There are a lot of hobbies out there and a lot of collectibles. So how is it that one guy chooses comic books or baseball cards or Impressionist paintings and another guy chooses watches? Well, I can only speak for myself and my own obsession with wristwatches but I wouldn’t be surprised if all of those interests had a common source rooted in our childhood.

For me, the watch enchantment started when I was a kid and my dad and I would take long drives up to his house in Western New York (Upstate, as we always called it, the term Upstaters love to hate). Now this was a long drive in an old red Volvo so it took a bit over 5 hours on a good day. My parents being separated, these road trips had a special magic for me, to spend so much alone time with my dad while he steadily drove northward away from the City. And aside from our talking and catching up, he would invariably hand me his Omega chronograph, which I believe he had got working as an ad man on the brand’s account. It took me some years to remember it correctly but I finally realized it was this one:

A Speedmaster Professional Mark II with exotic “Racing” dial. Of course, as I kid I didn’t know any more about this big, heavy watch than what was written on the cool and colorful dial. But I did know that the chronograph was just about the coolest thing ever invented. My dad taught me how to use the Tachymeter function so that at a mile marker, I would start the stopwatch and at the next one I would click it off and the orange sweep seconds hand would read 66 or 68mph. Now sure, the dash speedometer could tell you the same thing at a glance but the idea of “time + distance = speed” was just too fascinating. I would not only time speed but any old thing. How far from that last telephone pole? How far to the next farm? How long between Binghamton and Ithaca? All well worth timing and all made the trip go that much faster.

My other favorite thing to do was to click start-stop as fast as possible to see how little time elapsed. I’d do that repeatedly like a little private contest with my own reflexes. Probably played hell with the caliber 861 under the hood but what did I know or care about the frailties of mechanical chronograph movements? In this chunky man’s watch, which was incredibly loose and heavy on my little boy’s wrist, there seemed an endless world of enjoyment to be had. The wonder factor was sky high and for a very long time after that and well into adulthood, I did not see the point of a watch without a chronograph complication. A watch that only told the time and maybe the date? Booooring!

My dad gave me that Speedy Mark II to have for a time after the divorce was finalized but had to take it back when times got tight. I felt like he was a welsher for repo’ing it but in retrospect I can see why he would if he needed the money. The things kids don’t understand about adult life could fill a very large library. Also, I had wound the damn thing to death and it definitely needed a new mainspring. I may also have put a pretty good chip in the mineral crystal (these are prone to that), although it may have come to me that way, as my pop was also pretty tough on his equipment. Either way, I hope he got good money for it, although back then it couldn’t have been more than a couple hundred bucks. But back then it surely did piss me off that he took it back.

So when I finally started making money and after some years of dicking around with cheap watches, I determined to get myself a good quality Swiss timepiece–a “real” watch–to replace the one that had been denied me. And heck if it wasn’t going to be a chronograph and an Omega. Other kids may have grown up with Patek or Rolex (probably most of my high school class, in fact) but I had grown up with a magic Omega, so for me that was the one to get. Can’t choose these sorts of things–your father’s watch is always going to be special.  So I laid out some dough for a watch that most reminded me of that Mark II–in a very general sense, since about 30 years separated the two watches…

This big beast is the Seamaster Professional “Bond” chronograph and for me it hit the sweet spot. Really nice chunky case, super water resistance, helium release valve, orange accents and most of all–chronograph! Perfectly over-engineered and reminded me of that old Mark II somewhat. So I took the plunge, spent a couple grand to buy it new and this was my daily driver for several years.

But I kept searching for my dad’s exact watch, since it was no longer available in Omega’s current collection… and that lead me to find it (with a lot of help from the late great Chuck Maddox’s website). And that led me to a lot of other great vintage watches out there, which were simply cooler than their modern counterparts. The fascination with the past has always been strong for me and these older objects, which were top of the technological heap in their day, have such resonance and character despite their limitations when compared with a modern counterpart. And so I became a watch collector and primarily a vintage one and I would have to say in a fairly big way. I have a collection of around 30 watches of many different makes and styles, almost all vintage, and I spend a lot of time researching and talking watches.  I have bought and sold more than I care to mention in an effort to tweak and upgrade my collection, always striving for better and more interesting, always trying to recapture that thrill that I felt in that red Volvo so many years ago, clicking out the times as my father drove and smiled.

That big modern Seamaster Chrono left my collection a few years ago. It was a great watch but I had moved on and it no longer moved me aesthetically. But a Speedy Pro Mark II with Racing dial remains. And most likely always will.