Watch Wednesday Thursday (10/7/10)

Sorry about that... we went grocery shopping last night, and when we got back I completely forgot I was supposed to do a watch post.

This story goes all the way back to 2003, when the movie SWAT came out. There were two styles of Hamilton watches worn by the characters in the movie: this one, and a fancier version with touch controls borrowed from Tissot. They were sold to the public as limited editions, and I wanted one of these right away.

I looked for one for a while on eBay, but then I got laid off and tried to avoid buying stuff for a while. A couple of years later, Hamilton re-released the watch, but without any mention of the movie (the movie watches came with an aluminum box). The second batch of watches floated around the web for a while, and eventually you could get one at Overstock. I really don't know why I didn't just buy one then.

So I've been looking for one of these, on and off, for a while now. A couple of months back I found a seller on eBay who seemed to have a stockpile of them; the person would auction one watch each week, and start a new auction as soon as one ended. They weren't the movie watches either, because they had just a regular box.

The problem was that people were bidding these things way past what they are worth; one auction ended at over $300, which is just ridiculous. It's just a basic quartz Hamilton field watch with a couple of minor differences: the black plastic bezel, the red numerals, a flat rubber strap. Luckily I found someone else selling one, and it has been well taken care of because it looks like a new watch.

And yes, I'm probably going to get a different strap for it, but for now this one is fine.