I've been collecting watches for several years. One of the first things I learned was that there's a lot more to a watch than: its brand, the way it looks, and its price -- the criteria most of us use to buy one. Take the two watches shown below. One of them is a Cartier Tank Watch -- one of the most famous watches in the world -- which today costs about $15,000. The other is a "homage" to the Tank sold by Temu which costs $4. This is not a type-o, the watch costs $4! 

Can you tell them apart from their pictures. Believe me, even if you were holding them in your hand, you would not be able to tell which is which. Even wearing them for a few weeks would not reveal the secret conclusively. Sure, the winder on the reat Cartier feels more solid, and after a few months one of them would be off by a minute or two, but are these small differences worth $14,996?

In fact, like most things that cost a lot, what you're paying for is subtle. It's the materials, the craftsmanship, the precision, the name, the knowledge that the watch on your wrist is the genuine article. In other words, the more you know about a watch, the more valuable it is to you.

This is the idea behind collecting watches -- knowledge leads to appreciation. (By the way, the watch on the left is the real Tank from Cartier.) 

So, what's important in a good watch? First, it's the BRAND. People like to buy from a watchmaker whose name they recognize. Even among brands though, there is a hierarchy. At the very top are prestigue brands like Patek Philippe, Audemars Piguet, and Vacheron Constantine (the "Holy Trinity"), which can easily cost hundred of thousands. Then come the luxury brands like Rolex, Omega, Cartier, Breitling, and Grand Seiko, which typically run up from $4-$5,000. Entry level brands (which cost from $1,000 to $5,000) include Tudor, Longines, TAG Heuer and Rado. Then there are the more resonably priced GADA (Go Anywhere, Do Anything) brands like Seiko, Citizen, Tissot, Hamilton, Casio and Tudor. At the very bottom of the watch cognicenti's list are the fashion brands like Fossil, Guess, Armani, Michael Kors, and Diesel. These trendy accessories, which are priced from low to ridiculous, are primarily clothing or lifestyle accents rather than items of horological value.

So, you can see where this is going. All watches tell time, but not all watch brands convey equal prestigue, cachet, and exclusivity to their owner. Snob appeal, often called "true appreciation," is a big part of owning a watch and sometimes of collecting them. If you're poor like me though, focusing on the brand is a non-starter. Fortunately, there are lots of other things to apprciate about a watch like its:

• Movement (what kind of engine [mechanical/automatic, electrical (quartz)] does it have?)
• Material and Build Quality (Is the crystal saffire, glass, or plastic? Is the case gold, silver, steel, or ceramic? How many jewels are used in the mechanism? Is the strap leather? Etcetera.
• Accuracy and Performance (Does it keep good time for a long period? Does it need servicing often?)
• Complications (What does it do beyond telling time?)
• Water Resistance and Durability (How long is it going to last in the real world?)

Every collection needs a theme or a challenge. For me, that was to collect a dress, sport, and banger (everyday) watch for three price categories -- $500, $2,000, and $8,000.  

al include prestige, cachet, and exclusivity, w

one small part of a watch's story.

Take the watch pictured to the right. It looks like a Cartier Tank Watch, one of the most famous, which today costs about $4,000. Unfortunately, this one is a replica from Temu that costs $4. At first glance,it's

Collecting is fun, he says, because it takes you behind the pricing to the amazing design, engineering, and aesthetic that goes into a good watch. People assume that any watch collection is valuable, and that collecting watches is for the rich and famous--the pezzinoavante as Michael Corleone calls them in "The Godfather". It's not, most collections are modest and most collectors are ordinary people who are simply fascinated by these mechanical marvels.

Jim's collection, for example, has very little resale value today. Maybe in a hundred years one or two of my more interesting watchs will have become "famous" and command collector prices, but not in his lifetime. So, what beyond the monetary value makes a watch different? After all, in the final analysis watches they all do the same thing -- tell time. He pondered this for a while then created the following chart to break it down for himself.

Here's how it works...

