My Watch Story – Part 2

The SKX

Everyone needs an SKX. At least, that is what I was told. Sooner or later, every person who dives into the world of automatic watches will encounter the SKX. Whether it is just seeing one posted online or on someone’s wrist. After my discovery of what a mechanical watch actually was, I was diving deeper into them. Through the usual channels of modern watch education (YouTube, Google etc) I decided I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Browsing through the recently discovered watch sale forums I found the one for me. I settled on the SKX173. The 173 is the square indices version of the SKX007.

Now, if you expected to get through the rest of this story without me returning to my watch-stupidity…you’re wrong. I bought the SKX173 used and when it arrived, I was aware of the “Seiko shuffle” to get it going. I shook it from side to side and watch the hands spring to life. But now I needed to set the time. Here is where my stupidity returns. I’m sitting there, trying my darndest to get the crown to pop out. After about 2 minutes of trying, I decide to get the pliers. I’m convinced this guy sold me a junker, but I wanted to set the time. Pulling with the pliers I still can’t get the crown to come out. I’m about to give up when I see the crown turn a little after all my tugging. Light bulb. You heard it here first, I had no clue what a screw down crown was.

Get Educated

At this point, I have decided that I can’t just “wing it” when it comes to watches. I need to learn. Diving into everything I could find from Wikipedia articles to blogs and more I learned everything I could. I educated myself on brand history, movements, straps and tourbillions (still don’t know what they really do). Oh, and I also learned what a screw down crown does.

Throughout all of my research I also discovered the best resource of all…other watch people. Participating in forums, the watches subreddit and other channels I learned a lot. The only downside to all of this was discovering the inevitable snobs, but they are easy enough to ignore. The amount of exploration and discovery you can do on a website like Watchuseek is mind boggling. I found more cool watches on there in a week than I did in the previous three decades of my life (aside from the Spiderman watch of course).
In the middle of all this, I found what would become one of my most treasured watches. The Oris Aquis. Tune in again to the next episode to see how I got this watch and why it means so much to me.