A terrible thing happened to me about a month ago. Biggs showed me the Poor Man’s Watch forum. My wallet may never be the same.
The Poor Man’s Watch forum is just that; an online forum where people sell and trade watches. The cool thing about it is that unlike eBay, the prices aren’t driven up by the punters. You can easily pick up a Seiko Orange Monster for $100, or a Omega Seamaster for under $1000. There’s actually two sides the forum the “PMWF” side, where everything is under $1000, and then there’s the “Premier” side. On the premier side, expect to the prices to run over $1000 for everything. Most the time prices are negotiable, but there are a few exceptions and that’s normally stated in the ad. In some cases, you can even trade, but again that’s at the discretion of the seller.
I like the forum because you can negotiate. Most of the sellers are quite knowledgeable though, so don’t expect to get away with anything. The good deals move fast too, so it’s a good thing to check for new posts repeatedly throughout the day. And there are a whole lot of good deals. From people who buy a watch, don’t like it, and flip it, to people who got caught buying watches by their wives, you can usually find what you are looking for just by watching the forums for a bit. I would suggest caution when buying though, sellers are not moderated and there’s always a chance that a scammer might have snuck into the room.
Montblanc is a pen company. They do watches as an aside, some sort of weird cross-marketing thing that presumably they’ll use to convince watch lovers to go and pick up some pens. However, they have truly outdone themselves with the TimeWriter 1 Metamorphosis.
Ariel at ABlogtoRead found the full details on this watch but, in short, when you pull down a lever the entire face changes. One face, with the lever up, shows the time and date. When you pull the lever you release a single-push chronograph. While the technology isn’t that impressive, the presentation is amazing. Watch the video about and fast forward to about 5 minutes to see how it works.
The process of changing the watch is longer than you would expect. First you need to press the monopusher chronograph button in the crown, then slide the lever on the left side of the case. The process actually takes about 15 seconds. So much of what you get is watching the process take action. There are two hidden plates in the watch that act like a double scissors. These “close” and the upper and lower dials are covered over with grayish plates. At the same time the lower dial actually moves down like a little elevator. Internally the watch is going mad with gears and changes to make sure everything works properly. This is not a sport watch my friends, something that you are wise to be delicate with.
The watch is 47mm wide and runs an MBM16.29 movement with a power reserve of 55 hours. Amazing stuff but I worry, like Ariel, that it’s a gimmick. Pricing, shall we say, is not published.
A terrible thing happened to me about a month ago. Biggs showed me the Poor Man’s Watch forum. My wallet may never be the same.
