WATCH THE WATCH

I like collecting watches—not the expensive luxury watches you’d have to take out a second mortgage to afford. Okay, I confess, I do own two lower-end luxury watches, but all of the others are fairly inexpensive. I like the variety of colors, shapes, and mechanisms.

A few years ago I wore a nice automatic (read self-winding) as my everyday watch. It was a cheap ($85) kind of knock-around timepiece. While on a cruise to the Caribbean, something interesting happened. One of the things I liked to do during the stops in the Islands was to visit the luxury jewelry and watch stores. A guy can dream after all.

During the excursion, while walking with the family to the row of stores, I noticed something about my knock-around watch: the colors popped in the brilliant Caribbean sunlight. The two-tone silver and gold bracelet sparkled, the cobalt blue dial showed brilliantly, and the rotating bezel’s serrated edges stood out in stark detail. It was as if the watch had been dipped in magical waters.
 
Smiling, I entered one of the watch stores. As I settled in and window-shopped luxury watches behind glass cases at prices comparable to those of a small sedan, a salesman came over. We began to talk. After a few moments, he noticed my watch.
 
“Can I see it?” he asked.
 
“Sure.” I took it off and gave it to him.
 
He began to examine it, turning it over and over in his hands, his eyes laser-focused on every detail, from the intricacies of the dial to the clear exhibition back. The longer he looked, the more I could see his friendly salesman grin morph into an angry scowl. He started turning the bezel like a man in the throes of a fever dream. Finally, he returned the watch and walked away.
 
Strange behavior, I thought, then continued my browsing. As I came to a display of a brand whose name rhymes with “tolex,” it hit me. There in the center of the group was my watch.  Well, OK, it looked like my watch. Actually, a lot like my watch. It was then that I realized the salesman, a man who prided himself on his knowledge of watches, had confused my little knockoff for a watch that cost over one hundred times more, and it had galled him to no end.
 
Needless to say, it was a fun shopping trip.

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