Horological Meandering

Hi Follows,

Last year I woke up and noticed that during the last 7 years I had been buying watches like a maniac. I also noticed that I had tens of watches I did not like to wear and those were just staying in the bank vault. It was also sad to notice that I had i.e. 5 Rolexes, brand new, which I had never placed to my wrist.

So I started to cut my collection - first the Swiss watches and later this year I will jump to the German watches. My dream was to cut the number of watches to around 26. Why 26... In order to give each watch in average 2 weeks of wrist time per year. The other consideration was that I like to get my watches serviced by the factory every five years and something over 50 watches would mean that the regular service costs would have been some € 1,000 per month in average. That is unreasonable!

On Friday I sent the last batch of 7 watches by FedEx to central Europe in order to find new homes for the same. After that I made a head count of the watches I love to wear and it looks as follows:

                                                              Noble metal                              Steel/titanium           Total Brand

Audemars Piguet                              1 watch                                        1 watch                      2 watches

Blancpain                                                                                                 2 watches                  2 watches

Breguet                                               2 watches                                                                        2 watches

Cartier                                                                                                       1 watch                      1 watch

Chopard                                             1 watch                                                                            1 watch

Girard Perregaux                                                                                    1 watch                      1 watch

JLC                                                      2 watches                                    3 watches                 5 watches

Patek Philippe                                   5 watches                                    1 watch                      6 watches

Rolex                                                                                                         2 watches                 2 watches

Vacheron Constantin                       4 watches                                    1 watch                      5 watches

Zenith                                                  2 watches                                                                        2 watches

____________________________________________________________________________

Total                                                   17 watches                                 12 watches             29 watches

My conclusion is that I still have too many watches but non of the above is such that I could give it away. And then we have to add my German watches...

Anyhow, the interesting thing in this process has been the final conclusion: the number of watches of different brands I own at the moment, corresponds very well my personal ranking of the different brands.

My #1 brand is Patek Philippe. It can easily be seen from my collection. After Patek I appreciate Vacheron as a real top brand and JLC as a high end brand - the same can be seen. My appreciation of AP and Breguet are on the same level - both are top brands in my books. And finally, I appreciate Blancpain, Rolex and Zenith a lot as higher end brands.

Now I am quite satisfied: my modest collection represents pretty well my understanding about different brands. In addition to that, each and every watch I own, will get some wrist time!

I am just afraid what will happen when I am adding to the above list the German watches and my shopping list... Again I will be in a total count of around 40 watches. So it seems to be difficult to reduce the head count to a sensible level. Or should I start wearing a watch in both wrists?

Have you ever made similar head count and shaping of your Collection? And what can you conclude if you analyze your collection - does it reflect your ranking and preferences?

Best, Kari

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