Watch Wednesday (5/25/11)

It's been three months since I bought a watch, which I consider reasonably restrained behavior. If this one looks familiar to you, it's because I mentioned it about six months ago as something I was hoping to find for less than its full retail price.

The timing of finding this watch was good, since my 20-year-old, beat-up, $20 Carriage (Timex) military-style J. Crew lookalike stopped working recently. Well, it's still ticking, but the hands only move once in a while, so it's no longer usable. I'm not willing to pay $150 for a Timex just because J. Crew sells it, and they are on the small side for my wrist anyway. I'd seen this watch in Nordstrom last year and and could tell it was bigger, but I also felt $100 was a bit high for it.

Timex offers this Originals watch with either a green canvas strap or a Speidel-style metal expansion band. I didn't love either one, but I could live with the canvas one. When I was searching for the watch on eBay, I was only looking for the strap version. I'd forgotten that the two different strap styles meant two different model numbers, but somehow I got reminded of that a couple of weeks ago, and sure enough, there was one for sale with the expansion bracelet, new with the original box, for a starting bid of $50, which turned out to be the (my) winning bid.

At 38 mm the size on this is just right, and it's just a nice, simple, really good-looking piece. I prefer the look of this watch to the J. Crew version: while the lugs are similarly shaped, this one's dial is less crowded-looking (because it's bigger), it has a date window, and the red blocks at the hour positions go nicely with the red second hand and add a little extra punch to the dial. One odd thing: even though the dial has Indiglo lighting, the numerals still glow, which is fine, except there's no luminous on the hands, so you kind of need the light anyway.

The tan leather strap was on the other Timex, but until this watch arrived I didn't know if the strap would fit. The color is just right, I think. I also have one of the one-piece straps that J. Crew sells for its watches, olive with a red stripe down the middle, and I suspect that will find its way onto this watch for the warmer months.