Hello from New Jersey

[Corey986]

So I am technically new to watch collecting. Apparently I was collecting many year ago and didn't know it. I had a few watches, some which I received when my father passed away and one because I was a vary avid scuba/wreck diver in the 90's before my kids were born.

My teenage son who has started collecting watches found a box in a closet at my house which contained my "collection". It had a Citizen ProMaster Dive watch, Rolex President Tridor, a Bulova Accutron, an art-deco vintage watch and a Patek pocketwatch that was re-cased into a wrist watch.

I used to rotate though these watches every day. That came to an end after Sept 11th 2001 when I stopped working in NYC. So they sat in a box which eventually moved from my nightstand to a shelf in my closet. The closest I came to wearing a daily watch was a 1st gen Microsoft band a few years ago, that had to be replaced 3 times and turned me completely off the idea of smart watches.

Now I collect a lot of things. I used to collect cars, now I collect Vintage Computers and technology. I really didn't need to start another collecting hobby, but this is something my son and I can bond over. So we decided which watches he would keep, what I would sell as he sold me on the idea of buying modern watches and wearing them.

So he took my dad's vintage Bulova and the art-deco watch. We had to replace the band on the art-deco watch, the Tourneau crocodile band fell apart. The band was very thin. The crocodile skin separated from the leather backing.

I sold the Rolex which was very dated in look and put the Patek up for auction.

I really wanted another Patek, mostly because only watch guys recognize it is something special. Kind like my GT3, only a Porsche or Car guys know it's special. I did consider an AP ROO, but reading maintenance horror stories pushed me away.

So I purchased a used Patek 5711 Nautilus with the blue dial. I also bought a multi watch winder case. My son then convinced me since I work with vintage technology, a Rolex Milgauss would match my "evil mad scientist" personality. So I picked up a new Z-Blue Milgauss from an AP in Delaware.

I have sent the Citizen ProMaster out for a battery and new seals. It will also need massive polishing since it was a working dive watch for me when I was wreck diving back in the day. It's not the original band, I bought the watch when I lived in Curacao so the band's ND tables were in Metric, but when it wore out I had to replace it with a non-metric band. I loved this watch since it was the version that you could be really lazy and have it collect your dive log by simply hooking it up to a DOS computer. Plus you could spot another diver from the other side of a room because only real divers would bother with a ProMaster you could hook up to a computer.

Anyway I think that's a long enough introduction....

Cheers,
Corey