tikkathree wrote: ↑Mon Feb 27, 2023 2:22 pm Here they are, my 1st, 2nd and 3rd watches.

The Seiko auto was presented to me at about 10 years of age and was bought with green shield stamps: remember them?

The Casio I bought from a branch of Dixons/Currys and basically it was a "happy birthday to me" reward when I turned 21 in 1974. I don't think I've changed the battery more than five times in the passage of time. I've changed straps more often than batteries! I popped the back hoping that I'd have recorded the "date fitted" on the battery - I didn't but look at the size of it!

Then came my first Seiko 7T34 Flightmaster. I can't remember when exactly that was but definitely since 1983 when we moved to Suffolk.

All three watches work. I messed with the original seiko painting the dial markers with lume paint: what a mess I made!! I had the watch serviced a couple of years ago. The 7T34 eats batteries in about 3 years and it has been doing the two-second hop for several months now and I'm just curious to see how long it runs.

Watch number 4? That was probably a Christopher Ward but that and watches 5-12 are all long since flipped.

thomcat00 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 28, 2023 12:08 am Fun to trip down memory lane to my earliest watch experience.

I’ve shared it elsewhere but will share again here. Dad was steeped in technology from a young age, cameras and radios were his hobby interests. In the seventies, electronic calculators caught his attention. In the spring of 1977 I was 8. Dad gave me a Texas Instruments LED watch, much like the pic here. My watch, like all LEDs at the time, glowed red. The button lit up the digital display for a few seconds to show the time. A second press showed the date; pressing and holding would show the seconds. A second button allowed access to various settings. I preferred to have my watch show 24hr time in its 4 digit display.

In May, Star Wars came out. TI and other businesses sold stickers shaped to fit the panel below the time display. I got a sheet of Star Wars stickers to decorate the watch. They were not reusable and they left their sticky residue when peeled off. I wore my watch to see Star Wars that July. For my 9th birthday in August I wanted to see the movie again. I had a fresh sticker for my second viewing. I wore the watch everywhere. I figured out how to change the batteries myself - it took 2. I kept the watch into high school but even by middle school I had other watches, mostly LCD digital ones.

At about 14 or so I bought a LCD analog watch from Armitron. It was a large rectangular LCD display of hands in a traditional clock face. LCD technology had advanced well beyond the display limits of LED. The newest watch then had the analog time yet it could also display digital time. It had an alarm, hourly chime, day, and date displays. It also had a 99 hour stopwatch with measure to 1/100 second. Pretty fancy for 1983-4. Would be fun to still have them but I don’t have any of those things from my earlier years any longer.

I never did own a Casio in those years, not until I got a G-Shock about 20 years ago.

jkbarnes wrote: ↑Tue Feb 28, 2023 2:36 am I know this wasn’t my first watch. That was a Mickey Mouse watch. But this was my first proper watch, given to me in maybe the 6th or 7th grade?

This isn’t the actual watch, but an example I was finally able to score on eBay. The black mesh is not original. I wish I could track down an original rubber strap.

I don’t wear this too much, but I’m thrilled to have it in my collection.

richtel wrote: ↑Tue Feb 28, 2023 10:09 am

thomcat00 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 28, 2023 12:08 am Fun to trip down memory lane to my earliest watch experience.

I’ve shared it elsewhere but will share again here. Dad was steeped in technology from a young age, cameras and radios were his hobby interests. In the seventies, electronic calculators caught his attention. In the spring of 1977 I was 8. Dad gave me a Texas Instruments LED watch, much like the pic here. My watch, like all LEDs at the time, glowed red. The button lit up the digital display for a few seconds to show the time. A second press showed the date; pressing and holding would show the seconds. A second button allowed access to various settings. I preferred to have my watch show 24hr time in its 4 digit display.

In May, Star Wars came out. TI and other businesses sold stickers shaped to fit the panel below the time display. I got a sheet of Star Wars stickers to decorate the watch. They were not reusable and they left their sticky residue when peeled off. I wore my watch to see Star Wars that July. For my 9th birthday in August I wanted to see the movie again. I had a fresh sticker for my second viewing. I wore the watch everywhere. I figured out how to change the batteries myself - it took 2. I kept the watch into high school but even by middle school I had other watches, mostly LCD digital ones.

At about 14 or so I bought a LCD analog watch from Armitron. It was a large rectangular LCD display of hands in a traditional clock face. LCD technology had advanced well beyond the display limits of LED. The newest watch then had the analog time yet it could also display digital time. It had an alarm, hourly chime, day, and date displays. It also had a 99 hour stopwatch with measure to 1/100 second. Pretty fancy for 1983-4. Would be fun to still have them but I don’t have any of those things from my earlier years any longer.

I never did own a Casio in those years, not until I got a G-Shock about 20 years ago.

Just wonderful. Love the way it transports you back to the stickers and the memories of going to see Star Wars. I remember one of the 'posh' kids coming into junior school with LED watches and I was sorely jealous Didn't Hamilton recently try to cash in on fond memories of that genre with the PSR? IIRC the original LED watches used to chew through batteries (especially with kids showing them off!) and Hamilton tried to make a 'hybrid' OLED/LCD watch to permit an always-on seven-segment display or a brighter dot matrix.