Reto's Watch Biography

The first version of my "watch biography" was written as an answer to Jeremy Zorn's question whether one would like to amass unlimited watches (type 1 collector) or keep the collection limited to e.g. 12 watches (type 2 collector), on PMWF, July 2002. You will certainly know which type I am when reading ahead.
In mid May 2006 a PMWF post asked about PMWFers' collections and I replied with a reference to this page and found it was outdated (the Thai Baht had been devaluated in 1997, so there where also outdated currency references) and foremost, it was lacking important phases of my watch biography. I rewrote many passages and added important stages (important to me, because they changed the course) of my watch journey. And I am sure this will not be the last version of my watch biography. Because we all change over time and this hobby offers unlimited variations for us to explore. Currently you could call me a "movement collector" rather then a watch collector. The movement does not even have to come in a watch case. I love to look at movements through a loupe or my 3.0 reading glasses (they work like a head loupe for me) and to try to understand the functions of the parts. This phase can take very long as there are so many movements I do not know yet. Especially older movements from times when the watch industry's ebauche (raw movement) suppliers were incredibly diverse. Or movements from other countries that I occasionally spot in watch parts shops. I always look at the different spare movements for sale and then buy a couple of samples to study them later at home. I have also setup a spare movement table, which you might like to see too. In order to keep this watch biography readable, I have included many links that will open in a new window for those that are interested in more detail.
Thank you for reading!
Reto, Bangkok, 24 May, 2006

PS I will not link to all the watches mentioned in this watch biography. I will only link to those watches that changed it. You will find all watches mentioned in this bio (except for the OysterQuartz) in this overview. You find all the watch work in this section. I think if you go to my watch site, you will be able to navigate via the main page and via the links at the top of the main page. The same links bar is also repeated at the bottom of the main page.

PPS After re-editing this watch biography I realized that most of my more expensive watches were not even mentioned in my watch biography! Now that is certainly a sign that the more expensive watches did not really influence the "watch path". Of course I like my JaegerLeCoultre Master Geographic and my other more expensive watches, but it seems that the real passion goes to the watches that I dare to open, regulate, fix and service. Maybe one day my watch skills will further improve, so I will hopefully dare to open the more expensive watches as well. And who knows, the love for them might increase as well.

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The real culprit is probably my great teacher (all math topics) at the Kantonsschule in Chur. He was not only a teacher that could sell Math and Physics (because he was passionate about it), but he would often invite some of the class to do extra homework on Wednesday afternoons. Call it nerd training if you wish. He gave me one day this book about Einstein's relativity theory. It was a paper back book with many great illustrations. E.g. how a church clock would look when viewed from a train moving ahead with the speed of light. That book had triggered my fascination with time. Time is a variable. How many times have I tried to understand it... I am not Albert, so I will take considerably longer to try to understand it. Time dilatation, length dilatation, all those concepts were later part of my study as an Electrical Engineer. The future docent also mentioned that Russian scientists had actually laid the foundation for the theory long before Einstein. But I think it was Einstein's genius to combine all the work that had been done and combine in it in the "relativity theory" that could then predict facts that could only be experimentally proven decades later. His work was definitely ground breaking and I was definitely caught in the "time web" for life time. Stephen Hawkins bestseller published much later, was of course just additional fuel into the fire. And he said he'd explain it as simply as possible, oh well.

Before reading hat book at college, I had been tinkering with mechanical alarm clocks that were about to be disposed at the age of eight to 12. Then the sealed Quartz clock movements, those black quadratic box movements, that have not changed much in 30 years, replaced the mechanical alarm clocks and also these could be tinkered with.

When I was 20, I bought my first expensive watch: a Rolex OysterQuartz, because - and I honestly admit that - I bought it to show off. To some extent at least. But I remember that I had just started my studies in Zurich and that the "watch precision contests" we had been running during college had definitely biased me to Quartz. Also Quartz was the revolutionary new technology that would create much havoc in the Swiss watch industry. An incredibly inexpensive Ronda Quartz watch was my entry into the "Precision contests" a couple of our class were running. The contest started Monday morning and ended Saturday if I remember correctly. All watches were synchronized and then the winner (no prizes) was the one with the watch closest to the Swiss TV news time signal.

