Our Most Worn Watches of 2024

2024 was an interesting year for us here at Hourstriker since it was the first full year of the site being in existence. With the amount of work we put into the site it really feels like the site has been around a lot longer than it actually has been. This year saw amazing growth in both our website traffic along with our social media presence. The things I'm most thankful for in 2024 were the amazing and supporting words we have received from our readers as well as being welcomed with open arms from so many brands from the large established icons of the industry to the small independent brands making a name for themselves.

The New Year should be an exciting one for Hourstriker. Sometime around the middle of the year we're going to be rolling out a full site redesign that is way more than just a simple reskin. We have been working in the background on some pretty awesome functionality that we're excited to launch in a few months. Also changing the look and navigation of the site from "just get something up" to something we're more proud of is something I can't stop thinking about.



More and more brands are starting to send us watches to review, so hopefully we can continue with our two reviews per week schedule that we've been sticking to over the last few months. I'm also making writing articles a priority and am planning on putting up a new article each week. As always we will continue to put up daily new watch releases as well.

With that said, as 2024 draws to a close we thought it would be interesting to look back our personal watches we wore the most over the year. Don't expect a huge list since there are only two people currently working on Hourstriker, myself and my wife. My wife Tina has been along for my entire journey of watch collecting and has also worked in the industry with me. She has been working all of 2024 on part on the new functionality we are going to roll out next year and will also branch out into more of an editorial role in 2025.

While my wife has a pretty decent collection of watches, there was one watch that she easily wore more than anything else in her collection which also happens to be here favorite watch. The watch she wore more than any other piece this year was her Hublot Big Bang All Black 41.



The Big Bang All Black was released in 2010 and was limited to 250 pieces. When the Big Bang All Black 41 was released it was during the peak popularity of the Big Bang and sold out rather quickly. The watch originally carried a retail price of $14,000, but we purchased the watch for a fraction of that price in October of 2023.

For some reason the small but very vocal watch influencer set has focused their eyes on Hublot to be the target of their attacks. This anti-Hublot sentiment has driven pre-owned prices of Hublot pieces to rock bottom levels. The amount of watch you get for the price is just insane with pre-owned Hublots.

This Big Bang All Black is crafted out of polished black ceramic and titanium and has a case diameter of 41 mm. Yes this watch does use a modified ETA caliber 2894-2 automatic movement, but remember the whole in-house and manufacture movement obsession only started in the 2000s. Big Bangs even moved to in-house calibers before Royal Oak Offshores from Audemars Piguet did. Even Patek Philippe was still using sourced movements in the 90s and 2000s.



My wife wears a ton of black in her clothing, so the Big Bang All Black is perfect for her since the entire watch is blacked out. The watch has a black dial, black hour markers, black date window and black hands. There is also zero lume on the dial making the watch very hard to read in pretty much all lighting situations. The only bit of color found on the watch are the metal bezel screws and chronograph pushers and crown. None of this bothers her at all though.

The watch also features one of the most comfortable rubber straps I've even tried on. Just as expensive watches should, the strap comes on a deployant clasp. Even on my wife's 5.2 inch wrist the Big Bang All Black wears just fine. The ceramic and titanium construction also makes the watch rather lightweight for having an over 40 mm case diameter. My wife is also not easy on her watches, so the scratch proof nature of ceramic is perfect for her. Also small children's fingerprint smudges easily wipe off with any piece of fabric and the watch looks factory fresh.



While I personally feel the market for Big Bangs has hit its low and the watches will start to come up in value over the coming years, this is definitely the one watch my wife will not sell. I'm not even sure if this list will change much next year since she asks to wear this watch pretty much every time I go to the safe to grab watches for when we leave the house.

Moving on to the final member of our "staff", there were two watches I wore the most over 2024. This happened since a new watch was acquired just after the middle of the year and I started wearing that the most towards the end of 2024.

When I was a younger collector, I typically would have thought if you had your grail watch you would wear that the most. I probably also would have thought why wouldn't you wear your most expensive watch the most. Now having my two grails, I can without a doubt say I don't wear them the most.

2024 was a weird year and it saw both of my grail watches break and need repair. My Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Montoya in titanium ended up having its crown get stripped and would no longer screw in. The watch was sent off for repair and when it got back I became very gun shy of wearing the watch often.



