A Common Sense Guide to Uncommon Sense Watches

(日本語版あり）

I consider myself to be a common man, but I confess, over the last couple years I’ve come to own a couple watches that defy common sense.

As a person who is uniquely positioned to explain so-called luxury watches in common sense terms, I offer this Common Sense Guide to Uncommon Sense Watches.

First, the most important thing you need to know about luxury watches is that their purpose is not to tell time.  That’s what you have an iPhone for.

This fundamental rule manifests itself in two ways.

One, many uncommon sense watches are unreadable.  Take, for example, the coolest-looking watch below, which I usually wear on my right wrist. When I’m outside, I can see the long and short hands only during the hours of late morning to early afternoon, only if I tilt the watch at just the right angle, only when the sunlight reflects at just the right way.

Two, even if you can read the time, uncommon sense watches are highly prone to be inaccurate.  For example, the below watch, which I usually wear on my left wrist, gains about 15 minutes every two weeks.  It used to lose 10 minutes every week before I put it into repair, so this turns out to be an improvement.

One time I made the mistake of walking into a luxury watch boutique store and casually mentioning how watches like theirs are not the most accurate pieces of work.  The sales staff who was mostly pleasant up until then suddenly frowned and noted that a Grand Seiko shop was only a couple blocks away.  Remembering the #1 rule will spare you from experiencing the same embarrassment.

Next, you need to learn the vocabulary that is unique to the world of luxury watches.  It may sound as incomprehensible as Latin, but as the following illustrated glossary demonstrates, there are common folks words to describe every snobbish-sounding feature.

1. Chronograph:  This simply means “stop watch.”  You will almost never use this feature because you won’t be using the watch to measure time any more than you’ll be using it to tell time.
   
2. Complication:  Taken from the word “complicated,” this means that the watchmaker spent a lot of time adding features that serve no practical purpose. Prices of complications are inversely proportional to their usefulness. For example, a simple chronograph (see above for definition) will be a low(er) priced complication.  Complications like the below cost millions.
3. Dive Watches:  As in “diving,” these watches purport to be so water-resistant that you can go underwater with them.  At their prices, though, if I were you, I wouldn’t even go into the shower with them.
4. Duel Time:  This means that the watch theoretically has the ability to show time in two different time zones.  Even assuming the watch is accurate and you can read it, it loses usefulness when you go to India, which observes that funky half hour time zone.
5. Minutes Repeater:  A fancy phrase that’s usually explained as an “alarm,” it’s actually more like a “chime.”  It’s a feature that’s per se unreliable because the watchmaker’s primary concern is with how nice the alarm sounds and not with your hearing it when you need to.                                                 (click on image to view the watch chime)
6. Moon Phase:  This is a complication that purportedly shows the phase of the moon at that moment in time.  In addition to having no redeemable value, it’s often hard to take this feature seriously because of the moon’s smily face.
7. Perpetual Calendar:  A complication that adds an extra zero to the price of the watch, this feature means that the calendar on the watch accounts for the leap year. WARNING: YOU CAN NEVER TAKE THIS WATCH OFF!  If you do, the watch will stop and you will never be able to reset the calendar to the right day, month, date and year.
8. Power Reserve:  This is the iPhone equivalent of a “battery level.”  It’s a somewhat practical feature on manual watches that you need to wind, but it’s often featured on self-winding watches where all practicality is lost.
9. Skeleton:  This means “moving parts are visible.”  Of all the features that serve no purpose, this serves the least.
10. Tourbillon:  This is a complication that is the granddaddy of all complications.  At one point, back in the day, there was some practical rationality for this feature involving something about the impact that gravity has on the mechanics of a watch.  No one cares about that anymore.  Today, the round thing on a watch that goes round and round epitomizes all the extravagance of uncommon sense watches.  Because a tourbillon has become synonymous with status symbol, more and more watches are featuring tourbillon wannabes that also go round and round.  The way to tell whether a tourbillon-looking thingy is real is to look at the price of the watch.  If you can’t buy a house with it, it’s fake.

Now that you’ve read through this guide, a quick quiz to see how much you’ve learned:  of the ten features described in the glossary, how many can you spot on the two watches I usually wear on my wrists?