Beautiful Ronda Caliber 1377. And not only beautiful, but very accurate. At times it would run for months in synchronization with the Swiss TV news clock (and that one was controlled by a nuclear clock in Neuenburg at the time)

This beauty - Ronda Quartz Caliber 1377, battery RW44 - was available at the unbelievable price (we are in the 70ies and we are talking of a world novelty: Quartz!) of only CHF 55 in the mid seventies. At that time Quartz watches were absolute luxury articles and this was the first Quartz analog that I could afford as a college student. And probably only because Ronda decided to make some watches under their brand. One of my college buddies flashed a CHF 1000 Omega LED digital watch, but that was way out of my reach. Almost 20 years later, John Ermel saw this Ronda picture on my private collection site and posted a very nice reply on the PMWF.com. John had been an engineer at the Ronda factory. Today John Ermel is famous for the development of a very complicated movement that is found in his brand Cyclos exclusively. You have to see this movement, it is from a complexity that is really mind-boggling! I am still waiting for a bit more income that will allow me to own a Cyclos. It is a fantastic time piece in my opinion. Read about "IDEA AND HISTORY" here please.

Near 9 o'clock (note, the crown is at 4 o'clock and there are "chew" marks too) you see the marks from the countless openings because part of winning the contest was to adjust the really huge capacitor (at 11:30 or near the lug on the right)

Now you maybe better understand why Quartz watches were the obvious choice in the seventies and why my first RMW purchase (CHF 1700) was Quartz . When the Rolex OysterQuartz was first released in 1976, it was clear that this must be it! A Rolex and with Quartz time keeping accuracy! I was also ogling the Eterna KonTiki but was eventually scared off with what seemed a very expensive watch box. As a student you are very cost conscious and I wanted all my hard earned money to go into the watch and not into the box. Finally I bought the OysterQuartz and was very happy with its precision. This was long before the internet age and I only started taking watch photos in September 2001. Thus there are no pictures of this watch. But google OysterQuartz and I am sure you will find many pictures of it on the web. My first stainless OysterQuartz had a smooth bezel which I eventually replaced with a diamond-cut white gold bezel. Yes, I was still young and I still wanted people to recognize the watch on my wrist.

As a student, you often are the underdog, if you for example want to rent an apartment and you say you are a student, then you are already doomed. Especially in a city (Zurich in my case) with extremely little apartments for rent at very high prices. Same for restaurants. Chef waiters seem to seat nicely dressed people with nice watches consistently better. With Jeans and G-Shock you might end up at that table next to the kitchen pass where again swinging doors and noise will add to your dining experience...

Also the luminous dots on the OysterQuartz' first edition were falling off. A watch worn by a 20 year old better be shock resistant. Wearing it daily for all sorts of sports, even trying to wear it in a Sauna (not recommended LOL! ), the glue of the dots was probably evaporating quickly. The kind watchmakers at Bucherer Bahnhofstrasse replaced the dots twice (read changed the dial) but when one dot got into the date window, I had enough and time had come to buy a Rolex that looked like the impersonation of that brand in the late 70ies, the 2-tone DateJust! My first dial was gold color with black Roman indices, but again, the most kind watchmakers at Bucherer, Zurich Bahnhofstrasse changed it to the dial below for free. Now that fantastic is part of owning a Rolex, I am not sure whether it is still possible today, but in those days, you simply ask for another dial a couple of weeks after the purchase. Also this great service experience should later make me a very loyal customer at Bucherer shops throughout Switzerland.

When I was 22 I bought my Rolex DateJust 2-tone. No, not because someone sponsored it. I had signed an ice-hockey contract with a club closer to where I studied, and thus received an incredible sum - ridiculously small by today's sports salaries standards and immensely large for a poor student in the 70ies - and I guess after the OysterQuartz I now wanted what everybody would recognize as a Rolex immediately. Thus are young people ;)
I had worn the watch for many days and years daily and it certainly got its share of beating! Only thanks to Rolex quality, the watch kept running flawlessly for 25 years. In 2003 I noticed (the watch was now in Thailand for almost 10 years but got very little wrist time because I bought a lot of Japanese watches during my first years here) that the winding mechanism slipped occasionally and had also stiffened. When I turned the crown, it would suddenly slip a quarter of half turn. Obviously the mainspring grease was dried out and I was very happy to have my watch tutor servicing it. Please see the partial service (cleaning of the winding mechanism) here (new window).

