Watch Wednesday (2/17/10)

Let me begin by stating the obvious: I did not take this picture. My little pocket-size digital camera, for whatever reason, will not focus this close to an object. Perhaps I should have considered that before buying it...

But I do own this watch, or more accurately, one just like it. About seven months ago I got an email from my friend DC with this picture attached, and the title "wow, that's vivid." My response was that I liked it and would wear it. A few days went by, and I found myself thinking about the watch. It has one of those self-winding mechanical movements that I've mentioned in previous watch posts, and I'd been wanting to add a modern watch with a Swiss movement to my collection.

I went to the Hamilton web site, and was surprised to learn that the watch was supposedly not sold in the US. But a little more poking around on the interwebs revealed a few places that sold it. But a Swiss-made automatic watch is a little outside my normal price range, so if I was going to splurge on something like this, I wanted to be able to do it in person. The internet is great for many things, but sometimes you want to see a thing in front of you and hold it before buying it.

A short time later I happened to be in a jewelry store, and I saw a different but similar Hamilton. I tried it on, and felt it was close enough. I started looking on eBay and within a couple of weeks I had found one that was slightly used. As soon as it arrived, I knew I'd made the wrong choice. It just didn't have the zing of the orange accents and the huge 12, 3, 6, and 9. I was able to resell it for 80% of what I'd paid. I looked around a little more. I found a store downtown that claimed they could order it, but I couldn't get anyone to return my messages.

A few weeks later, around the end of August, the Mrs. and I went to the mall one night, and I wandered into Tourneau. Tourneau is a big-time watch palace: they carry all the fancy stuff, and if they don't have it, they can most likely get it. I have mixed feelings about the place; I love going in there and looking around, but it's also somewhat depressing to look at amazing stuff that I'll never be able to afford, and once or twice I've been given icy treatment by staff who felt it was their job to affirm that I was unsuited to shop there.

I had checked one of their other locations and they didn't have it, so I was surprised to spot this watch in the display case. It was right before my birthday, and I was feeling like I wanted to get myself a present. The clerk gave me their price. I knew from looking around and talking to people that other jewelry stores typically offered bigger discounts off list price on Hamilton watches. I'd also read an article on Consumerist about how stores were more willing to bargain or haggle due to the recession.

I used this knowledge and information and told the clerk the best price I had been quoted elsewhere. She wanted to know how serious I was about buying it. I told her it depended on the price. She stepped away for a moment to speak to a manager, and I thought, this is like what people go through when they're buying a car. She returned with a number that was within $20 of the one I'd given her, which was close enough. I guess they wanted to make the sale.

It's a heavy sucker, and it has three (?!) crowns. The one by 2 does the usual time-setting, the one by 4 turns that outer ring, and the one on the other side, by 9, turns the dial inside the outer dial, the one with the place names on it. (I keep it set to New York.) It's kind of silly, but it's also kind of cool. And the strip of numbers on the inside next to the 9 is for a second time zone, which is handy when you're traveling to the west coast.