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Back when I was part of the rat race, a company I worked for wanted to save costs on employees' flight bookings. The brilliant idea they came up with was to have a little piece of software check the flights we had booked to see if there were cheaper alternatives. The only little tiny miniscule flaw was that the software completely disregarded any logic. Thus I was constantly bombarded with emails saying something like: Dear employee, we see that you have booked a flight on 16 may at 0630 from Am …

There are a lot of ways to sell watches, each with their own pros and cons. They range from selling privately through forums to selling professionally through one's own websites and through marketplaces such as eBay or Chrono24. The biggest watch marketplace by far is with some 1.5 million offerings at any time. eBay is a mixed blessing for sure, with lots of highly questionable offerings and pitfalls at every turn for the uniformed buyer. When saying you bought a watch on eBay, your c …

Human wrists haven't changed much in the last thousands of years. Neither have our eyes. So why have wrist watch sizes changed so markedly over the last 50 years?The first wrist watch is said to have been made by Patek Philippe in 1868 for a Hungarian noble lady, and until the 1900's they were exclusively seen as suited for women. Men still used pocket watches for many decades after that, until military officers started strapping their pocket watches around their wrists. Napoleon himself is said …

Everyone loves to make a really good deal. The feeling of knowing you got massive value for your money is just fantastic, even if the actual amount spent isn't that much. My wife recently triumphantly showed me a can of corn she bought for CHF 0.35 while they normally cost about 1.00. It's about the satisfaction of making a good deal, not necessarily about saving a lot of money!But how is that in the world of watches? Are there bargains to be made? Are there steals to be found? Can you really ma …

A mechanical watch that only shows the time is certainly complicated enough as it is before adding any so-called complications. A complication in watch-speak is simply an additional functionality to the basic timekeeping. That's the definition I will use in this blog post.To narrow the discussion down, we will keep it to the most common complications that are available in commercially mass-produced watches. We will discussDateWeekdayMonthMoon phase24 hour handGMT/World timerChronographPower rese …

When I was young, growing up in Norway, everyone skied. Skiing was apparently "invented' in Norway, so yeah, what else are you going to do when everything is covered by several meters of snow half of the year? And snow is generally very soft. It can of course get hard if it is melted and refrozen, but all in all it's soft. Which means that if you fall in it, the chance of you being injured is very, very small. You might get a whiplash in your neck if you fall on your back or if you're really unl …

Bad idea. So you think to yourself "WTF"? My watch clearly says "Waterproof" on the back? Yep, it does. And no, it isn't. It wasn't even waterproof when it was new some 50+ years ago. No watches are waterproof, in fact. There are just degrees of water resistance. That is why you no longer see watches carrying "Waterproof" markings. Nowadays they will say for instance "Water Resist 3 ATM" or similar. So what's the story here?Reality, meet Marketing. Back in the day, the term Waterpr …

So you were setting the time for your watch and somehow (likely with using a bit more force than you should) the crown came out! And not only the crown, but a short piece of the stem was attached to it. It probably looked something like the picture on the right.  What happened? Is the watch broken and in need of repair? Well, probably not. In fact, this "split stem" is a feature of some watches to make them more water resistant (no, not water proof) Watches with split ste …

Vintage watches have a certain attraction to a lot of people, but even those who aren't really into vintage watches might find themselves the proud owner of one. Perhaps a loved one passed away and when cleaning up the house you found an old watch you remember your father wearing when you were a boy and since you have some nice memories about that you decide to keep it. Maybe a grown-up gave you a present they thought you might enjoy instead of that junk Donnie Wallingdon you've been wearing lik …

There's something about vintage watches. Maybe it's the attraction of bygone days, a different era where things were less complicated and stress levels were much, much lower. Maybe it's the joy of finding a 50, 60 or 70 year old item that kind of looks its age but still looks fantastic. Aged, yes, but with pride and grace, maintaining the exquisite features that made it beautiful when it was new and still today so much later.  Vintage watches are generally much more affordable than …