Watch Radar: Hamilton Jazzmaster Viewmatic Skeleton H42555151

Being among the entry-level brands under the aegis of the mighty Swatch Group conglomerate, Hamilton offers one of the strongest value propositions for those interested in Swiss-made mechanical movements - specifically those made by Swatch's subsidiary ETA - in the sub-$1000 price point.  Last year's Hamilton Intra-Matic - featuring an ETA 2892-2 at a street price of just over $500 - is a prime example of the solid finishing and economy of scale that Hamilton can offer budget-minded mechanical watch fans.

The one design that caught my eye - supposedly revealed at BaselWorld 2013, but sneak-peaked by the good folks at Hodinkee in February - is the Jazzmaster Viewmatic Skeleton, reference H42555151.  It represents a rare opportunity to acquire a skeleton movement - an even rarer (though admittedly somewhat contra-purposed) automatic one at that - with the finishing available from a large watch brand at a suggested retail of approximately $1200.  Applying the usual Hamilton street discount, it's likely to become a Swiss-made skeleton model at or below $1000.

Image courtesy Hodinkee.com.

Image courtesy AceJewelers.com.

As can be seen in these close-up images, the dial appears very attractively designed and well-finished for a mass-production model, with many flourishes - like the Hamilton "H" patterning on the movement plate - that can only be achieved economically by a large-scale manufacturer.  The watch is sensibly sized for dress and casual use at 40mm, and satisfies my personal criteria of being time only - avoiding the annoyance of having to reset date or day windows, or the more arcane knowledge required to set moon phase complications (knowledge that I still do not possess).

While Hamilton calls the movement a Caliber H-20-S, automatic skeleton; its size relative to the case and rotor design lead me to believe it's a skeletonized form of the ubiquitous ETA 2824, albeit a variant that will be exclusive to Hamilton.  (Another perk of being in the Swatch Group is access to exclusive ETA variations, which other Swatch brands like Longines have also enjoyed.)

For my watch box, the new Viewmatic Skeleton is possibly poised to knock the Intra-Matic from its place as my go-to automatic.  My work responsibilities that make the Intra-Matic's date window a convenient evil will conclude at the end of June, and while I've grown to like the Intra-Matic's hour-and-minute-only hand setup, part of the soul of a mechanical movement does lie in the telltale sweep of its second hand.  Only the comparatively larger size - 36mm to 38mm is really the ideal for my 6" wrist - and potential movement downgrade from a 2892 to 2824 give me pause in considering the switch.  I may have to see the watch in person to make the final call.

Watch Primer #13: Building A Watch Collection

As with any hobby that primarily consists of acquiring manufactured goods (and obsessing over said goods), the sky really can be the limit where watch collecting is concerned.  Where money is no object, one can amass a collection spanning styles, manufacturers, eras, and complications, or price tags rivaling luxury cars and even single-family homes.  Few of us can afford to dedicate such resources to a pass time; but the question is, even if we could, would we want to?

For me (and the purposes of the Watch Primer series), the answer to this question stems from the intrinsic characteristics of the watch itself.  The most elemental is this:

You can only wear one watch at a time.

(I've seen videos of the CEO of Omega, Stephen Urquhart, running around Baselworld with a Planet Ocean strapped to each wrist, but given his position in the industry and the context, I think he provides a fitting exception to prove the rule.)

From this first principle comes a corollary that has direct bearing on the size and disposition of your ideal watch collection:

The amount of wrist time each watch enjoys is inversely proportional to the number of watches in your collection.

This might not matter for those watch enthusiasts who, at least in part, collect watches for the same reason that some people collect coins or stamps - that is, for the collection itself.  For those who make it a point to collect every subtle iteration of a particular model, or the rarest examples across a wide range of brands, actually wearing each and every one of the watches in their collection is merely a secondary perk (or, if they're more focused on maintaining the value and condition of the pieces, an anathema).  But it is my contention that the act and practice of collecting always remains a distant second to the actual use and enjoyment of the watches you own.

