Watch Purchase Stories

[mnl]

ok hopefully this doesn’t turn too long haha

i’ve always loved watches, i’ve worn one every day since i can remember and even before that i was wearing watches. but i never owned any high end watches, could never afford them. most “recent” (probably over 5yrs each except the last) ones i had were a nike, then oakley, then citizen, finally apple watch. so 2017 comes around, i graduate college and manage to get a dream job. so in the back of my mind i started to think about replacing the apple watch with something nice, start doing some more serious research.
in december i get back from visiting my family for the holidays and start going even deeper into research and lots of visiting all the watch shops in sf seeing all my options, but i was having a hard time finding something that i actually really liked and that fit my small wrists. original plan was to not spend too much, maybe like $6k, but then i somehow decided to look into AP and Patek. the nautilus didn’t really do it for me, but the aquanaut seemed super nice (but i quickly discarded it cause of the “10 year waitlist” the local AD mentioned), but the royal oak was super interesting to me. and as a bonus, i my dad had left me his collection when he died 2 years before and one of the watches was a (fake) royal oak. so the idea of getting a real one seemed pretty cool to me. but no local AD and it was $18k so well over double my planned spend. plus i kept reading the 41mm wore huge!
but i kept looking, and found a used 34mm gold from the 80s i could try on, and i think that sealed the deal and got me hooked. few months pass and i discovered an AD about an hour out of the city so i rented a car and visited. luckily they had both a 15400 and a 15450 for me to try on, as i thought the 41mm was too big, but the 37mm fit perfectly! so after all these months of trying all the watches imaginable i finally found one that i loved AND it fit me! so i did some more thinking and decided to call up the BH boutique to see about availability. they said it should be doable, they can get it in two months. “really?” “yes, you just need to put a deposit and finish payment before receiving it” so i kinda froze for a second, then they ask if i’m in and i kinda just went with it not thinking much more and said yes, but could we please delay delivery for one month so i can fly down to pick it up. they say sure and transfer me to make the first payment. and that was it, in the end i was sure i loved the watch, and while it was a lot more money than i initially thought i’d spend, it was going to a “safe” watch that wouldn’t lose as much value as most watches (potentially even appreciate instead). so a few months pass, i fly down to san diego to meet up with my cousin, we rent a car and have a week long road trip all the way back up to sf stopping along the way to pick up my new watch.
suuuuper lucky i managed to get in just before the big explosion in demand, few years later and no regrets, i love this watch and wear it every day.
if you made it this far, thanks for reading hahaha i never wrote this down before, maybe i rambled too much


tldr: looots of research over a few months late 2017 early 2018, placed order around march/april, picked up in june