This Rolex DateJust bought 1978 had at first a golden dial with black Roman numerals. This is a picture after it had survived almost 2 decades of daily use

For a very long time I had been wearing this Rolex as my daily watch. I remember that a birthday present - a Tissot Rockwatch - was a welcome change as an incredibly light summer watch and I also remember that I once smashed through the Rockwatch with my tennis racket (just clumsiness I guess) and that Tissot fixed it and provided a great customer service. I had been working as an assistant at the Federal Institute of Technology when I suddenly got more and more interested in VAX computers that were the biggest hit then. Thus I applied for a job at Digital Equipment Switzerland and started to work there just in time to experience the "computer boom" of the ending 80ies.

The serious watch buying (note, not collecting, at least as some authors define it) started for me in 1987, when I started working for Digital Equipment. I was not really into watch movements except that I had repaired Quartz clocks when being a boy and then replaced Quartz watch batteries for my many Quartz watches and those of friends. So I was a happy watch customer that bought whenever the watch industry offered something new (I could be qualified as an early adaptor) or whenever my "Japanese watch pusher" at the Langstrasse in Zurich (that is a red light area where many students lived because of the lower rents) received something new from the land of the raising sun. And the watch industry was indeed very exciting during the 80ies. The Quartz shock had been absorbed by the Swiss watch industry - also thanks to great initiatives of people like Nicolas Hayek who e.g. saved Omega from becoming Japanese - and unexpectedly the mechanical watches were booming again.

Many smaller Swiss watch companies had not survived the Quartz era because they were too small to make those big investments such an abrupt technology required. And it was not only about money, it was also about re-training the employees, Suddenly electronics specialists were the hot specialists in an industry that had not changed much in the last 5 decades. Watchmakers were laid off in the late 70ies and when the re-awakening mechanical watch industry needed them again, many had undergone re-schooling into other professions and did not wanted to join a segment of the industry again that had let them down not long ago.

Mentioning all the watches purchased at the time would be like trying to put my private collection picture tables into verbose format. That would be a book project :) One never knows, maybe I find the time to write down all my watch experiences in book form, but then again, who would be interested to hear such personal buying experiences!

Raymond Weil Quartz dress watch with an extremely slim case and one of the most comfortable bracelets, ca. December 1987

I remember that this was the first watch bought with the DEC salary: Raymond Weil, Fidelio, Quartz, gold-plated, extremely thin and very comfortable to wear. Raymond Weil has just started to name the models after famous Operas and I found that the Fidelio name had a very nice ring to it.

Do you think it is crazy that I still remember Saturday May 1st 1989? And just because I got this new SEIKO Quartz Alarm Chronograph with Timer? I remember that I had been working during that weekend (as I preferred to prepare for teaching during the quiet weekends) and that I decided not to go directly to the office on Sunday morning, but test the new SEIKO on a walk around the Greifensee (near Zurich). I still remember it, as it were yesterday. I had been playing with all the functions during the three hour walk and arrived at my destination Greifensee (same name village) and at the train station without noticing much from the beautiful landscape I had just been walking through. Oh well, such are watch crazy people. I waited for the train back to Zurich-Oerlikon and this offered of course more chances to play with the chronograph. Back to the office, I could also use the alarm in order not to forget to go back home. And the timer was useful to see how much time had elapsed since I had been drinking the previous plastic cup of coffee from the coffee machine that was far too close to my office.

First, those were golden years for the computer industry, and secondly I was traveling quite a bit and found sometimes interesting watches on planes or in foreign countries, and sometimes I just bought the watches, because the prizes were just a lot better then at home. Something you might only understand if you also suffer from this "watch buying disease".
For instance, Seiko prizes in Switzerland used to be very high, my first Kinetic cost close to CHF 500 after discount. The same model has dropped to ca. USD 150, street price Bangkok. Of course SEIKO had in the mean time produced Millions of Kinetic calibers (e.g. 5M42) and given part of the production cost reduction back to the customers.