Back when my collection threatened to overwhelm my 10-slot watch box, I often found that at least half of my watches remained in the stable for months on end.  A couple saw alternating but occasionally infrequent use, while one watch - usually an automatic - enjoyed go-to watch status.  Among those watches perennially confined to the stable was the Speedy Pro - the eventual winner of my "only watch" category - and every time I reach into the box for another model, I would feel a slight pang of guilt at leaving it behind.  Even now, with my collection pared down to four, two of them - the quartz "backup" and "beater" contingent, comprised of a Grand Seiko and a Casio ProTrek - see very infrequent use.  If I weren't so attached to the notion of having a quartz "backup" dress watch and a "backup" chronograph, I could probably stand to pare down those two as well.

The most important thing is to acquire watches that you would be comfortable putting on day in, day out, for the indefinite future.  This determination is to a large degree dependent on context; if your work days see you often donning a suit, then a dress or dressy sports watch would be appropriate.  If your work is more active and less formal, a more casual and rugged watch may be better suited.  The other half depends on your own aesthetic sense - your propensity or disinclination for certain colors, features, or design elements.  Sometimes, the context and aesthetics force a compromise:  my current work-day watch, a Hamilton Intra-Matic 38mm, deviates from my minimalist aesthetic preference with a date window, which, for the purposes of the court documents I regularly deal with, has proven to be a necessity.

Flipping Watches for Fun and (Sometimes) Profit, Part 2

Continuing from where we left off in the last post, here's the info from the purchase and sale of a Japan-only Omega Speedmaster Reduced with sunburst blue dial:

Example #2: Omega Speedmaster Reduced 3512.80
Purchase Price: $1400
Sale Price: $1649

While the net profit from this flip was about the same as the one from the Explorer I, it represents a much larger gain when viewed as a percentage of the purchase price - 17.7%, compared to 6.4% for the Explorer I.  The explanation is that the Reduced "Japan" model is not only discontinued, like the 36mm Explorer I; it was a limited edition of 1,500 that was only sold domestically in Japan.  That limited quantity, coupled with the stunning blue dial that was only available in this particular model, makes potential buyers far more willing to pay top dollar for a used example in good condition.  In this case, the watch was sold on eBay for a Buy-It-Now price, which was another event made more likely by the watch's limited supply.  If it had been a run-of-the-mill 3510 Speedy Reduced, the eventual buyer might have been more willing to risk losing my specific auction by bidding rather than buying-it-now, as he or she could safely assume that another 3510 would be posted for auction again sometime soon.  But the 3512.80 is a rare bird outside of Japan, so the buyer decided not to take any chances and pay the 10% buy-it-now premium - which resulted in a greater overall profit on my end. 

All that being said, this watch sat on the auction block for around a month and a half before the fateful buy-it-now buyer came along.  Its ability to do so was a combination of eBay's monthly free listings quota and my willingness and ability to wait until the right buyer happened upon my listing.  More motivated or impatient sellers are often discouraged by an initial lack of interest, and may aggressively discount in order to attract more people.  This is fine if you're just trying to monetize as soon as you can, but if you're looking to recover more than your initial investment, this is very rarely the way to go.  Slow and steady - if you can afford it - wins the race.

Lessons learned from this transaction:

- Even with the weak dollar/yen ratio these days, you can still manage to profit off of a watch purchased in and shipped from Japan - if it has the right pedigree / limited supply / unique attributes that would make people seek it out over similar mass-produced models.
- Used is (almost invariably) the best way to acquire a watch and flip it for more money down the road.
- Be patient.  If you're realistic in gauging the supply and demand (and, accordingly the appropriate asking price) for your watch, the right buyer will come along eventually.

Next up: a profitable flip on a watch purhased new-in-box.  How was it done?  I'll explain in the next post.

