Sometimes Wearing Your Own Watches Is Very Nice

It really feels like we haven’t put up an article in forever… this is due to the number of watches we got in all at once from brands to review.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve received a ton of watches from various manufacturers that agreed to let us review some of their newest releases. These pieces spanned from inexpensive quartz watches all the way up to solid gold high horology pieces. They came from small independents as well as very established names in the world of watches.

Even though there were tremendous differences between these watches, one thing remained the same for all of them… for us to give them a fair review, we would have to spend some time with them and that meant wearing them. With an average of five new watches in the safe waiting to be reviewed, whatever wrist time I have is well booked up.

Don’t get me wrong, I love having all these new watches showing up every week, especially when they are from brands I have no experience with. There is something very different from looking at pictures and videos of a watch to actually handling it, even more so wearing it as if it was your own. I’m also learning that I’m very stuck in my mid 2000s view of watches and having my preferences formed by that time period, it’s nice to be “forced” into wearing something that is way out of your comfort range, be it case size, metal or style.



Back nearly twenty years ago when I first started in the watch industry, I could wear pretty much any watch that we had in inventory that was considered pre-owned. Since we focused mainly on sports watches I tended to stick with watches like Royal Oak Offshores, Big Bangs, Big Pilots and such. Back then it really didn’t make sense for me to own a watch since there was so much to choose from. This large selection of watches I liked also kept me from really challenging myself with watches I wouldn’t have normally picked.

A few years ago when I started getting back into watches I didn’t really have the ability to wear pre-owned watches anymore. The only way I was going to be able to wear anything would be to start building my own personal collection again. I hadn’t owned a personal watch from around 2004 until 2022. For a long period of time I had access to pre-owned pieces and the other part of that time period, although still in the industry, I had no real interest in watches.

In the two years that I have restarted my collection, I have achieved getting two of my grail pieces, the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Offshore Montoya and the IWC Big Pilot Top Gun Perpetual Calendar. I have also added a few more pieces like the IWC GST Aquatimer 2000 and the piece I’ll talk about here.



I’ve had a mostly positive experience with the company I helped start almost twenty years ago, with many ups and downs over the years. During a particular bad patch I ended up leaving and coming back, with part of me coming back was finally getting a watch of my own. Looking at the inventory I ended up picking an IWC Big Pilot Top Gun (time only), which was agreed upon. When the watch showed up, sure enough there it was a big full sized IWC box. I was so excited and then I opened the box…

Now my reaction to opening the box can best be described as a kid seeing a box under the tree for Christmas thinking it was a Playstation 5, then opening it up and seeing it was instead a Playstation 4. My wife saw this all take place and me then go off by myself upstairs in a state of defeat.

The agreed upon Big Pilot was not in the box, instead there was a Top Gun Chronograph IW388001. It just seemed like one more disappointment from this long working relationship. Needless to say I wasn’t too happy and that kind of ruined what is an amazing watch for me. After a few months I ended up trading the Top Gun Chronograph and an Aquatimer on a Big Pilot Miramar, which then along with a more recently acquired Big Pilot Heritage was traded on the Big Pilot Top Gun Perpetual Calendar I have today. In all honesty, if there would have been a Big Pilot Top Gun in that box, I’m not sure I would have expanded my collection past there or even have started Hourstriker.



Well as we were getting a clearer view of what we wanted Hourstriker to be, I started buying watches from dealers I thought were way below market value and then resold them. I never really wanted to be a watch dealer, but it was fun doing these little transactions with dealers and seeing a lot more watches than I would just having my small collection. I’ve recently decided to quit this completely and mainly only deal with selling watches directly from the brands themselves. We’ll get more into this in the coming months and years, but back to the story…

During this time, basically everyday I’ll be constantly looking through the groups to see if anything I liked came up for sale at a good price. Since I don’t really believe in selling watches I don’t personally like, it made my purchases few and far between, since I have a very specific taste in watches, which for the most part isn’t on today’s trends.

One day the same IWC Top Gun Chronograph IW388001 was listed by a dealer at a steal of a price. The watch was overseas, didn’t have box and papers and looked pretty rough. At the listed price, even for its condition and lack of box and papers, I really couldn’t pass it up. When it arrived, sure enough it was pretty rough with some scratches on the case, as well as a strap that was shot. The watch did run a perfect +/- 0 seconds a day on our timegrapher though. The plan was to clean the watch up and resell it.



One thing that is great about ceramic watches is their resistance to scratches. I had a hunch that these scratches were just metal transfers to the ceramic and heard that you could remove these with a normal pencil eraser. I bought a cheap pack of erasers and was able to take off 95% of the “scratches”. I’m sure I could have got more off, but it was really fine as is. I also give the watch a nice bath and scrub down and it came out looking like new.

I had also been trying to find a perfect third watch for my collection and had just traded my Hublot King Power Oceanographic in carbon on an Ulysse Nardin Diver X Cape Horn. While the Oceanographic was just a little too thick and the carbon worried me as it came to long term durability, the Diver X just seemed a bit too small for my tastes. Getting the Top Gun Chronograph back kind of really made me miss it. Funny for a watch I pretty much wanted no part of when it arrived years ago. I guess already having the Big Pilot Top Gun Perpetual Calendar filled my Big Pilot need, and now I just looked at the Top Gun Chronograph as a stunning everyday watch.