But sometimes I also found great looking watches abroad, like this Seiko Kinetic Arctura Kinetic Chronograph with rubber, steel and ceramic parts. It had a sad life at the bottom of a watch display and was quite dusty, when I found it in a small shop near the famous Nathan road in Hong Kong. The shop owner was very happy to get rid of this "dust catcher" and this SEIKO chronograph became on of my favorites. I had dearly wanted a SEIKO chronograph since the "Jordan" limited edition was presented in Thailand in 1996 and the 5 models available for the country were sold out in 2 days. The next week, the price had doubled for one of those very first "4 eyes" steel "Michael Jordan" special editions.

I also found exciting new watches when traveling (for teaching mostly) inside Switzerland. I also remember this evening so well, I had finished working and it was snowing. Nevertheless I was making a small detour to pass the "Interdiscount" (Swiss equivalent to Radio Shack) shop before I went back to the hotel. Without reading much and asking much, I had bought my first Casio Databank. I expected it to be a calculator only. And I still remember that I my excitement knew no limits when I found out that this watch could store phone numbers and schedules! What a great watch world this is!

Now another interesting stage of watch amassing started: Casio Databank watches! While working at Digital Equipment in the late 80ies or early 90ies, one had to achieve a certain number of "stage" days, total days one was standing in front of a class during a year. I do not remember the exact number, but I remember that Digital Equipment was a great employer that gave employees enough time between courses to pursue personal development and to learn about new products. This might today look like an edgy ugly 80ies watch, but I was wearing this Casio Databank analog-digital many times because it was easy to read (analog time) and because the digital part allowed me to store one full year of teaching courses! And I remember that one of our support staff was so excited to see that I knew all my teaching dates by heart, that he went and bought a Casio for himself. Yes, I am definitely guilty of having spread the "watch virus" many times.

After this unusual long honey moon, I found many excuses to buy Casio Databanks and the madness continued for at least 15 years. This is the explanation for the huge amount of Casios in my collection. Please see the two Casio tables, the first one is here if I stirred your interest.

Back to 1989 to explain a bit more about my first encounter with watch tools. To my 32nd birthday my girlfriend gave me the present that should change my life, literally: a Bally shoe carton full of watch making tools. She went to Zurich's oldest and most renowned tool shop and asked a watchmaker to put together a collection of tools for a "want-to-tinker-with-watches" person. And below is the set she carried home:

I was using them mainly to replace batteries of the Quartz watches for family and friends or resizing bracelets. One Sunday morning in August 1989 I decided to give that bunch of tools a real try. I opened my Head Chronograph which was not running and I had no clue at that time, that I was dealing with a beautiful Valjoux 72 chronograph movement. Every step I had recorded on a A4 sheet, numbered and circled the steps. I simply placed the parts into the circles believing it would all fall in place during assembly with this system. After 3 hours, I had counted around 220 parts. When reassembling the watch, I wished I had made a better description of how those 3 or 4 parts were connected for each step and not simply dumped the parts of whole modules into one circle. But at 3 AM and after 12 hours of trying, tinkering and sweating, the movement was reassembled and the balance wheel began to oscillate after only a couple of windings of the crown. That was a moment, I will not forget till the end of my days and an experience that continued to spur my passion for mechanical and Quartz watches.

However after that first and luckily successful attempt on watch movements, my professional career did not allow me to invest a lot of time to tinker with watch movements. But I clearly remembered that I was convinced, this would be my retirement hobby. However, I had never dreamt, that dealing with watches (in the widest possible interpretation of the term) would become my professional context in only 15 years. In 2002 I had started the "Poor Man's" Watch Corner because I kept buying nice watches while traveling. But I could simply not wear them anymore. I remember the first watches sold were those beautiful 1997 SEIKO 5 Sports Re-issues that would very soon sell-out and after they did, only very few examples were available for a five-fold price (reference watch window in Hong Kong ca. 2003). I sold a few watches to fellow forumners and the business develop very fast. Today the "Poor Man's" Watch Corner is a full-blown website of its own. No, I am not adding a link here to lure you to my shop. This is watch my biography and this is about passion mostly.

After the successful Head Valjoux 72 disassembly and more importantly, assembly, I began to develop an interest for mechanical chronographs, buying them, not disassembling them. I also kept buying Quartz watches and dress watches and about everything that stung my eyes on my many travels. Sitting in a plane is a dangerous place if you are on your own and if there is nobody to talk too. You grab the in-flight shop brochure and there you go again, a level deeper into the watch madness. I bought many watches while flying to a working destination and it was a good thing to do, because on work travels, there are those lonely evenings (CNN and you) where playing with a new watch is definitely a welcome morale booster.

