forever.