By Seth Ahonen
At their core, watches are built to tell the time. But the true gift of these utilitarian pieces isn’t just the function, it’s their ability to contain the stories of their wearer.
Watches can be era-defining, representative of a period of time, certain kind of warfare, or emblematic of an organization’s culture. They have the capacity to carry your life story in an unspoken yet tangible way. You wear them through the good and the bad times, the safe and the dangerous, the times when death seemed imminent or so far away it wasn’t even worth the thought. So, when it finally is your time to buy the farm, it can be inherited by your sons and their sons after them to ensure that story lives on, and to carry their own.
Or you can buy an Apple Watch, if you’re into wearing a Southeast Asia sweatshop-produced, estrogen-infused, portable OPSEC liability disguising itself as a watch.
The Man Makes the Watch
“The man makes the watch, not the other way around” – Watches of Espionage. It doesn’t matter if there’s a $140 Seiko or a $20,000 1985 Rolex GMT Master II Root Beer on your wrist, your decisions and your actions (or inaction) will determine the difference between just another used watch or THE used watch.
The famed 1956 ad campaign doesn’t say that Rolex’s guide the destinies of the world, but that the men who wear them do. Unless of course you’re Paul Newman, in which case your name alone will drive the price up by $20,000-$30,000.
Some watches have been on deployments to the darkest and nastiest depths of a shithole country. They have survived gunfights, dangerous hunts, adventurous fishing trips, been in meetings that changed the course of a company, or maybe were even there when the course of history was put on a new path. Others sat in a safe for 20 years. Do with that what you will.
Let’s Roll
Case in point — Todd Beamer was one of the few men who fought the hijackers of Flight 93 on 9/11 and was killed in the crash. His last words were, “let’s roll.” I’d argue he was the first to set the tone for the next 20 years of punishment the boys would lay down in the Middle East. His Rolex Datejust, however, did survive, now burnt and mangled, frozen in time with the date window still reading “11.” His spirit lives on through that burnt and twisted steel.
Simply put, wear your watch. Regardless of if it’s used as a status symbol, a piece of your culture, to be an heirloom to hand off or an heirloom that was inherited, to encapsulate the memories, or really just to tell the time. It’s not about the watch, it’s about what you did while wearing them. Few people have something that they can legitimately say “this was with me through it all.”
If we are to reclaim what we reminisce about, from a time in society we never got to experience and had stripped from us, I’d maintain that this should be a starting point. Exhuming watch culture up from the unfortunate grave of the materialistic and reviving it back to being worthy of its own history and legacy is vital. Moreover, striving to be the example of the men these things were built for, despite the culture-killing epidemic of the last 15 years.
Physical pieces and reminders of your legacy that can be a part of future generation’s daily lives are not a dime a dozen. With that, an opportunity to speak across generations is not to be taken lightly. Watches grew in value by 27% from 2020 to 2022, and it’s not slowing down. More and more watch-guys are popping up, and the community is growing. These things can do so much more than just tell time; they can carry your stories across it. It’s ironic yet poetic that the thing that reminds people of how quickly that precious resource is escaping from them is encased in one of the very few ways to transcend it.
Wear it. Beat the bitch that is always working against you — time.