Also analog Quartz watches have gear trains and rotors, but they are so tiny, one really needs great stable hands to get those trains together again. I tried once with a Pforzheimer PUW910 caliber in 2004 and it was one heck of a stress. The experience was no where near the Valjoux 72 experience because I needed all tricks (because I am not a watchmaker, just a tinkerer with lots of curiosity) to get that gear train back together in 3 hours. If you are interested in more detail about this Quartz watch repair, follow this link please (new window).

I continued to work as a technical consultant when arriving in Thailand and continued to travel in Asia for different projects. My daughter was three and a half year old and had been coming into my office after Kindergarten and said "Dad, you travel too much, I want you to be here at home when I come back from school". I replied "OK, you got a deal, I will stop traveling for work for three years and spend a lot of time with you and after three years, we will see and take it from there". That was in Summer 2001 and I kept my part of the deal, although I had traveled to Hong Kong occasionally working on some last IT projects and more and more the motivation for traveling were watches. There is a whole section about watch travelogues on my private collection site. Lastly it turned out that my daughter's request should change my career considerably. Without her intervention I would not work from home today and I would not sell watches and would not run the "Poor Man's" watch forum. Actually, my Administrators run the forum today, of course I am still spending a lot of time there. Because it is a great meeting place for watch friends.

In 2002, I met Rob Berkavicius who had decided to retire in Thailand and I was fascinated by his knowledge about watch movements and the ability to service and fix them if necessary. Also to make watch parts, to adjust, oil and clean, to do about any watch job imaginable. This is a picture of one of his first visits at my home where we looked at his pocket watches (in front of me) and some of my watches in front of him. It was very funny that my daughter immediately brought along most of her children watch collection . The watches are right in front of her and if you look closely you might be able to make them out against the very colorful table cloth.

My daughter immediately came along with her watch collection, a bit hard to see on the colorful table cloth in front of her. Talks with my watch tutor had a big influence on my "watch path" and I became a lot more interested in watch movements

Meeting Rob should change my "watch path" probably for the last decisive turn: I started to look at watch movements rather then watches. Rob was so kind to accompany me to the watch shop and he had also seen my first batch of watch tools and created a list of tools necessary to take it one step further. This is all documented in chronological form on the Watch Tools Overview page (new window). I had after that first long and exciting visit to the watch parts shop several times added more tools to my collection of tools.

Rob was also kind enough to do a "teaching round" on a Chinese Automatic ST-6 movement. We found we better start on an inexpensive movement in case things would go wrong.

Chinese Automatic movement ST-6, my first hands-on servicing experience with my watch tutor

And they did go wrong, as Mr. Murphy sleeps little and is always out there watching that things go wrong! Read all about this first and very adventurous Service experience here. Rob helped me through the various steps (my first chronograph movement I had been tinkering with was a manual wind chronograph) of servicing (including oiling) an automatic movement. To me the most exciting part was certainly the disassembly of the shock protecting and the oiling of the cap jewels.

It turned out that we would have better used a better movement to start with. Interestingly a movement of a higher grade is easier to assemble. The gear train on the next movement I should experience, the A. Schild 1133 manual wind, would almost fall in place by itself while the ST-6 gear train assembly required a lot more work. What was most stressing during the ST-6 overhaul was that the ratcheting wheel of the automatic winding mechanism that flew out and away (if you plan to do watch work, familiarize yourself with a partial life under the table or bench) could not be replaced. The spare ST-6 movements available in Bangkok had already a ratcheting wheel with slightly different dimensions. And it took even Rob quite a while to figure out that the lost ratcheting wheel must have been quite different to the spare ratcheting wheel spare that we bought first. We then had to buy a spare movement and the freshly serviced ST-6 landed in a movement box. Interestingly a fellow WIS in Germany wrote me, that he smashed his ST-6 in a car accident and that he would like to buy my newly serviced ST-6. So I trust my first serviced automatic movement is now happily ticking on a wrist in Germany.

