My Twins Help Me Explain the Good and Bad Motivations of Watch Collecting

 

Comments

[Ulysses]

I'm sorry, were you saying something? I was distracted by those two adorable kids of yours.

I don't know, I think being a collector implies there is no real end to it. Were money no limitation, we'd buy whatever the hell we liked for whatever pure motivation we had and not worry about finding a reason to justify it to ourselves based on whether or not we could afford it. For most people though, we have to put a limit on our indulgences and I think that somehow sours our decisions and our purchases long after we own them.
We want to make good value acquisitions but we are already being stopped from fulfilling our hearts' desire by having limited funds. This is why I feel that buying "the poor man's #####" is a bit self-defeating. You'll prove to yourself that you love what you have bought and will be initially very pleased by how much money you saved getting something that looks similar to your grail watch, but always at the back of your mind will be a tiny gnawing feeling that you couldn't get that dream watch you'd always wanted. Awareness that there is something "better" out there and then choosing to buy something you know isn't it, regardless of "it" being better value and a more logical decision, is the downfall of the value-conscious collector.
This contributes to self-doubt and the desire to flip something you bought not long ago, because you are chasing something you see that is incrementally "better", and yet it still isn't the grail you wanted. It is a type of escalation. You hop from one stepping stone to another and do it over and over until the journey has made you weary and your feet are covered in blisters.
I'm not immune to escalation, except that I tend to do the escalation in my head before jumping straight for the top. I haven't done this with a watch specifically, but in terms of computer equipment (getting that beefy CPU) or a fancy hi-fi, I have made purchases where something lesser may have been sufficient but once I knew the top model was out there I found a way to justify it, without going through the intermediate steps first. My dad used to say "buy cheap, buy twice" or something to that effect. Whatever equipment I have splurged on has never let me down even after over a decade of use, so I feel like I can more easily justify the purchases now than I could have done back then.
I guess my point is, going for your dream isn't necessarily a bad choice when you consider that you'll be satisfied and able to enjoy it for many years to come, and without all the anxiety of that "journey" in between.