Flipping Watches for Fun and (Sometimes) Profit, Part 1

As I mentioned in my last post, several months ago I started paring down my watch collection to the bare essentials, because, to put it simply, you can only wear one watch at a time.  The watches culled from the herd were posted in the for sale subforum on WatchUSeek and on eBay.  I'd never considered myself a flipper - what many watch enthusiasts who often buy watches only to "flip" them by resale only a short time later - but that's basically what I've become, having sold at least a dozen watches to forum members and eBay buyers. 

The craziest part is that, when everything is tallied up, I've actually made back more money that I spent on the watches in the first place.

This is about as far from the norm as flipping can get.  Most of the time, flipping a watch will net you only a fraction of the price you've paid for it.  It's simple supply-demand economics: why would someone buy a watch - a preowned one, for that matter - from you when they can get a brand-new one straight from the source?  The most straightforward answer is "because they can get it from me for a whole lot cheaper."

But offering prospective buyers a good deal entails more than undercutting the retail price.  The supply-demand ratio of the piece - whether it's discontinued, a limited edition, or just a highly sought-after model - is the ultimate arbiter of what kind of price you can realistically expect to get.  All the watches that managed to bring home more than I spent on them had some sort of supply limitation that only amped up their demand - and enabled me to sell them at an aggressive price.

Example #1: Rolex Explorer I 114270
Purchase Price: $3570
Sale Price: $3800

Several things converged to enable this profitable flip to take place.  First, the 114270 was discontinued and replaced with the 39mm 214270 model - a model that has gained infamy for its stunted hour and minute hands.  Second, I picked up the watch preowned - a common necessity for discontinued models, unless you come across old-new stock - which meant that I paid considerable less than Rolex's bloated retail price.  Third, this particular watch had an extremely recent serial number that pegged its production in the year directly preceding the discontinuing of the model, which made it attractive to those who were interested snagging a 36mm Explorer I that was as close to new as possible.  These factors, coupled with the brand attraction that Rolex exerts on a significant portion of the watch enthusiast market, enabled me to price the Explorer competitively at $4000 - and find a buyer within 24 hours of posting.

Wait a minute, you say - if the buyer paid $4000, how come the sale price I listed is only $3800?

The cost of doing business - specifically, shipping/insurance costs, and PayPal fees - reduced the $4000 to a little over $3800.  You have to account for those costs if you want to make an actual profit on the flip.

The lessons learned from this transaction:

- People will pay well for discontinued models, if they're popular and/or rare enough.
- If you buy the watch used to begin with (and at a bargain price), it's far easier (but not necessarily easy, per se) to recoup or make a profit over your original investment.
- People love a Rolex.  I've only had one watch sell faster than this one, and it was priced to be a steal.

Next time: the resale value of a limited edition Omega only sold in Japan.

Watch Principle #1: No matter how many you own, you can only wear one at a time.

A lot has happened with regard to my personal watch collection since the last Watches-To-Wear post in July.  I've been reexamining my needs based on the axiom in the title of this post:

No matter how many watches you own, you can only wear one at a time.

There is a very narrow exception to this rule (which some might say proves it) with regard to Presidents and CEOs of watch companies, and even then only while attending an international watch convention or press event.  (Example: President of Omega Watches, Stephen Urquhart, in this 2011 interview with ABlogToRead.com's Ariel Adams.)  So for those of us who aren't tasked with running a major watch brand, one watch is the most we can expect to be able to wear at any given time without looking as odd and out of place as a businessman walking around with multiple cellphones - or worse, a Bluetooth headset in each ear.

When my collection was at its largest, I'd often find myself feeling guilty when selecting my watch for the day at how much money's worth of timekeeping steel I left sitting neglected in my watch box.  The notion of paring down the collection to a single watch - essentially becoming one of those blessed individuals for whom  one watch is all they've needed, or even conceived of needing - has always held a strong attraction to my minimalist, form-and-function-over-frivolity aesthetic.  So I decided to cull through the collection the same way that Immortals cut through one another in the Highlander franchise: repeating the mantra "There can only be one."