First off the Montoya is the most expensive watch I own and I really couldn't stomach damaging the watch at an accelerated rate by wearing it frequently. Also with the crown being a known weak point of the watch, I tend to not want to use the crown more than is needed. This leads me to wearing the watch more on special occasions, like I wore it a few times over Christmas. Finally with the Royal Oak being such a well known watch, there is always the chance of attracting the wrong attention.

My other grail piece is the IWC Big Pilot Perpetual Calendar Top Gun. I've been a fan of the Big Pilot ever since it was released 25 years ago and never really thought I'd own a perpetual calendar version of it. Through some trades and luck I ended up with the Perpetual Calendar Top Gun in July of 2023. While the watch is rather robust with its ceramic construction and would make a good daily wearer, there were a few reasons I didn't wear it the most in 2024. First the watch is very expensive and I have a much cheaper IWC Pilot's Flyback Chronograph Top Gun that has 99% of the looks of the Perpetual Calendar and even has the same matte black ceramic case that is around 2 mm smaller. I could wear the Flyback Chronograph around and never really feel too worried about damaging the watch. Even with this rational, I do find myself wearing the Perpetual Calendar more than the Flyback Chronograph for some reason though…

The biggest reason I didn't wear the Big Pilot Perpetual more in 2024 is that it broke around the middle of the year. Every night around 11:40 the movement with move back 5 minutes and then be stuck for 10 minutes before advancing like normal, this resulted in the watch being off 15 minutes every day. I had the watch sent off for repair by a seasoned watchmaker in New York who ended up not being able to fix it. The watch then sat for a few months before I finally sent it off to IWC for a complete service and repair, only coming back at the end of October.

Ok… so what was my most worn watch of the first half of 2024? For the first half of 2024 the watch I wore the most was the IWC GST Aquatimer 2000 in titanium. The GST Aquatimer was released in 1998 and was the successor to the amazing Porsche Design Ocean 2000 which was produced by IWC. The GST Aquatimer 2000 also revived the Aquatimer name which has continued to this day to still be a permanent fixture in the IWC lineup.



A friend of mine in college had a GST Aquatimer 2000 which was really the first grail watch I ever had. At the time the GST Aquatimer 2000 was far too expensive for me and I ended up getting a GST Chronograph Automatic instead. This was the first "luxury" watch I owned after my two Omega Seamasters. I almost feel that if it wasn't for the GST Aquatimer 2000 I might not have followed the career path of working in the watch industry.

Through some dumb luck I ended up stumbling on a one owner GST Aquatimer 2000 in titanium in September of 2023. The watch was actually sold back to the same Authorized Dealer that originally sold the watch and was then offered for sale. The pictures on Chrono24 made the watch look pretty rough, but the price was a steal and I decided to take the risk.

When the watch arrived, it was filthy. The watch was complete though and even had all the links for the bracelet. With older watches like this, most examples I found didn't contain many links with most only fitting 6.5 inch wrists. Also barely any were complete sets. After about an hour of going at the watch with hot soapy water and a tooth brush the watch ended up looking amazing. For its age I would say after a deep cleaning it looked near mint.



Since I'm not a huge fan of bracelets on watches, I ended up getting the rubber strap and pin buckle for the GST Aquatimer 2000. IWC didn't actually make a rubber strap for this model, but the next model Aquatimer did come on a rubber strap that fit the GST Aquatimer 2000 just fine. My one complaint with the rubber strap is that is made this 42 mm watch wear rather small. IWC also offered a Velcro strap that was attached to the case with titanium endlinks on each side. Beyond being unlimitedly adjustable, the endlinks on the strap also made the watch wear larger and also weigh next to nothing. This is the preferred way I like to wear the watch now.

The GST Aquatimer 2000 is just so comfortable on the Velcro strap and still looks like a watch that could be produced today. When you look at the Rolex Yacht-Master in titanium or the Christopher Ward C60 Lumiere also in titanium you can see strong resemblances to the GST Aquatimer 2000 first produced in the late 1990s. The 2000 meter water resistance with being relatively slim and not needing a helium relief value are still mind blowing today. I love this watch so much that I'm really looking to add an Ocean 2000 in the near future. This will be a harder task since finding Ocean 2000s in good condition with a full set and newer bracelet design at a good price is not an easy feat.