First there's "the name," where prestigous brands like Patek Phillippe are found. At the bottom are fashion brands like Gucci and Fossil. No matter what these fashion brands cost or how rare they are, they are dismissed by serious collectors. Next comes the "movement," that is, the watch's motor. These motors are categorized by mechanisms (quartz or mechanical), power source (battery, solar...), and manufacturer (e.g., Seiko). Third is the "function," that is, what does the watch do? Yes, they all tell time, but they can also do lots of other things (called complications) from displaying date, day, time zones, and air pressure to correcting for local difference in the earth's gravity. Then there are the "materials," what the watch is made of. A stainless-steel watch case with a sapphire crystal and a titanium band is light, strong, costly, and accurate, while a plastic watch with an acrylic face and a rubber band is often heavy, fragile, inexpensive, and inaccurate. Lastly, there's "everything else," all the "soft" features like size, design, finish, color, and history that further separate one watch from another. (BTW, while Apple calls their device a watch, most collectors would call it a computer for your writst.)

More complicated than you thought, right? Which brings us back to collecting. Every collection needs a theme. For example, the brand like Rolex or Breitling is a favorite theme. Another is the technology, e.g., powered by wrist movement or solar. The important thing is to have a theme and not just collect randomly.

Jim's collection's theme is "cost and purpose." He wanted to collect watches in groups of three where each group would contain a sport watch, a bang-around everyday watch (a banger), and a dress watch. The total cost of the watches in the three groups was to be less than $500, $2000, and $8000. This is a pretty standard way for a newbie like him, one without a lot of knowledge, experience, or money, to start collecting.

The <$500 group was easy. He bought an indestructable Casio MW240 for $25 as his banger, a Glock made of "gun" metal steel as his sport watch for $425, and a no-name replica of a Cartier Tank watch from Temu as his dress watch for $4. He admits that he wears the $4 Temu for fun sometimes just to watch how people react to learning that the watch they think cost thousands actually cost $4.

The <$2,000 group was more of a challenge primarily because he didn't want to spend $2,000 on watches he wasn't going to wear. The banger he selected was the "indestructible" Victornox which cost $200. (Victornox substantiates this claim by driving a 64-ton tank over the watch.) His sport watch in this castegory is the all-titanium Breitling Aerospace he bought in St. Barts in 1990 for $1,000. Talk about accuracy, this watch has not lost more than a couple of seconds a year for 35 years. His dress watch in this category is the $200 Orient, which is great looking, an excellent timekeeper, and automatic (wrist-movement powered, needing no battery or winding).

The <$8,000 group is four time more challenging than the $2,000 for the same reason--he didn't want to spend $8,000 on watches he was not going to wear. Unfortunately, he started this group by buying the current version of the all-titanium Breitling Aerospace. Frankly, this watch was a disappointment -- it's twice as big as his 1990 Brietling, it's hard to read the time with all the F-18 bling on its face, and it cost 4x more. Not a great start, but another good lesson about price versus value. (Remember, they all tell time.) He's hoping to make up for this misstep with his next two selections, which are still to come.

Video editing has been a hobby of Jim's for a long time, long enough so that he should probably be a lot better at it. In any case, examples of his early and late work are on the Videos page of this website. The tools he uses are: Cyberlink's Power Director editor (a replacement for Adobe Premier when Premier went to subscription), a Sony RX10 IV mirrorless camera, a Sony Alpha 7 III zoom camera, and a Sony FDR-AX700 camcorder. This sound impressive, but he claims that these are very modest tools for a video editor, even a hobbiest. The video below is an example of his recent editing work ... not great, but not embarassing either.

In 2023 Jim decided that he was done with travel. At his age it was just more trouble than it was worth to visit places he'd already visited many times. He couldn't just sit home and do nothing, though; a thought that eventually spawned the idea of a staycation--a vacation spent at home. And why not when your home is New York City, the most visited place in the world? The problem doing this from home was commuting--traveling from Staten Island to Manhattan--which was Yvonne's approach.

Instead, over her strong objections, Jim set his sights on a Manhattan apartment they could use as a pied-a-terre...without realizing that the "average" apartment in the city cost $1.4 million. Once he reconciled to this reality, he began looking in ernest. The rest of this Manhattan section addresses the apartment he and Yvonne finally bought, and what one needs to know to live and survive in Manhattan.

Manhattan's a big place, more importantly, it's a diverse place. Every neighborhood from Chelsea to the Village is unique in supporting a particular lifestyle. To put you in the right frame of mind, here's a "Manhattanhedge" (Manhattan's Stonehenge) picture looking from east to west along 57th Street just as the sun is setting.