The Omega Speedmaster Professional 3573.50 eventually proved to be the MacLeod of this contest, besting a Rolex Explorer I 114270, Omega Seamaster 2253.80, Omega Speedmaster Reduced 3510.82, Stowa Marine Original, Xetum Tyndall, and, at the end, a Nomos Tangente Gangreserve to be the last mechanical wristwatch standing.  While the Speedy Pro's complexity as a chronograph and sporty-if-classically-so aesthetic technically disqualifies it as a dress watch, its near-ideal dial proportionality and understated color scheme make it suitably universal, especially in a day and age where most onlookers would have trouble telling whether one's shoes are oxfords (aka balmorals) or blutchers (aka derbys).  (The distinction lies in the "throat" of the shoe - closed-throat lacing for oxfords, considered more formal and classically paired with suits, and open-throat lacing for blutchers, considered more informal and classically paired with more casual trousers or even jeans.)

Despite my aspiration to become a one-and-only-watch person, I'm still too contingency-minded to not keep a handful of spare timekeepers on hand, just in case.  Quartz movement watches are well suited to the backup role, given their accuracy and ease of maintenance.  The Citizen Stiletto AR3010-65A, whose hour-hand-and-minute-hand-only minimalist dial and slim profile qualifies it as a quintessential dress watch, was my choice for primary backup quartz.  Its black-dialed counterpart, the AR3010-57E, along with a completely blacked out version, the AR3015-53E, can still be found on Amazon.com.  It remains one of the least expensive watches I know of that includes a scratch-resistant sapphire crystal, rather than the more scratch-prone mineral crystals typically found on watches at its price point.

I've also retained a digital quartz watch as a backup chronograph and "beater" watch, in the form of a Casio Protrek PRX-2000T-7JF, which is a Japan-only version of the popular Pathfinder "ABC" - Altimeter, Barometer, Compass - watches.  The Casio Pathfinder PAG240-T7CR uses the same module and retains the same functionality at a fourth of the price.

The moral of story is to keep your watch collection from getting out of hand by remembering the inescapable truth that, no matter how many watches you own, you'll only be able to wear one at a time.  Therefore, the more watches you own, the less time, proportionally speaking, each of them will spend on your wrist.  When you expend considerable resources - some might say too many - on the watches in your collection, the notion that most of them will spend much of the day sitting quietly in your watch box (or worse yet, collecting dust on your counter top or languishing forgotten in a desk drawer) should give you pause.

Next time, I'll talk about how I managed to "flip" the watches that I pared from the collection - even making a slight profit on a few of them.

Watches on Sale: Timex Weekender Central Park T2N656KW with Steel Bracelet

This Timex Weekender Central Park T2N656KW with steel bracelet is an absolute steal on Amazon.com at just over $25.  I've written about the virtues of the Timex Weekender series before, but I never got a chance to discuss the steel bracelet at length.

Despite the misleading review on Amazon, the Central Park bracelet is adjustable via the usual push pin system you find in many watch bracelets.  They are a bit stiff to remove at first, but the fineness of the bracelet's links make it one of the most adjustable on the market, and its straight lugs means it'll fit any watch with a 20mm lug width.  The bracelet alone is worth the price of entry, so don't miss out on this great deal!

Watch Brand Review: Bathys Hawaii

This installment of the Watch Brand Review takes a break from the big names in the watch industry to examine a boutique brand that has been near - both figuratively and geographically - to my heart: Bathys Hawaii.  Besides bearing the distinction of being the only watch brand headquartered in Hawai`i - specifically the island of Kaua`i - Bathys's six-year history offers both as an example among small watch companies and a few important object lessons in business management, pricing, marketing, and building and maintaining relationships with the watch collecting community as a whole.

Identity

Bathys draws on its Hawaiian locality for both the tone of its watches and their intended functionality: solid, well-designed and dependable timepieces for active, outdoor lifestyles at reasonable prices.  Its dials are eminently legible and well-known for their bright luminosity. Their cases are PVD-coated, rendering them more scratch resistant than untreated stainless steel.  And along with the "Hawaii" on their dials, each watch's caseback features an engraving of the Hawaiian Islands, a nice touch that firmly reinforces their association with surfing and beach-going culture, as well as an island lifestyle.  That, along with the accessibility of the brand's owner, John Patterson, on various watch fora and social media, makes Bathys a solid contender for a take-anywhere everyday watch.

