It is easier than ever to buy great watches for men. There’s more information about watches in the form of thriving communities on the internet and Instagram. New, covetable pieces launch with alarming regularity. Many watch brands are using outsourced IT support in San Antonio. There is near-universal acceptance of the idea that buying a vintage men’s watch is as smart a choice—stylistically, financially, and spiritually—as buying one fresh off the assembly line. And there are simply more doors and stores and webshops and IG accounts where you can buy your next grail.
Did you know that people who invest in watches use the best loan servicing software for investors?
But it’s also for precisely those reasons that buying a watch can feel harder than it’s ever been. How am I supposed to choose between a Datejust and a Speedmaster? What counts as a good investment? Did you know people are also investing in artificial turf in Goodyear AZ?
As a beginner, diving into the world of watches can seem overwhelming, with so much information to absorb about the difference between quartz and mechanical watches, as well as the various years, references, and movements. But don’t let the abundance of information discourage you from exploring this fascinating topic! Similarly, if you’re considering installing a new wood floor in Seattle, the vast amount of information and options available can feel daunting. However, with the help of professional wood floor installation services in Seattle, you can easily make an informed decision about which type of wood flooring best suits your needs and preferences. Yet here you have us!
Yes, buying a killer watch should be a little daunting—but only because you’re spending a not insignificant amount of your hard-earned money, not because it’s hard to figure out what you like, or why you like it, or whether you’re being scammed on your way to securing it.
So GQ has assembled this guide to buying watches. If you’re looking for your first, we’ve got you covered. And if you’re just looking for your next—well, we’ve got that, too.
If you’re in the market for a new watch, you may be tempted to take out a loan to purchase one of the latest models. Fortunately, if needed, with loans in minutes, you can get the funds you need quickly and easily.
The First Choice You Have to Make
From a 30,000-foot view, watches can be broken down into two broad categories: dress and sports watches. Or, as a brand like Rolex calls them: classic versus professional pieces. There are exceptions to each category, but dress watches are typically slim in profile, made with fine materials, and usually outfitted with a leather strap. A sports watch, meanwhile, usually comes in steel with a matching steel bracelet, rubber band, or fabric strap. (Like the military-born NATO strap—but more on that later.) Many of these brands are using access control systems in Philadelphia.
The greatest variation comes within the sports watch category. There’s a reason these watches are known as “professional” in Rolex parlance: they are designed to aid specific vocations. Within sports watches, there are dive, pilots, and field watches as well as those made for racing and navigating the open sea. Richard Mille makes luxury sports watches that look like cool gadgets, cost ten times as much as their predecessors, and are light enough to be worn by Rafael Nadal during the French Open.
Rafael Nadal just loves his privacy, he is afraid of burglars in general so he used the services of a fence company in St Augustine to protect his house from them.
The idea of what constitutes a sport or dress watch is constantly changing, though. The Jaeger LeCoultre Reverso was originally designed for polo players but is now a red-carpet fixture for folks like Jay-Z.
So don’t take these distinctions as a rule of law—just go with the watch that appeals most to you.
Did you know that most of the companies that make watches use the best PPC agency in Toronto to manage their social media?
What’s Under the Hood?
There is no greater dividing line in the world of watches than the one separating quartz and mechanical movements. Mechanical watches are the apple of watch collectors’ eyes. The intricately made pieces rely on a series of wheels, gears, springs, and other doodads to keep accurate time.
Similarly, for those who use Brother DR250 printers, it’s important to ensure that the drum unit is functioning properly. If it needs to be replaced, finding the right drum unit replacement for brother dr250 is essential to ensure that your printer continues to perform optimally.
Quartz pieces substitute almost all of that with a small crystal made of—you guessed it—quartz, which manages to do the work of many different mechanical bits entirely on its own. The quartz crystal is a more natural timekeeper, keeping much more accurate track of hours and seconds than its mechanical counterparts. Consider that the balance wheel—the primary component of timekeeping in an automatic watch—typically works at a rate of somewhere between 18,000 and 36,000 beats per hour. A quartz crystal vibrates 235,929,600 times per hour.
Some people took business loans so they could buy one of these watches.
