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North Central US | A watchmaker, those that are left, makes money on repairing watches.
A watch collector makes money on buying and selling rare watches.
A Timex mechanical watch's service instructions say something to the tune of "rinse in Kerosene and lubricate with light oil". They are repairable, but at the time, why? It was a $20, equivalent, watch that was mass produced in US factories, and if you broke it, there was probably serious damage.
A Timex wasn't collectable as it was mass produced. Millions a year made and sold.
I encourage you to read into US clock and watch making. We took the skill and trade and did like what we did with the Model T: made an affordable, but reliable, mass produced version. Clocks and watches in Europe were basically an heirloom, expensive, usually accurate, made in low quantities by skilled trades people, usually one at a time. A clock was basically a status symbol in a way, a watch even more so.
Of course, so was the automobile in Europe. US clock and watch makers had three goals: make a more accurate clock/watch, make it affordable, and mass produce it. And that is what they did.
If you look at the end quarter of mechanical watch's time, it was dominated by US companies. If you wanted the most accurate clock, you were buying it from a US company. The most durable? US. Most affordable? US. All three? US. It was not uncommon for European and Asian militaries and governments to have and use US clocks and watches.
When digital watches came around, the European watch makes abandoned mechanical for the "high tech, advanced" digital watches. Rolex at one point only made digital watches. It was, once again, an expensive, usually accurate, status symbol to have a digital watch...
...until the US, home of basically anything computerized and with broad access to Japan, got involved and did the same thing again with digital watches: made them accurate, reliable, affordable, and mass produced. Once we did that, European watch and clock companies abandoned digital watches and returned to mechanical watches, for the most part.
That basically is Timex in a nutshell. Nothing exactly special, just a normal US watch: affordable, accurate, reliable, and mass produced. An everyman's watch. A watch to give to your destructive kids. A watch to wear fishing. A watch to wear to work. It's not a status symbol, because in the US we don't really care, we want something we can have, that works, that we can afford.
So, yeah, watch makers don't like them, because it put them out of a job. Watch collectors don't like them because there's not really anything special or collectable about them, compared to a Rolex. | |
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Timex Watches