As a relatively young homegrown business, however, Bathys has inevitably made a few misteps along the way.  The largest in my opinion was its attempt to market its watches in brick-and-mortar stores like Ben Bridge.  On the face of it, the move was a logical one in order to increase availability and awareness of the brand beyond online watch enthusiasts.  The maneuver, however, came with a retailer-imposed price markup that  saw even the online prices of Bathys watches increase by over 40%.  This severely damaged the value proposition that had up until that point been one of Bathys's most salient selling points, and served to estrange the brand from some of its established consumer base.

In addition, supply has been an issue for a company that lacks the financial and logistic resources of larger brands.  Most of Bathys's watch lines have been out of stock for more than a year, and some of its special offerings - such as watches with a unique ultraviolet PVD coating or gorgeous mother-of-pearl dials - have either been discontinued outright or out-of-stock with no plans for reproduction yet on the horizon.

Yet despite these difficulties, Bathys continues to enjoy strong support among its loyalest followers in the watch enthusiast community, sentiments only bolstered by their recent return to their original prices and departure from brick-and-mortar retailers.  Once it is able to restock its online store's inventory (with another shipment of watches estimated to arrive in June 2012), Bathys will attempt to offer one of the strongest price-value ratios available.

Design

Bathys watches are designed with durability, dependability, and ease of use firmly in mind, with legible dials, PVD-coated cases, and domed sapphire crystals.  Every model uses a Swiss-made movement, and offers the 200m (roughly 100 fathoms) water resistance that allows them to brave the waves as easily as they do more terrestrial adventures.

With men's models ranging between 41mm and 48mm in diameter, Bathys watches are robust tool watches in keeping with the modern trend toward larger sizes.  After years of anticipation, Bathys now also offers a fitted bracelet for its 100F and Benthic models, in both silver and black PVD, albeit not through their web store but a separate checkout system direct from the bracelet's manufacturer.

Functionality

Bathys' offerings are straightforward and easy to use, yet its original and flagship line, the 100F, cuts a classic enough profile to not seem out of place peaking out beneath a dress shirt cuff.

Like many smaller watch brands who relied on ETA-produced mechanical movements, Swatch Group's decision to cut back on the availability of those movements forced Bathys to turn to other suppliers, like Selita.  While this change in sourcing doesn't have any significant impact on the performance of their watches, those hoping to acquire a Swiss-made watch utilizing ETA's workhorse movements may need to turn elsewhere (including Swatch brands like Tissot and Longines . . . which may have been Swatch Group's intent from the onset).

Conclusion

When I began this review, I fully intended to catalog Bathys Hawaii's triumphant return from the dual purgatory of the brick-and-mortar sales model and lackluster web store inventory.  I had been eyeing their basic 100F Quartz model as my pick, as it is the most accessible piece and a great rough and tumble watch with a reliable Ronda movement.  (One quirk of the big-date function did pop up upon further research, though: the date continues to cycle beyond 31, to 32, 33 . . . all the way to 39.  So at the end of every month, you have to advance the date to begin again at 01.  To me, that's a deal breaker.)

However, a slew of inventory delays and - most recently - a lack of responsiveness from the team at Bathys has eroded the last of the good will I had nurtured for the company.  The issues with their quartz movement, the uncertain supply issues with their automatics, and a general lack of communicativeness when it comes to restocking, inventory, and even which of their models they intend to restock - or when - just outweigh the novelty factor of having the Hawaiian Islands engraved on your caseback or buying from a "local" company  . . . who has their watches built and shipped to them from Switzerland.

The Bathys concept and business model might work for some people, but the quality is in the execution.  Sadly, in terms of dependability - both in the products it produces, and the people who run it - Bathys falls short of the mark.

My pick: Reluctantly, avoid.