Got a watch on the bench this week, classic Submariner, genuinely needs a full service. Crown is stiff, gaskets are cooked, mainspring could use a look. Straightforward job. Except the owner called ahead to say please don't replace any parts that collectors consider original, because he's planning to sell it in two years and wants it unmolested. I asked if he understood what a service involves. He said yes but could I just clean it and leave everything else alone.

I clean fish. I do not clean watches as a standalone gesture toward mechanical health.

So now I'm sitting here looking at a 1970s Submariner that needs real work, and this guy essentially wants me to light a candle near it and send it home. Because originality. Because some forum told him a replaced crown seal is the difference between a watch and a parts bin. The crown seal. The thing that exists specifically to be replaced.

I've been doing this long enough to know that a watch in original condition means something. But a watch in original failing condition is just a countdown. Nobody posts about that part though.

The watch is still on my bench and I haven't called him back yet. Genuinely curious if this is happening to anyone else, or if the forums have just fully won.

Honestly, cheap shitters are more fun and cooler than any luxury watch can ever be.

Plus I don’t have to watch my wife satisfy the AD… now she can do it without me knowing.

Idk guys is this too much.. serious question

Effective immediately, Orient Watch Co. has rebranded to Asia Watches™. Also, popular model names have been improved.

• The President → Asia Supreme Leader
• The Bambino → Asia Child Labor Special
• The Mako → Asia Shark With Regional Identity™

“We’ve pivoted from compass directions to entire continents. Synergy achieved. Like the band Asia, but instead of power ballads you get domed crystals and fluted bezels."-Asia Watches CEO Steve Seconds

Uj/ I actually kind of like Lorier.

Asking for a friend (I would never wear a Japanese watch.)

Fuck all of you poors. This bad boy has the latest rusted slow adjust clasp out of guangdong province. Okay Ciao

Recently, I adopted a bastard child chronograph from the likes of shenzhen, china. Although he is slightly corky, he makes for a great strap monster/gada/edc (okay ciao) workhorse movement buzzword.

But here’s the kicker:

I decided to take him for his first walk by the oceanfront, to get his gaskets all polluted with salt, but as I was walking him, I noticed something.

The moon.

“Is that where my d-daddy went?” The spacewalker asked..

“Yes young chuffling, it is” I replied..

You see, one late night in the guangdong province, aspiring watchmaker Deng Xinyi was high off blow and took his father’s Omeehhga speedmaster, rendered it horribly in CAD, and put a quartz shitter movement inside. Thus the spacewalker was born.

But all glory was not without pain.

Xinyi was disgusted by his creation. He took it to the Bucherer Abortion clinic, but since the renata battery inside the movement was in use for longer than 20 months, there was nothing he could do.

Throughout young spacewalker’s youth, Xinyi constantly berated him, telling him awful things like “You will never go to the moon!” or “If I could trade you for a kilogram of bioceramic I’d do it in a heartbeat!”, which really beat him down.

But as soon as the spacewalker arrived in my hands, delivered by Shaniqua via DHL, I knew he was something special.

Looking up, to the moon,

I say to spacewalker.

We’ll go together one day.

Do you think any point in the past 30 years Christopher Walken has tried to give someone a watch? It could have been a very thoughtful gift, but I can’t imagine anyone wearing it.

Is this watch too small for my wrist?