It only took a week or two to decide that I wanted to keep the Top Gun Chronograph as my third and “everyday” watch, even though it was much cheaper than what the current “everyday” watch of the Diver X Cape Horn had cost me. I then ended up selling the Diver X and now the Top Gun Chronograph has taken the role over as my “everyday” watch. The lug to lug size is perfect for me, it’s lightweight and durable being ceramic and its black coloring going with almost everything I wear. Also with the price I picked it up for, it’s really a watch I can feel comfortable wearing to most places, unlike my Montoya or Big Pilot Perpetual.

One thing that had to change on the Top Gun Chronograph for it to be my everyday watch was the strap and spring bars. The original strap was ok, but it was not perfect or new, I also like the peace of mind of having new spring bars on a watch I don’t know the history of.



For the strap, I really liked the original strap, but it was the same exact strap my Big Pilot Top Gun Perpetual Calendar was on, so I wanted something different. The first strap that popped into my head was the new rubber and microfiber strap found on the Big Pilot AMG G 63 watches. Even with my contacts at IWC, I was unable to source that strap. Apparently it’s only going to be released later in 2024, so no luck there. I knew I wanted a more everyday watch on a rubber strap, so I was able to source an IWC black rubber strap that looked like it was fabric on top while being completely made of rubber. I also made sure to get new OEM spring bars from IWC.

After the strap and spring bars were replaced, the watch really seemed brand new and seemed like a different watch from the one that arrived weeks before. The timing was not great though, I was only able to wear the watch once before review samples started to arrive from a few brands.

From that time up until just yesterday, I had so many back logged watches to wear, that my watches just sat in the safe unwound. Recently I’ve been knocking out reviews left and right, and at this time I only have three watches left to review. There are some more on the way and I already have some wrist time with the three I have left to review. This allowed me to mentally give myself permission to wear one of my personal watches yesterday for a trip to Target and a local brewery with my wife and daughters.

Now I had already broken my rule of not wearing one of my personal watches while having watches to review back in March on my birthday. Literally the day before my birthday, my Royal Oak Offshore Montoya had just come back from a very long repair of its failed crown. With it being gone for so long and it also being my birthday, I just had to wear it. So that was off the list of watches I wanted to wear. I do like the Big Pilot Top Gun Perpetual much more than the Top Gun Chronograph, but with the Top Gun Chronograph just being still new to me, I picked it to wear on our little outing.

The first thing that I noticed when putting on one of my own watches was just the sense of familiarity. Although I had not worn this watch much, I did own it before and it is very similar in feel to the Big Pilot Perpetual. The watch just felt right on wrist with no adjustment time needed. When I glanced down at my wrist, I also wasn’t surprised with what I saw, it just seemed to be what my brain was expecting to see.



Although I have always been extremely careful while wearing and handling my watches, there is just an extra level of carefulness added when wearing a watch that is on loan to you. When I was younger and had my pick of watches to wear, I guess I was more naïve and didn’t think too much about what would happen if I banged up a watch. Now I know that if anything happens to one of the watches that’s on loan to us that it reflects badly and myself and Hourstriker as a whole, making me just that much more careful when wearing a watch on loan. We are still very new and very small, so it means a ton to me every time a brand takes a chance on us and sends us one of their timepieces. Forging good relationships with brands is honestly one of the most important things to me. I remember telling my wife the first time a rather expensive watch that was on loan was returned and the brand wrote back saying the watch came back and was in great shape. She replied with “Of course it was.”

I’m not sure how most people are when it comes to picking watches for their personal collection, but for me the journey of being interested in a watch until the time it is on my wrist can honestly take years if not decades. With the Montoya, I’ve wanted that watch for nearly two decades, there was a similar timeline with the Big Pilot Perpetual as well. The GST Aquatimer 2000 was on my mind even longer than that, going back to when a friend of mine had one while I was in college.

For that reason, seeing these watches on your wrist is just extremely satisfying. It’s like the culmination of an extremely long journey every time you look at your wrist. Even on pieces I haven’t wanted for the same length of time, there was still a ton of thought and significant time that went into acquiring that watch. Watches that we’ve bought on a whim, technically do not last very long in our personal collection.

With a watch you didn’t pick showing up from a brand to review, when you’re wearing it, you’re still just getting to know the watch. It typically isn’t something you have lusted over and for that reason just doesn’t mean as much personally when wearing it. There are a few watches that should be coming in from brands in the following days, weeks and months that I am very much looking forward to, but they aren’t watches I’d really personally consider owning for one reason or another.



I’m excited about these watches coming in, but it’s not the same as the thought of adding a possible completion watch to my collection in the Blancpain 500 Fathoms. I’ve always had a strong liking for the Fifty Fathoms and the 500 is just the pinnacle of the series, with the outdated case sizing that I love. I think along with the Montoya and Big Pilot Perpetual, I’ll have land, sea and air covered well! Hopefully if / when that watch does get added to my collection I’ll have a better balance of wearing review and personal watches.

The guy I started the watch sales site with all those years ago always says that he really doesn’t have a personal collection since he can pretty much wear anything he wants since their inventory is so large. That is always a viewpoint I believed to be true until the same situation started to happen to me with review watches. Sure you could say, well I don’t need any personal watches, since more than likely there will always be something interesting to wear in for review. I can honestly say that no matter what you’re wearing, if you don’t own it, it just doesn’t have the same feeling as wearing one of your own watches… especially if it’s a watch that you have always lusted over, of if it’s a watch you just reconnected with like the Top Gun Chronograph.

Hopefully in the next few weeks I’ll figure out the balance of wearing my personal watches as well as finding good quality time to spend with watches in for review. I also would like to get up more “retro” reviews of my personal watches as well as the last few resale watches I have left to sell.