I can be considered a watch newbie, only starting to learn more about the watch hobby after being poisoned by the Orient Bambino (just like how I was poisoned by the Crossroad Mylar into the audiophile hobby).
After reading through the last few pages of this thread, and looking at the advices given to Seannie, I can tell that there are a lot of knowledgeable people here and comparatively less trolls. Looking forward to learning more from you guys!
When it comes to watches, I think that there are 2 main types of people, perfectly personified by me and my FT friend.
I like to get back as much values for my money for my watches, which is different from saying I won't pay much for one. Meaning I'll rather buy a $500 Seiko than a $200 Swatch. A big problem with the watch industry is that alot of the price of a watch goes into marketing, so saying you pay $1,000 for a watch, maybe only $100 is the actual material costs and assembly costs of the watch, the other $900 is the marketing and distributorship, dealership etc that go into building up the brand name. Christopher Ward was disillusioned by this and thus decided to start his own brand and I'm very impressed by his watches though I've yet to own one so YMMV.
My FT friend, on the other hand, just only go for the name. He initially wanted a Tag but I somehow managed to convince him to get a Tudor. He laughed at me when I said I wanted to get a Grand Seiko and a shrouded Seiko because Seiko is a cheap brand. He wants to get an Omega because... duh, it's an Omega, but I want to get an Omega Speedmaster because its movement is good enough for space use. As an investment banker, he said he rather get a famous watch that will impress his clients in a meeting, but I rather get a watch that another watch enthusiast will immediately identify with.
Nothing truly wrong with what type of watch person you are since ultimately it's your own money you're spending but this is just my observation as someone new to the hobby.
