This page is more or less obsolete, since it's hard to maintain (I have to ... gasp ... edit HTML by hand). Look at my Pinterest page for a replacement.
| Long-time fave | |
| Citizen BM 8180-03e A thorough-seeming search of Citizen yielded nothing that met all my criteria ... until October 2005. MSRP is $135, which is reasonable; better yet, it seems to go for about half that on “the street”. I have succumbed. It's an “Eco-Drive”, which means it's solar-powered and hence don't need batteries. |
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I put up with 
this for a while ... but the fail
got to me. It quickly refused to set itself via WWV, which was
sort of the whole point.
I used to own the Wenger Swiss Army watch below -- I bought the Victorinox first but was unsatisfied with it because it's mechanical, and hence very inaccurate. Then I bought the Wenger, and sold the Victorinox.
These were my criteria. I didn't start out with so many, but I kept adding to them to reduce the number of watches I had to consider.
(I like this
watch otherwise) (I'd never own a Rolex, but this site
does
describe a fun, nerdly GMT watch); Phil Greenspun suggests
the Seiko SLT009 ... my God, it's ugly
Surprisingly few watches meet these exacting criteria. Here are notes about my search for such a beast on the Web. (These days, Amazon is by far the best way to search.) I started my search from Google directory and here and here.
Most of these sites are astonishingly poorly designed -- they require Flash, Java, and other bullshit.
These guys have some gorgeous mechanical watches.
Timefactors has some nice, cheap, military-style quartz watches.
Since I indeed seem to like military-style watches: Broadarrow seems to be the place to go. Some of the nicer watches there are from Marathon.
Here's a particularly nice one:
The glow-in-the-dark markings are
radioactive. Smith and
Wesson, apparently, sell similar ones.
Stocker and
Yale
seem to be another big name:
In fact I used to own this ... but sold it, because it's not
particularly bright. I was surprised when I first got it that
the glow-in-the-dark bits weren't brighter; stuff on the web
made me think it'd be at least as bright as the ordinary
glow-in-the-dark watch is when it's been outside. But in fact
it's much dimmer than that, but much brighter than that same
glow-in-the-dark watch after
it has been in the dark for a while.
This guy seems even more fanatical about military-style watches than I am.
This site (pmwf) has many gorgeous -- indeed, bordering on the pornographic -- pictures of various watches, mostly mechanical
A how-to-buy-a-watch page
For what it's worth, most of these are Swiss. Wonder what that means.
Relatively decent web site. Alas, no links to dealers, and the on-line ordering page was so hard to find that I didn't even notice it until about two months after I started looking. Lucky for me I bought it from eBay instead; it was cheaper that way.
Ok, here is a catalog from a Swiss site; here's another.
 
Commando 70145 $170 35mm? (Hee hee -- I paid $116 for mine; got it from some guy in Bulgaria(!)) That image on the left is odd -- the number “10” on the rim is directly above the logo, whereas the image on the right (and my watch) has, more reasonably, the number “60” up there. I have a sinking feeling that this model isn't available in North America -- This page didn't show it. This and this have many Wenger models, but not this one. A Google search for “wenger 70145” turns up lots of hits, none of them in North America. Here and here are some typical hits. One feature I've not seen before: the day-of-the-week wheel has not seven, but fourteen labels: each day has both an English and a (I guess) French abbreviation, and at midnight the wheel turns over not one, but two clicks. Thus the same watch can be sold in French- and English-speaking areas. Every morning, from about midnight to 2:00AM, the day-of-the-week wheel shows the French day. Around 2:00 it reluctantly snaps into the English day. |
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This image is roughly life-size when you've got 100 pixels per inch Swiss Army "Infantry Automatic", catalog number 24695 This is the one that I bought and then sold, because I wasn't aware when I bought it that automatic means mechanical :-(. It was typically twenty seconds fast per day. (My cheap Casio is off maybe one second per day.) As of June 1 2003, I think I've thoroughly searched the Swiss Army web site, and so I'm pretty sure this is the only watch they have that meets my criteria. http://www.swissarmy.com/Watches/This is the closet quartz equivalent -- no day-of-week indicator. Self-winding: it doesn't need a battery. The back is glass, so you can see the innards. List price appears to be $400, but webjeweler.com offers it on eBay for $263. Lots of dealers, including online. |
They claim to have dealers in many US cities, but cleverly omit their names. Closest city with a dealer appears to be San Francisco.
Princeton Watches claims to carry the full line.
The following models seem to be going for $300 - $400 on eBay
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Fortis
pilot professional automatic day / date
I hope it's not that big in real life
595.18.41 $495
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Fortis
spacematic day/date
623.22.11 $650 I couldn't find a picture of the model I want, but I assume it's the left-hand watch with the right-hand strap. This leads me to believe that this is a purely mechanical watch. This place wants $650 for it. |
The web site is cleverly designed so that you cannot link to individual watches.
Not many dealers carry these ... The Museum of Modern Art 's store (I'm too tired to type in the whole URL) has the classic one, which has a white dial and no day of the week. $150.
Essentially no hits on eBay.
Mwatch A133.20886.03 or M7607.101. A132.30300.11SBB is also nice.
“Sport” category. Doesn't look like you can get a non-metal strap. |
Something similar |
The “Swiss Railway Watch”. As such, no numerals, but it's still pretty cool. Model A667.30300.14SBB has day and date. |
Junghans atomic. The web site sells on-line. Shows only the month number and day number (not the spelled-out day of the week), but hey, it sets itself from WWV! $99 |
Got a silly picture of a fish on it, but hey, it's only $55 Apparently you can recharge the battery without removing it, by using induction, presumably the same way my rechargable toothbrush works. |
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I'm somewhat confident this is the only Timex -- their site is reasonably well-designed, and I searched for "analog Arabic day". $40 |
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Shame about the metal strap, but the web site gives the vague impression that it might be replaceable. |
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Web site is painfully Flash-heavy, but does allow searching.
I have no reason to believe that I could get a non-metal strap. |
Gaah. I just (January 2004) discovered a
bunch of Seiko watches
that look perfect, except they
appear to be mechanical ... oddly cheap for mechanical
watches (about $75) ...
Here
is a similar quartz one. Oddly, it's a lot more expensive
than the mechanical equivalent.
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| Amazon has something similar. |
Chronosport
GC2000
The right idea, but: $900! (And those numerals are pretty goofy.) |
A “Tutima”. $1000. Nice to look at, but you could buy a car
for that much money, and it violates the Texas Belt Buckle Bezel
rule.
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There's a part of me that drools over many of these (I guess that would be the salivary gland part) but none is quite right (e.g., this one lacks the day of the week). They look expensive, too. |
Goofy, mostly, and an infuriating web site.
Goofy.
I couldn't find a web site, although a number of dealers sell them. Didn't find anything I loved.
I can no longer remember why I bothered writing down the name of this manufacturer.
Couldn't find a web site for the manufacturer; the above link is to an amateurish store
Yup, they brand watches too.
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This
isn't bad, but I wish it had digits:
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Swatch “Almost Black”, catalog number GM718 URL is too painful to recover; their site is unspeakably hard to use $40 (yup, one-tenth the price of the Swiss Army watch) This is the only watch on this page that I've beheld in the flesh (apart from the ones that I ordered) ... What don't I like about it?
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This is all kind of depressing -- what if this is really my motivation?
The "Kinetic" line appears to be a self-winding watch with a quartz movement -- a very appealing idea; I don't think any other maker has this. Apparently not sold in the U.S.
RD213AX9 is close (and it's self-winding), except its dial is white.
Just for the sake of having a picture, here's another
Kinetic model:
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