One Watch to Rule your Heart, Forever.
Imagine the scenario where you find yourself marooned on a island alone. You’ve got a small list of things with you, one of which is your watch. You can choose one that can track the moon, or one to drive down into the depths of the ocean, or dare it be suggested, to tell the time.
Which one would you choose, if you could have only one? This is a scenario that many watch collectors have played out in their minds while looking at their collection of watches. Whether great or small, a collection of watches is a fairly normal thing to own, even if most of us rely on our phones for the date.
As a watch is an expression of identity, style, status, and trends all at once, it can therefore be difficult to choose one watch to live life with for the rest of all time. Just how much could you love a watch, such that you would never be swayed into buying a second, or third, or more. Unlike your spouse, your watch will never hug you back, keep you warm at night, or yell at you for spending outrageous amounts of money on well-another watch. Just how many is too many, asked every collector ever.
So what does it mean to someone, who only has chosen one watch that satisfies them completely. It could be that this person is a traveler and so the GMT function is what they need for their Rolex. Perhaps this person is an avid diver so they wanted one with a Helium Escape valve on their Omega. A graduation gift is also possible, given from parent to child or from spouse to spouse. How do you decide which one is the one? The answer is that, cheekily enough, you just know.
In actuality, the allure of the One Watch Collection has nothing to do with forever. On the surface, it may appear that this person has chosen one watch and is perfectly happy about it. There are many people who profess this exact thing. The psychology behind it though, is different.
What is actually happening, is that this person has chosen a watch that they fall in love with over and over again, every single day. They find some new facet of the watches design, shape, color, heritage, or emotional significance and cherish it. Much like a spouse and sometimes lasting beyond the length of a marriage to be inherited by ones children and grandchildren, a watch that one falls in love with is an unmistakable lifelong friend.
You’ll take that one watch through every major milestone in your life, from home to home, job to job, birthdays and vacations. Properly serviced, there are stories of people owning one watch for 50 years and being buried with it. Now that’s love, if a little morbid. A watch, especially one that is the singular in a One Watch Collection, therefore does more than tell you the time. It will mark the passage of events in your life and looking back, this watch will be a constant companion.
In the end, whether your watch collection is 1 of 1 or 1 of 100, as long as you can afford to enjoy them all, more power to you. If you’ve chosen one watch and only one watch and shall not have another, you my friend are lucky. The rest of us collectors will be off in the distance, hunting for that allusive next watch to add to the collection.
Meanwhile, One Watch Collector, kick back and bask in the safety and security of your one amazing, surely loved, timepiece.
Until next time,
The PNH
The Patently Nerdy Human 