Why I'm selling one of my most worn watches

Along with the majority of my collection.

A couple of months ago, I wrote this blog post that talked about where I was in my watch collecting journey, and why I chose to buy a chinese homage over a vintage Rolex.

At the time, that felt like the right call, and in the months following, that decision was only further enforced. That Baltany earned the most wrist time, beating out my Nomos and Omega. It is the perfect size, insanely accurate and kind of just goes with everything. So.. why have I put it up for sale?

Every watch enthusiast goes through a few journeys in their lifetime. Sometimes even repeating the same journey a few times. The state of my collection right now is an amalgamation of a few journeys I've been on. You can think of it as a good representation of how I got here, but it doesn't quite capture where I am or where I want to be.

The journey so far

Entrapped by hype.

I first got into watches just after covid. The catalyst was a Tissot Gent XL that my sister bought me for my 26th birthday because "you're growing up and you need a nice watch". Around the same time, I was driving home from work and listening to an episode of the Accidental Tech Podcast where Marco was talking about mechanical watches and Seiko. That started be down a whole rabbit hole of youtube videos and reddit posts.

You could say that the entire foundation of my watch collection at the time were hype-driven pickups centered around other people's taste profiles. A Tudor Black Bay GMT, a Cartier Tank Must XL and eventually an Omega Moonswatch. Pieces with cultural cachet and global appeal - but nothing that really felt like me.

The Tissot I would never sell. Even though it wears too big for my wrist, it holds too much sentimental value to sell - but we'll talk about that in a different phase of the journey.

Almost every watch I bought during my first phase was sold. All except one - the Casio f91w. The watch that can belong in any collection during any phase of a journey. The true timeless piece. In fact, I still haven't had to change it's battery.

A slave to sentiment.

While that first phase of my watch collection ended relatively quickly, the next few phases kind of existed in an intertwined timeline.

The more you get into watches, the more you get enthralled with the idea of milestone pieces, or buying watches to mark special occasions. In theory, this is still a great way to approach watch collecting. Intentional pieces that all carry a story.

In my reality though, it turned more into finding any excuse to buy a watch. The "watch I bought when I got laid off" followed immediately 3 months later by "the watch I bought when I became a business owner".

Don't get me wrong - these are all great reasons to buy a watch. For me however, it turned into less about the moment and more about finding an excuse to buy that watch I had on my mind - or worse, feeling like I needed to buy a watch in the moment and settling on something I didn't actually love.

Parting with a sentimental watch wasn't something I could easily come to terms with. In fact, it was only last week through the help of my friends on the TGN Slack (a community of watch nerds) that I was able to do so. One member put it quite eloquently: "selling a sentimental watch is an emotional rite of passage in a true collectors journey".

Even if the watch was bought with the right intentions and has a great memory attached to it, sometimes it ends up holding you back and weighing down your collection instead of giving you the freedom to grow.

Buying for an invisible audience.

Readers of my blog (of which there are very few) would know that I've had my battles with identity and flex culture in the past. I'm not going to lie, I've fallen for the trap before. I have bought a watch that I didn't buy for myself, but as a signal to other people. I grew up comfortable, but my dad came from nothing, so to be able to drop "big boy money" on a watch that I earned and paid for myself felt like a signal - a way of telling people I made it.

It's for that very reason that I almost never wear that watch. The most expensive watch in my collection hurts the most to wear, because I know that isn't who I am. I'm not saying everyone who wears that watch is flexing. I'm saying the reason I bought that watch was to flex, and that's why I don't care much for it anymore.

The lifestyle mismatch problem.

Around the time I started listening to TGN more and thinking about my life, my hobbies and what I wanted to do - I started buying what claude calls "aspirational pieces".

Beaters, divers, field watches. Watches for the rugged adventurer that could take a beating. I could take them snorkeling, or maybe even diving. I could take them when I go up a mountain, they'd have lume that was legible in a cave. I couldn't buy a vintage, because then I can't take it to the beach.

Here's the reality: I work from a home office. Sometimes I go to cafes. I go to the supermarket, to the gym, for a walk, to play padel and to hang out with my friends in a typical suburban or city life. Sure I do go to the beach sometimes and I do have plans to do some adventuring, but I don't need 5 watches in my collection dedicated to those activities. I don't need all my watch purchasing decisions to be driven by those activities that I'll only spend a fraction of my life doing. I can just wear the f91w for that.

The next chapter.

I don't regret the decisions I've made to get here, I learned a lot about myself through this journey I've been on. If you're reading this and you're not into watches, you probably think I sound ridiculous, but I really think that's why so many people share this hobby with me, it's kind of a path to self discovery in a way.

So where does that leave me? My watchbox is full of watches I really like, but only a few I actually love. I've put up almost all of them for sale, including the Baltany. Yes, I did wax poetic about it only a few months ago and to be honest, I still have a lot of those feelings.

However, now I'm in a more measured and intentional phase of my journey. I'm keeping the Nomos because through all the journeys that is the watch that is the most me. Nomos is a brand who's values I align with. Independent, thoughtful, attention to detail and technical precision. I have a modded Seiko/Seestern mishmash that I'm keeping because I picked every part on that watch and put it together to make a watch that gave me all the features I wanted. I'm keeping the Tissot for sentimental reasons only, and I'm keeping the f91w cause, I mean, self explanatory. It costs $10.

Everything else is either sold already or for sale. The Seiko divers, the Baltic, the Tudor, the Omega, everything else. Watches that all served as teachers and guides that once had a place in my collection but now must go be a part of someone else's story.

That leaves me with effectively a two watch rotation, with room for intentional and thoughtful additions.

I learned that I'm not the guy that wears the big flashy brands, and I'm also not the guy that swaps between multiple "budget" pieces daily. I've got my eye on a diver that fits my life similarly to how the Nomos does, and I do still want a dressy vintage piece, perhaps something with a bit of gold on it. What I know now though, is that I'm in no rush. I'm not chasing to fill any slots. In time, the listed pieces will sell, and when the right time appears I'll notice it for what it is.