Manual wind movements are always easier to assemble and one of the harder parts of watch assembly (I am not saying that this is true for all the watchmakers, because I am just a watch tinkerer and not a watchmaker) is often the calendar mechanism. Not only because they greatly vary, but also because of the relatively fragile parts and because of the spring loads that need to be correct for the calendar to advance.

The AS 1130 has no date and sub seconds at 6 o'clock. Here is a picture of the nice Royal watch I had found on the weekend market in Bangkok. Since the time I had found this watch the markets have been "grazed down" and good finds are much rarer these days. Ebay proficiency must have been another factor, almost everybody knows these days how to start an auction on Ebay and so it is no wonder that every single day thousands of watches are auctioned and that flea markets are less and less important for watch trading and selling.

Here is the Royal DE LUXE, the inset shows the old crown that was definitely not the original because it was far too small for the watch. Another interesting fact about this watch is that all the surfaces you see from top are covered with a ca. 0.5 mm thick 14 K gold sheet.

Here is a rather crappy shot taken right after the find. Also note that these were my watch photography beginnings and the first digital cameras required a bit of fiddling with light. This shot got too much but it shows well the layer of gold on the front of the watch case.

The AS 1130 is like many A.Schild (Grenchen, Switzerland) movements a very nice clear movement to look at and to work with.

The overhaul of this AS 1130 was easier and much more rewarding then the one of the Chinese ST-6. Also of course because it was my second overhaul experience and many things are a lot easier the second time around

You find two tables of Watch Work reports here on my private collection site. I have separated the works that require a watch tutor or require that you absolved a watch school (e.g. TimeZone.com offers a watch school for serious hobbyists) from those that are basically possible for beginners with manual skills. You need stable hands, patience, peace of mind and a silent working environment. Besides good tools, those are the requirements for better watch work experiences.

I had found this SEIKO together with a couple of Ladies' SEIKOs on one of the strolls through the street markets near Jatujak (weekend market). There is a whole section about watch buying reports in several Asian cities here. It had a great looking dial and was in my eyes, one of the very classic vintage SEIKOs that makes (modest) collector's hearts beat faster. A very nicely recessed crown and a great case make this "Poor Man's" watch a nice addition to my private collection. Even those older SEIKOs go for as little as USD 50 to USD 100, they make very nice collector pieces.

The SEIKO 7002 for which I later found an original bracelet 7005-8022W found outside the weekend market in August 2002

Three years later, my watch servicing skills had improved, so I was able to change the hair spring (balance wheel) and the main spring with original SEIKO parts all by myself. It was also the first movement I serviced without the assistance of my watch tutor. I made one phone call though, I had forgotten on how to open the regulator gate

Once you start servicing movements, you will also start to understand them much better and get a feeling what the parts really do. When assembling this movement, it was suddenly very clear to me how the "Magic Lever" of SEIKO worked. The very same mechanism still at work in most SEIKO movements, e.g. the very popular 7S26 found in most automatic inexpensive models

Whenever I have the time, I am "playing" with my watch tools and fixing watches. In a larger collection, there is always something to repair, a bit like in a big house. The next project planned is to replace all the capacitors of four SEIKO Kinetic 5M42 movements. Besides servicing and fixing some of my own watches, I was also shooting some of Rob's more complicated works, like the servicing of a SEIKO 6138.

One of the photo shoots (where I am photographing and Rob does the watch works) planned is the Citizen Flyback Chronograph 8110. This is a very compact and complicated movement. Often it is not just the question of how the parts fit together that is difficult to see (we are talking non-watch making educated watch autodidacts) but the adjustment of the different levers and spring loads. For a chronograph the correct pressures of all the levers and springs is essential for a good functioning and adjusting a chronograph, now that is something I wish to be able to learn to do as well.

I will sooner or later also need a watch timing machine. Right now I use the iterative watch regulating method where I simply regulate, close the case back, wait 24 hours and then regulate again. Not very efficient, but achieves very good results if time is not an issue. And it will be somehow hard to justify a USD 4000 watch timing machine for a hobbyist. But then hobbyists have always been able to find great reasons to buy new gear. I guess this is almost part of every hobby, to explain to others why one need so many tools and items and stuff.

Thank you for reading so far and I hope you got a bit of that "watch virus" now yourself. Watches are a great hobby and there are so many varieties in which you can enjoy the hobby. And whenever my watch journey makes a significant twist, you will be reading about it here.