Being a 25 year old watch and never having been serviced, the GST Aquatimer 2000 would run 30 seconds per day slow for the first hour after being set and then settle into an accuracy of +/- 0 seconds from then on. When I had multiple watches that needed repair and were being sent off, I ended up sending in the GST Aquatimer 2000 for service as well. This was around the middle of the year and was a big reason why it wasn't solely the most worn watch of 2024.

The watch I wore the most for the second half of the year ended up arriving in August of 2024. While I had always known about the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms, I never was that big of a fan of it. It wasn't that I didn't like the watch, it was more that I never really thought about it. Working on Hourstriker everyday eventually led to me learning more and more about the history of the Fifty Fathoms and even writing articles about it.

Through all this research I became a huge fan of the watch and started to feel like I needed one in my collection. Now seeing a Fifty Fathoms in the wild is a pretty rare sight and at 45 mm the standard Fifty Fathoms ticks all my watch checklist boxes, especially the titanium versions… but I still prefer rarer options if possible.



Luckily for me Blancpain released a limited to 500 pieces special edition of the Fifty Fathoms in 2009. This model was the Fifty Fathoms 500 Fathoms crafted out of titanium and measuring in at 48 mm. The 500 Fathoms also upped the water resistance of the standard Fifty Fathoms to 1000 meters.

After learning about the 500 Fathoms I knew I had to have one. It took a while to find one in good condition and at a price I was happy with. When the 500 Fathoms launched it came with a huge retail price of $26,500. The market price of the 500 Fathoms wildly ranges from $12,000 to $25,000 and every now and then one will be available even lower.

One day in August of 2023 a 500 Fathoms came up for sale from a very trusted dealer at an already low price, but I asked one of my dealer friends if he knew the dealer offering the 500 Fathoms and he did. Through him I was able to acquire the 500 Fathoms at the wholesale price which was an astonishing deal. The watch was sold as watch only, but my wife was able to purchase a new case from Blancpain for me this Christmas. The only thing missing now are the papers and the rubber strap and buckle. For papers I can just have the watch serviced by Blancpain and that paperwork would suffice and I'm sure I'll pick up the rubber strap and buckle sooner than later.



The 500 Fathoms takes some time to get used to since its pretty much all dial and bezel on the wrist. The short lugs really make your eyes focus on the dial of the watch more than anything. To me it looks bigger than my 48 mm Big Pilot Perpetual Calendar Top Gun with traditional lugs due to this fact, but it wears much smaller with the Big Pilot's lug to lug length being over 60 mm. Being crafted out of titanium means the watch although big is very lightweight and comfortable as well.

The five day power reserve from the in-house Blancpain caliber also means that most times after putting the watch down for a few days I find it running next time I want to wear it. Besides the awesome movement, the 500 Fathoms also has the brightest lume I have ever seen on a watch. Sometimes you can even see the lume glowing in broad daylight. The oversized numerals are a bit over the top, but this watch was purely made to be legible and that is what it does in spades.

Every time I wear the 500 Fathoms I feel a nice bit of nostalgia to the original Fifty Fathoms and when I show the watch to collectors they are really blown away with just how nice of a watch it is. I think with trends favoring smaller watches today, many people just pay little attention to watches of the 500 Fathoms size which is a shame. The 500 Fathoms has quietly become a grail piece to me over the last year or so, so it's awesome to now own one. I feel with the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Montoya, IWC Big Pilot Perpetual Calendar Top Gun and 500 Fathoms I have three grail pieces which nicely cover land, air and sea!



So there it is, our most worn watches of 2024. I have a feeling my wife's most worn watch of 2024 will probably be the same watch for 2025. I never know with myself, especially since the Big Pilot Perpetual just got back from service. Also the strap on my intended daily, the IWC Pilot's Flyback Chronograph Top Gun, is getting much more comfortable so I might start wearing it a lot more. Then there's that Porsche Design Ocean 2000 that I can't stop thinking about…

At the end of 2024 I really want to thank everyone for supporting us. I know there are countless sites that cover our little hobby and it means a ton to us that you take time out of your day to visit our site. Hopefully everyone is having a great Holiday Season and stay tuned for some big changes to Hourstriker coming in the New Year!