missF wrote: ↑Thu Oct 19, 2023 9:03 pm Back off! I told him - this is MY rabbit hole I couldn’t have coped with being mansplained to about watches, by someone I introduced to watches

Priceless!

^^^ The other difficult question is when someone points at one of my watches and asks how much it cost…
‘I’m not telling you’ is the only possible answer.
Must be emphatic

I actually have/ own 8 watches now for maximum points name them

My mother in law once asked me how many watches I own!

IIRC my reply made a reference to women and shoes and handbags.

Neil

missF wrote: ↑Thu Oct 19, 2023 7:39 pm
Well, 50 is the new 20. Years, that is. And my watch box is the new three-watch-every-base-covered collection

This should really be posted as a "misread thread",but I initially thought it said " a three storey watch box.."

Must go to the optician.

When I go to the pub, for a covert pint. My phone, oddly, rings after the first swig. My friends call it ‘The froth call’ meaning that as soon as I’ve supped…she calls! Mrs Gar787 is like that with my watches. It’s a proven truth…I’ve bought some fabulous watches that I truly love, but if she shakes her head, they’ve gotta go…and she really doesn’t have a Scooby-do when it comes to watches…but they do invariably go. The divorce will cost me a fortune…can anybody help me? Lindsey? I’m bereft.

Amor Vincit Omnia wrote: ↑Thu Oct 19, 2023 8:35 pm Am I unique in being adrift in the Philistine Sea, or do others find themselves in a similar situation?

I operate mostly solo in the watch world. My sons, now out of their teens, are mildly interested while my wife is mildly annoyed. I’ve one friend who owns a Wimbledon, which his wife got him as a retirement gift. It’s his only watch and other than it’s a Rolex he doesn’t much know or care about watches. Dad liked watches but didn’t see the point in a large number; he had two from the Rolex camp and a Casio. All disappeared when he died. My wife has three, and my two sons have two each. I have more C65s than their total number of watches. As for my total number, I don’t know exactly how many there are in my accumulated mass. And that doesn’t bother me.

DavidCM wrote: ↑Thu Oct 19, 2023 11:21 pm
This should really be posted as a "misread thread",but I initially thought it said " a three storey watch box.."

Must go to the optician.

I’m coming to rejig my thoughts about my watches in a similar way to having a three storey watch box - but think about it as three tiers instead. So I would like to have one top tier watch, several mid tier watches that are easier to own, flip, be impulsive and curious about, and a bottom tier for D1 Milano or Bulova rereleases.
That way I can be selective but specific and honest when I answer these questions - ‘I have a one watch’ and ‘I’m a bit of a flipper’ can be equally true all at the same time. It just all depends on what tier I’m operating on at any given moment.

I’ve just resolved my one watch / impulse flippy conundrum and you heard it here first

^^^ Sometimes the best solution to a problem is the realisation that it was never a problem in the first place.

^^^^ Hmmmm. That too indeed, wise one

kiter65 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 19, 2023 10:21 pm ………now for maximum points name them

If you start giving your watches names then you have a problem…….

Bahnstormer_vRS wrote: ↑Thu Oct 19, 2023 10:32 pm

missF wrote: ↑Thu Oct 19, 2023 9:11 pm ^^^ . . . . . . .
‘I’m not telling you’ is the only possible answer.
Must be emphatic

The more quizzical expression is; 'That's for me to know, and you to wonder'.

Trusting that they are a good friend who doesn't mind a bit of back handed humour. Say it to a stranger and it might be considered frightfully rude.

Guy

“Nowhere near what you think they cost” is my usual response.

I couldn't say how many watches I "have" for a number of reasons.

1. Genuinely I don't count them. Ask me the same question about cameras, lenses, bowties, shirts, socks or dreams and I cannot provide an accurate answer. Why? I guess I learned at my mother's knee that gentle non-commitment expressed with apparent sincerity is usually enough to leave the enquirer standing by the road. When you see the bus drive off, you know it's gone without you. "Mum, how old are you?" never ever produced an answer.

2. It rather depends on our quantification of the word "have". I accept there is a strict, literal act of physical possession but isn't that rather passe in these days when we can self-identify our own gender (or is it sex? I confess to losing my way in that particular debate.) So to "have" a watch should include a state of aspiration like "I have CW's next big release". Once we accept aspiration as a legitimate state of "having", the door is open to other possibilities. I have a shortlist of watches that I'd like to handle, to slip on and see how they feel: I "have" those watches too.

3. There was a third element to my answer, it was there ten minutes ago but now it's drifted out of recall. The fact remains the same.

4. Why should it matter to you? If having a number brightens your day then fair enough, the answer may be thirty seven (or even a hundred and thirty-seven). If having the number is intended to inform how many items you'll grab and run off with when you break into my home, the answer is two. A lifetime in management including a spell working for HM Government taught me the importance of understanding the motivation behind the question and giving the questioner what they think they want. Think of a national politician.... now imagine them in the tv studio.... now imagine them being asked the same question and try to work out how they might answer: see what I mean?

Bahnstormer_vRS wrote: ↑Thu Oct 19, 2023 10:32 pm

missF wrote: ↑Thu Oct 19, 2023 9:11 pm ^^^ . . . . . . .
‘I’m not telling you’ is the only possible answer.
Must be emphatic

The more quizzical expression is; 'That's for me to know, and you to wonder'.

Trusting that they are a good friend who doesn't mind a bit of back handed humour. Say it to a stranger and it might be considered frightfully rude.

Guy

In the same way it is considered the height of offensive ill manners to ask a rancher (and so I guess any farmer anywhere) "how much land do you have?"" or "How many cows do you have?"

What naivety gives total strangers the authority to ask these questions? The good friends know better than to ask.