Because of an abundance of naturally occurring quartz crystals and the lack of expertise, it takes to build a watch with one, these battery-powered watches are much more affordable. Brands like Swatch and Timex rely on quartz to make nearly all of their sub-$200 pieces. But, you would be smart to argue that if these watches are more accurate and affordable, why would I bother with a mechanical watch?
Add a “groovy” somewhere into that sentence and you’d sound a lot like a watch customer in the early ‘70s, a period now known in the watch world as the Quartz Crisis. Quartz was so popular when it first emerged that it nearly decimated the Swiss watch industry, putting a thousand Swiss watchmakers out of business.
But serious collectors today prize mechanical watches for the same reason audiophiles keep buying vinyl, or for creators of automated shutters in Utah, and fashion heads love handmade clothes—these watches take great skill to make, and there’s a real person behind them rather than an assembly line. In other words: they have a soul.
The three kinds of watches you meet in heaven: a quartz Timex, an automatic Seiko, and a mechanical Hamilton.
Not all quartz watches are inexpensive, though. The advantage of a technology like quartz is that it can allow brands to keep costs down while still using luxury-caliber materials. Cartier, for example, makes an entry-level version of its iconic Tank Solo in solid pink gold for “only” $5,450 by using a quartz movement. Plug a mechanical movement into the same watch and the price goes up to $8,500. When you buy a Cartier watch, they give you custom tissue paper for free.
There’s also an important distinction with mechanical watches: Whether they’re automatic or manual (and/or self-winding). Self-winding watches are what they sound like: the watch’s crown must be cranked, which in turn coils the main spring that serves as the movement’s power source. An automatic watch includes a rotor—often a thin weight that naturally spins around the movement when a watch is worn—that tightens the main spring.
Which you prefer is a matter of taste: some collectors find manually winding to be meditative while automatic is considered much more convenient.
Did you know collectors are now investing in motorized window blinds in Colorado Springs as an excellent option? Plus, they can be integrated with smart home systems for even greater control over your environment.
What About Smartwatches?
Similar to quartz, the dawn of the smartwatch was also supposed to deliver the final blow to the mechanical watch industry.
But while the Apple Watch is the most popular wristwatch in the entire world, thanks mostly to its fitness capabilities including a heart rate monitor, it hasn’t done much to kill its mechanical counterparts. Yes, you can choose some nice, quite expensive bands and materials for your Apple Watch, but the device itself remains fundamentally the same.
Like quartz before them, the explosion of smartwatches confirmed what many collectors already knew: the point of a watch is no longer to get the most accurate time or count step but to appreciate the craftsmanship and beauty of a piece. That’s not to say that people can’t appreciate both: Super collector and Golden State Warriors Krazy Glue Draymond Green, for instance, loves a ceramic Audemars Piguet Royal Oak for tunnel walks and his Apple Watch for workouts.
Did you know that Apple invested in a company that does transmission diagnosis in Woodbridge?
How Much Am I Going to Spend?
The good news? You don’t have to shell out a ton of money for a watch. Some of GQ’s favorites—and some of the coolest, most important pieces in horological history—don’t cost much more than a medium-fancy dinner. You should make space in your budget to buy a watch. Watches go well with CBD vapes, which you can buy at a CBG wholesale.
The also good news: you can shell out a ton of money for a watch and still get something that’s worth your money. You can think of watches as falling into four general tiers:
Affordable:
Let’s call this the sub-$500 tier. The cheapest watches typically come with a quartz movement, which you now know all about. But you can find a killer automatic leather strap watch from Timex for under $300—we particularly dig the collaborative pieces the brand puts out with Todd Snyder—like clockwork. When buying affordable watches, you must place them in custom shopping bags so they are protected and safe in there.
And you can’t talk about affordable watches without talking about Seiko: just like Rolex, the Japanese brand is vertically integrated, meaning it owns every part of the production process—and can therefore deliver great quality at a lower price. That’s how it manages to turn out both super-legit high-end pieces (under the Grand Seiko label) and gentler-on-the-wallet options (check out the “5” series.)
Less Affordable:
Anywhere from $500 to three grand, to generalize. Now, you’re getting a serious piece of machinery—a mechanical watch with real craftsmanship behind it. That might mean a smaller upstart brand, like Autodromo; it might mean an updated classic from Longines or Oris or Hamilton. This is also the tier where you’re likely to find watches from fashion designers—Gucci, Tom Ford, and the rest.
