Hi all,
New to the forum, always nice to write a introduction of course.
Nick, Dutch but living in Belgium. born in 1986, working for a wholesale company in designer fragrances and cosmetics.
I've had a watch tick for quite some time already.. spent most of my younger years buying the ''designer'' watches every few months or so.
But of course reading and dreaming about higher ''swiss'' quality watches.
Untill about 2-3 years ago, when i dumped another heavilly damaged boss/tommy/guess/diesel watch into my drawer onto the pile, thinking whilst looking at it.. damn this could have been a nice decent swiss watch all together.
So that is where it all began for me.
I already had one love fixated in my mind, which was the ceramica XL diastar from Rado.
Bought it 1 week after the birth of my son, to celibrate and preserve it till he will be 18. ( i'd like to think that's a nice tradition )
Photo of my beloved Rado, taken in Slovakia on a business trip.
Quite soon after i travelled to Cape town in South Africa for business and i came across a Ingersoll with a open heart at a local watch shop.
Ingersoll, according to them was a prestige German brand, and was overpriced, 1200 euro !!! offered them 300 euro on the spot but they refused.
Upon landing ( i like to travel using the Dusseldorf airport in Germany ) i bought it there for 220 euro, quite a difference !
Nothing special, just liked the look back then.. of course it's a Chinese watch with marketing around it.. but ok, just for the change of it.
It's a desk piece, since it was a spurr of the moment purchase, never really wear it.
Back in 1997 my mother gave my father a Seiko kinetic arctura, which is known and feared for it's capacitator dying out.
The bracelet which is a rubber strap with metal decorating on it also tends to break down quite a lot. ( at least with my father it did )
After numerous new rubber straps and services it died in 2005 after condensation was detected, according the watch maker it was a very expensive service and my dad left it.
8 months ago i found it in a drawer at my parents whilst looking for some documents and thought to myself i will fix this watch completely for his birthday.
And so i did. Did some research, doubted to do it myself, but shipped it to the UK where a man called Paul did a really fabulous job on it.
Restored the mechanism, new glass, complete metal limited edition seiko arctura strap and ofcourse polished it completely.
My father gave me his watch after 2 weeks, since the effort i put into it finding out where, how etc. was magnificant in his eyes, so i deserved to wear it according to him.
Since my girlfriend was also in the ''designer spiral'' i decided, after she requested an Ice watch ( brrr ) to give her a Rado Jubilé for her birthday last year.
Lovely couple aint it
Aaaaand now, the creme the la creme, and ofcourse meant for this forum !
I've had my eyes on a breitling for quite some time already, feared the ''in your face'' look quite a bit.. but after a lot of thinking i decided to go for it.
Last week i've purchased my first Breitling, a Navitimer heritage with blue dial and loving it ever moment so far !
So, as you can read from the above, got a small watch tick
Next up on the bucket list for me the Tag heuer cal.17 rs.
And for my girlfriend a Rolex datejust OR a rado diastar ceramica ( like mine but smaller ) havent decided yet.
