Watches Andrew, Zach, and Marcus regret buying
Time+TideRegrets, I’ve had a few, but unlike Frank Sinatra, watch collectors have more than a few that are worth mentioning. Watch collecting is a long journey that many believe never has a final destination. Ideally, watch-buying regrets only happen in the early days of collecting – but these purchase regrets happen to all of us and at varying stages of collecting. It is doubtful that anyone is immune, and if you have no watches you regret buying we certainly envy you. Skeptically, we would also add “give it time.”
In our latest Time+Tide Tribe video, Andrew, Zach, and Marcus each share a watch they regret buying. The trio could certainly share more, and we have other team members who definitely have stories to chime in with. So, it is safe to infer this is just part one. Check out the video above, and let us know in the comments what watches you instantly regretted buying.
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Andrew’s instant regret watch – Tudor Black Bay 58 Bronze
I drove back from the purchase of this watch, from Melbourne back to my house in Mount Eliza, which is a long drive, with my Tudor Black Bay 58 Bronze on the passenger seat in its box and I spent the whole time just looking at it going “you were a mistake”. I hadn’t told my wife I was going to buy it, I just went off script, I blew our budget for months, but I did do a video on it – I made sure I got the video out. As soon as I bought it, I just knew it was a mistake, but I’ll tell you why I fell for that Bronze BB58. In its original state, lovely, but it wasn’t even two days of being out in the air, I think I swam with it once in a chlorine pool, and I started to see that funky green patina I just could not get behind. I didn’t consider how quick and how intense Tudor’s bronze would patina. So, I referred to one of our stories on revitalizing bronze and I scrubbed that thing with a toothbrush and some toothpaste. I took it back to New Town. I can’t explain it. I liked it a lot in the moment, but as soon as I was driving home I knew this was, at best, going to be like a two-night stand.
Zach’s instant regret watch – Candino Power Reserve Automatic Chronometer
I’ve done this too many times, and that is going for the “easy wins” too often. You’ve just bought a watch and as much as you don’t want to admit it you still have that thirst and hunger for another. So, something comes up that isn’t super pricey and you get a false sense of safety in an impulse buy. As soon as this Candino arrived, this was at a stage of my collecting where I didn’t have a watch with a power reserve indicator and I really wanted a watch with a power reserve indicator. As I have since learned, collecting to own all different complications is not a winning strategy. In the moment, I thought the case lugs had an interesting cornes de vache-like shape, the Breguet-style hands, presumably stamped guilloché dial – there are strong design elements working in favour of this watch. But, I should have known just how much the 12 o’clock date window would give me the ick and once I realised how prominent the “certified chronometer” caseband engraving was I just could not unsee it.
I regret this watch and other entry-level impulse watches that I’ve bought just to get that short-term horological fix. This is the first time I’ve picked this Candino watch up in probably three or four years like Harry Potter stuck in the cupboard under the stairs. If I add up the cost of this watch, with five or six other watches on my table that are within this sort of criteria, I would have a Tudor Black Bay 54 I would actually wear. So, my regret, which has since better informed my collecting, is you have to have the discipline to not always go for the quick and easy wins.
Marcus’ instant regret watch(es) – Itanano Technology Montecarlo Carbon 43 & Albatross Grande 49
Your eyes may sting a little looking at these two watches. This is before Time+Tide, before Andrew McUtchen, in my life. This was when I was collecting watches like my wife collects shoes. I was in Italy, and I walked past some little kind of tacky sort of little watch store or something. I saw these popping colours and I was just like “wow that’s really green” and “oh, that’s actually kind of cool it lights up.” Now I look at them and think they’re just enormous and crazy. I think I probably wore them twice at most. Honestly, I’ve told my kids they can have them, and not even they want them. So, I really, really regret buying them. This was at a time in my life when I was buying watches because they were easy to purchase and, as Zach said, if you added up all of those easy purchases you could have something nicer and it wasn’t until I started working with Andrew and Time+Tide that, literally overnight, I stopped making those kinds of purchases.