Confessions of a former Rolex owner

     I'm doing it wrong: instead of saving up my money, and buying a really good watch, I keep buying watches that I think are a really good deal. Soon, I realize their shortcomings, and start surfing the web, again, looking for the perfect watch. The watch that will make me say "This is the only watch that I will wear every day, for the rest of my life."
 

BUT FIRST, AN EXPLANATION:

Twenty years ago--in my twenties-- I fell in love with Rolex. I wanted one so bad, it hurt. I wanted a Submariner. I couldn't afford one, and figured that one day when I have a college degree, a good job, and my own house, I'll get one.

Staring at the Rolexes on display at the mall chain jewelry store, I was accosted by the beautiful Korean woman whose job it is to look good, and pull men into the store. She asked me if I wanted to get a Rolex, and I immediately let her know that I couldn't afford one. She kept saying that I could, which I thought was idiotic, until she explained that you can buy one on credit, like a car. Soon as you could say "oyster date" I was wearing a Submariner Datejust.

Awsome.

 

Kind of.


Awesome watch, awesome construction, but God help me, the thing weighed 9 or 10 pounds. Maybe more. At least, that's what it felt like.  I started getting carpal tunnel syndrome-like pains in the back of my wrist. All day long, I had to switch the watch back-and-forth from one wrist to the other, to alleviate the discomfort.


Eventually, I traded the Submariner at a West L.A. watch store for a GMT Master I. I was much happier with this watch's weight, and I liked having a GMT watch. For scuba diving purposes I could always fall back onto my Heuer that I had purchased one summer at the duty-free shop in Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport.

I wore the GMT Master for 14 years. A co-worker asked if I would sell him the Heuer, and I did--figuring that owning two self-winding watches was stupid. I enjoyed wearing that Rolex GMT Master. Most of the time. Until it would die on me, every four years.

Here's the important thing you need to know if you ever want to buy a mechanical (as opposed to battery-operated quartz movement) wristwatch: No matter how high the watch's quality, no matter who the manufacturer is, no matter how manly, rugged, and famous the movie star/sports hero is who endorses it on the back page of National Geographic Magazine or Forbes, that mechanical (be it self- or manual-winding) watch will need to be serviced every presidential election. Every four years, baby.

Here's the fun part of owning a high-end Swiss watch: when you turn in your Rolex/Omega/TAG Heuer/Panerai at the authorized repair center with genuine parts, you will spend aprroximately $500 for a service.   The best part is that you are paying this much because they know they can charge you this much.  The same type of work done on a less expensive mechanical watch by the guy at the mall will run you around $150 when you have him clean and fix it.

Two things happen:

(1) Mechanical watches need to be disassembled, clean, put back together, and calibrated to be accurate. There have been improvements in the lubricants on the watch parts, but sooner or later, the moving parts will get clogged with oil that has turned into gunk.

(2) Rolex movements suck. Next time you look at that full-page ad on the back of National geographic magazine, note how they have a manly man exploring the Arctic, Antarctic, some volcano in Mexico, and other extreme environments. Yeah, right. Among high-end Swiss watches, Rolex is the brand that is most likely to experience vertigo while staring down a cliff. I wore the watch while working in hospitals in X-ray and Nuclear Medicine departments, where the watch would get banged against scanners and gurneys.

A short segue about Rolex's precision: they love to emphasize how accurate Rolex watches are in their ads. Sure, in the 1950s that was true when compared to other mechanical watches like a Hamilton or Gruen, but today a Rolex is way the hell less accurate than any cheapo Timex or Casio that you can buy at Target for $40.

     So, a couple of years ago one afternoon at the hospital I glanced at my watch to see what time it is, and realized that the f*&$@ Rolex had died on me, again. I growled, then took an oath: I would never ever ever fix this watch again, and would tell every person I ever meet not to buy one. Boy, was I pissed. True to my word, I called up the watch repair shop in San Pedro, and asked if they wanted to buy it, as-is. They said, "Yes" and offered me $1,000 for it. Boy did they screw me. After fixing it, they sold it for well over twice that amount. Literally the next day after I got my check for $1,000 my beloved Basset Hound got sick, and I wound up spending the entire check on her veterinary care. She died, anyway.

Now I had no Rolex, and no dog.

The Rolex part didn't matter. I had come to the conclusion that men who need to impress other men by wearing expensive manly-man watches were fools. Quartz movement watches were the way to go: (1) they are far more accurate, and (2) because they use a battery, you don't need to wear them several hours a day, to keep them running.

There. I had achieved the wrist watch owner's equivalent of nirvana. I had achieved the enlightened, higher plane of not needing luxury consumer products to impress others, and make me feel good about myself. I got a Seiko quartz movement chronometer. Stainless steel, highly accurate, and waterproof (more on the concepts 'waterproof' i.e. 'water resistant' later).

My love affair with Japanese precision lasted a while. Each day that went by reminded me that I no longer had my status symbol that I could wave in peoples' faces. This--after all--was the real purpose of a Rolex: to let people know that I am somebody. I have gravitas. I may be wearing shorts and a t-shirt, but excuse me while I deliberately rest my left arm on the check-in counter of your hotel. Now, aren't you impressed? I must be somebody, if I'm wearing one of these babies. Wouldn't you like to know?

For a while, good sense over-ruled my desire to return to the days of feeling better about myself because of a bauble.

Now I was in a pickle:  I swore to never get an unreliable, easily-broken, over-priced Rolex again, but wanted a nice Swiss watch.

And it needed to be a manly-man's watch.  It had to be waterproof, and glow-in-the-dark.  It needed to have name-brand recognition, yet not cost thousands of dollars.  

That's when I discovered Luminox.