Today I want to talk about something that is prominent in the photo and video content but has been lacking in writing for the website. This topic is watches.

I have been a collector in some form for going on around 10 years. I have enjoyed a lot of different types, makes, and models of watches over the years at various price points. I am someone who falls into what I find is becoming a more prominent segment of the watch world: the budget end of the spectrum.

Previously, the most expensive watch I have owned cost me around $3,000.00. It was an Omega Seamaster Aqua Terra. I bought this watch at a time when I truly could not afford spending that kind of money on a luxury item. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the watch while I had it. As is sometimes inevitable, however, it was destroyed during some training I was doing at the time. The watch was smashed into a door frame, which shattered the crystal, damaged the dial, and ultimately caused damage to the movement.

I was gutted. I looked at the cost of having the watch repaired, and it simply was not feasible. I ended up selling it for $500 to a friend who was in a better position to take on the project, and that was the end of the Omega for me.

At that point I decided that spending that much money on a watch was not the right move for me. It was not worth the heartbreak of losing something I had built memories with and had a good chance of destroying. This created a shift in my mindset and my collecting habits. I set a hard spending limit of $1,500 or less for any watch purchase, and I have stuck to that ever since.

Fast forward seven years, and I have stayed true to that rule. Careers have changed, life has changed, and my tastes have changed. In that time I have had well over 100 watches come and go from my collection. I have worn pieces from Longines, Hamilton, Seiko, Zelos, Elliot Brown, Erebus, Smiths, Watchdives, Laco, San Martin, and many others.

For two years, my main watch was a Laco Aachen 42. It was a beautiful pilot-style watch with good lume, good timekeeping, and the durability to handle my normal life. I met my wife at the end of 2020 while wrapping up my previous line of work, and this was the watch on my wrist at the time.

Over the next year I experimented with a lot of different types of watches and never really settled on a main go-to piece. Around Christmas, roughly a year into my relationship with my now-wife, we agreed we were comfortable buying each other a slightly more expensive gift. For the first year we had kept gifts under $100.

While shopping for family Christmas presents, we stopped at a small watch kiosk in a mall that I had dealt with before. We happened across one of the updated Seiko 5 Sports Divers, the SRPD63. They pulled it out of the case, I tried it on, she liked the green dial and rose gold accents, and the decision was made.

We bought it, had the bracelet sized, and it went straight onto my wrist, where it proceeded to stay for the next three years.

If I have one watch that tells a story, it is this one. The crystal, bezel, bracelet, and case all show signs of hard use and wear. This was the watch on my wrist while planning our wedding in 2022, while taking engagement photos, and even on our wedding day. It is a piece I will never be able to get rid of because there are simply too many memories attached to it.

Around the fall of 2024, I decided I wanted to start trying different watches again and give the SRPD63 a bit of a break. At one point I had around 50 watches in my collection. It became overwhelming. I had experimented enough to understand what I liked and what I wanted, so I sold most of them off and kept only a handful.

Around Halloween of 2025, I had what turned out to be my second stroke at the age of 33. Thankfully, I have no long-term effects from it, but it was still an incredibly scary experience. I spent eight days in the hospital, much of that time alone with my thoughts—and, ironically, with my Seiko SRPD63 on my wrist.

I spent a lot of time reflecting. I thought about what I was doing right and wrong as a husband, uncle, brother, and son. I thought about my watch collecting, my EDC gear, and what I had accomplished in life versus what I still wanted to accomplish.

When it came to watch collecting, I decided I had let it go too far. I sold off a large portion of my collection and made a commitment that I would not allow it to grow beyond nine watches again. I also realized I had spent too much time kicking rocks over what I wanted as a daily watch.

At the beginning of 2026, I kept two dive watches, two GMTs, a GADA watch, a field watch, and a few chronographs. I spent the first six months of the year testing them out as daily watches and eventually decided that a GMT was the best fit for my life.

That decision sent me down another rabbit hole. I tried a Certina, a Seiko 5 Sports GMT, a Seiko Field GMT, a Citizen Eco-Drive GMT, a Mido, a Timex, a Tissot, and a Seiko Presage GMT.

Every one of those watches was great, and I do not think anyone would be disappointed spending their money on them. During that process, however, I realized a few things. First, I had grown tired of rotating bezels. Second, I wanted something on the smaller side, ideally 40 mm or under. Finally, while I believe quartz watches are the best option for most people due to their accuracy, durability, and lower maintenance requirements, I still enjoy a good mechanical watch.

I ultimately decided on the Seiko SSK023. It checked every box for me: a 39.4 mm case, a 47.9 mm lug-to-lug measurement, Seiko’s in-house 4R34 movement, 100 meters of water resistance, and a very wearable 13.6 mm thickness.

I ended up giving the one I had been testing to a friend, so I began searching for another. I reached out to a few dealers and friends in the secondary market. One of them told me he had received a White Dial SSK059 and had it available at a good price.

I had seen the white dial models before. They originally started as Japan-only releases before eventually making their way to the U.S. Earlier in the year they were difficult to find, and I was too cheap to pay the import tariffs to bring one over from Japan, so the idea had stayed in the back of my mind.

I told my buddy Theo to box it up and send it my way, along with a San Martin Diver GMT he had in stock. The watches arrived, and the SSK059 quickly became my choice for a long-term daily watch. It is an awesome watch.

So, with all of that being said, I want this article to serve as a reminder to new collectors, old collectors, and everyone in between: you can get an awesome watch that will last a long time, take abuse, and build incredible memories with for a relatively inexpensive price.

You do not need to spend Rolex, Omega, Tudor, AP, or Patek money. If you can and want to, more power to you. A watch is a tool. Use it as such. Build stories and memories with it.

Buy what you can afford. Do not go into debt for this tool. Buy, wear, and enjoy what you like. If someone judges you for the watch on your wrist, they are probably not someone you would want to associate with anyway.