Yvonne still thought buying was a dumb idea, but she participated anyway "under protest."

It took them a year to decide that the Upper West Side around Lincoln Center (59th to 72nd Street) was right for them. As a neighborhood, it's generally quieter with less car, truck, bus, bike, and people traffic; it has lots of great restaurants and museums; it's close to Broadway and Lincoln Center (not that they go very often); and the park is just a few steps away. Like the Upper East Side, it's mostly residential, whereas most neighborhoods below 59th Street are either mostly business or a mix of commercial and residential.

They also decided -- after being rejected once for being too poor -- that they wanted a condo rather than a co-op. The idea of an intransigent co-op board preventing us from selling was just too hard to swallow. (Co-op boards have a legal right to disqualify a buyer while condo boards can only demand the right to buy the apartment themselves.)

Eventually, after studying hundreds and touring dozens, they decided on a well-lit, one-bedroom condo in the Lincoln Square area with a great view. They didn't truly appreciate how important the view was until they realized that their part time, pied-a-terre usage model favored a view over more space. This holds true even today as they consider moving up to a larger place.

Both of them immediately knew that the apartment in the Copley at 2000 Broadway was what we wanted. It's a large one-bedroom (891 sq. ft.) with an unimpeded southern view down Broadway from 68th Street. It's not a flex unit (i.e., one that is easy to convert to a two-bedroom), but it's large enough to sleep 4-5 comfortably or even more in a pinch, which allows them to host the grandkids who love visiting the city. After a month of haggling, it was theirs, and after six months of stressful shopping, it was furnished, complete with a Murphy bed and a closet office.

...Finally, they had a home away from home in the most popular destination in the world.

In 2023 Jim decided that he was done with travel. At his age it was just more trouble than it was worth to visit places he'd already visited many times. He couldn't just sit home and do nothing, though; a thought that eventually spawned the idea of a staycation--a vacation spent at home. And why not when your home is New York City, the most visited place in the world? The problem doing this from home was commuting--traveling from Staten Island to Manhattan--which was Yvonne's approach.

Instead, over her strong objections, Jim set his sights on a Manhattan apartment they could use as a pied-a-terre...without realizing that the "average" apartment in the city cost $1.4 million. Once he reconciled to this reality, he began looking in ernest. The rest of this Manhattan section addresses the apartment he and Yvonne finally bought, and what one needs to know to live and survive in Manhattan.

Manhattan's a big place, more importantly, it's a diverse place. Every neighborhood from Chelsea to the Village is unique in supporting a particular lifestyle. To put you in the right frame of mind, here's a "Manhattanhedge" (Manhattan's Stonehenge) picture looking from east to west along 57th Street just as the sun is setting.

Yvonne still thought buying was a dumb idea, but she participated anyway "under protest."

It took them a year to decide that the Upper West Side around Lincoln Center (59th to 72nd Street) was right for them. As a neighborhood, it's generally quieter with less car, truck, bus, bike, and people traffic; it has lots of great restaurants and museums; it's close to Broadway and Lincoln Center (not that they go very often); and the park is just a few steps away. Like the Upper East Side, it's mostly residential, whereas most neighborhoods below 59th Street are either mostly business or a mix of commercial and residential.

They also decided -- after being rejected once for being too poor -- that they wanted a condo rather than a co-op. The idea of an intransigent co-op board preventing us from selling was just too hard to swallow. (Co-op boards have a legal right to disqualify a buyer while condo boards can only demand the right to buy the apartment themselves.)

Eventually, after studying hundreds and touring dozens, they decided on a well-lit, one-bedroom condo in the Lincoln Square area with a great view. They didn't truly appreciate how important the view was until they realized that their part time, pied-a-terre usage model favored a view over more space. This holds true even today as they consider moving up to a larger place.

Both of them immediately knew that the apartment in the Copley at 2000 Broadway was what we wanted. It's a large one-bedroom (891 sq. ft.) with an unimpeded southern view down Broadway from 68th Street. It's not a flex unit (i.e., one that is easy to convert to a two-bedroom), but it's large enough to sleep 4-5 comfortably or even more in a pinch, which allows them to host the grandkids who love visiting the city. After a month of haggling, it was theirs, and after six months of stressful shopping, it was furnished, complete with a Murphy bed and a closet office.

...Finally, they had a home away from home in the most popular destination in the world.