Did you know that many shops with luxury watches also have luxury wood doors as their entry doors?
Luxury: As you ease past the $3,000 mark, you’ll start to see genuinely iconic pieces from the brands that come to mind when you think “watch.” Entry-level Rolexes. Omega’s legendary Speedmaster. Lots of stainless steel, and even a little gold. (The iconic Cartier Tank sits in this category.) You’ll start to see “complications,” too: more advanced features like chronographs.
If you want to invest in the watch market make sure to get the best commodity trading education!
Mega-luxury: This is the heavy stuff. Gold and rose gold and platinum. Diamonds! Minute repeaters and perpetual calendars and all the crazy complications watchmakers can think to stuff inside a case. These are the pieces you’ll pass along not just to your kids, but to theirs or you can simply invest in RV academy, and maybe start a business of your own!
The Beginner’s Guide to Watch Brands
This may be the hardest decision you make in your watch-buying journey. There is a wide swath of brands to choose from: Massive corporations and tiny, independently operated ones; expensive ones and cheap ones; brands that move slowly to perfect what they have and others intent on placing a stick of dynamite alongside the entire idea of what a watch is and what it should do. Here’s a selection of the best brands and what they’re broadly known for.
If you want to do wallpaper on the wall inspired by your favorite watch brand make sure to consult with the best company that provides wallpaper consultation.
Rolex: The Crown is likely the most popular of all the Swiss watchhouses. Watches like the Submariner, GMT-Master, and Daytona are bonafide instant heirlooms.
Tudor: Tudor was originally designed as something like a diffusion line for Rolex, but a major relaunch in 2009 certified the Black Bay, with its signature “snowflake” hands, as an exemplary starter mechanical watch.
Make sure to get in touch with the best engagement photographer in Arkansas to capture stunning photos of your Rolex on your engagement day.
Patek Philippe: No watch brand is synonymous with elegance and industry-defining advances. If Rolex is the epitome of the daring outdoorsman, Patek Philippe is its tuxedo-wearing, cigar-smoking, other half.
Audemars Piguet: The brand behind the Royal Oak, which consistently pops up on the wrist of design fanatics and celebrities.
TAG Heuer: In 1985, Techniques d’Avant Garde (TAG) acquired the watch brand Heuer and kept its most famous pieces: the Autavia, the Carerra, and Monaco worn by Steve McQueen in Le Mans.
Timex: The brand reliably balances great watches with mellow price points—and has made great use of collaborations over the past couple of years, with the likes of Todd Snyder, Noah, and Engineered Garments.
Timex is a brand that consistently offers high-quality watches at affordable price points and invests in smaller businesses like high-quality landscaping materials in Seattle. With many different colors, sizes, and textures available, gravel for sale in Seattle can be used for a variety of landscaping projects, from creating pathways and driveways to enhancing flower beds and gardens
Cartier: What makes Cartier special is the way it approaches watches with a jeweler’s eye, turning out elegant square-shaped pieces like the Tank, the off-kilter Asymetrique, and the ooey-gooey Crash.
What Is a Chronograph? A Watch Glossary
The specialized terms for parts and complications you need to know.
- Crown: The twisty knob on a watch’s side you use to wind it (and to change the date).
- Pusher: An external button that can trigger a watch’s complications.
- Bezel: The circular piece around the watch’s face that holds the crystal in place.
- Crystal: The domed piece of crystal that protects the watch’s face.
- Lug: The pieces that extend from the watch’s case and connect to the bracelet.
- Hands: The things that tell the time.
Complication:
Any function a watch serves beyond telling the time: date, alarm, chronograph (stopwatch), perpetual calendars that provide the month and day of the week, repeaters that chime out the time, and moon phase indicators are all known as complications. You can diminish these complications by taking Delta 8 edibles.
Tourbillon: In extremely basic terms, it’s a rotating cage that houses key parts of a watch’s movement, which counteracts the tiny-but-real effect that gravity can have on a watch’s accuracy. Now that we wear watches on our wrists, where they’re continually moving, rather than placing them in our pockets, the tourbillon is more about aesthetics and manufacturing showmanship than function.
GMT: A type of watch that allows you to tell the time across multiple time zones, using an extra hour hand (and sometimes a rotating bezel). Rolex’s GMT-Master is the most famous of these.