People who write about watches tend to skew towards the new, the shiny, the haute.
A bit about me - back when the dinosaurs still roamed the land, I was 25, living in Japan, and just gotten together with the woman I would later marry. It was a beautiful Saturday morning, and I strode into Robinson’s department store in Kasukabe (Saitama-ken) and bought the original version of this Swatch. If you knew me then, you would say that this was a bit out of character for me.
Before moving to Japan I had spent nearly a year and a half struggling to keep myself afloat. I was situationally homeless for a part of that time. When I got the job, I had to come up with about $3,500 (or so) to pay for my flight and have one month's worth of cash to live on until I would get my first pay check.
I sold everything I owned to get there…and that first year I was notoriously cheap. So believe it or not, the 6,000 Yen (less than $60 US at the time) I spent was a big deal. But something told me this was a big moment. Looking back 29 years later, I finally pulled the trigger on that Swatch's replacement, the Twice again.
Watch brands love to try and tug at our psyche, usually with over-priced, instantly forgettable wrist trinkets that will likely be worn for less than a year and discarded as the gift itself held little to no personal connection. With that said, it’s not lost on me that without any marketing efforts, a new $85 Swatch has landed such a visceral sucker punch on me some 29 years later.
Enjoy your watches!
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