Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms Hublot or Zenith

Yep - my daily drive is a £500 Corsa, and my watch is the equivalent Tells the time, weather, step count, heart rate, sleep patterns, has GPS, notifies me of calls, emails and texts and is waterproof. AND helps me find my phone when I've left it somewhere special.

Like the Corsa, when it dies after three of four years, I'll bin it and buy a new one. And no one want to nick it.

I think I can build a new garage for some watches....

Having said that (Apple Watch) I have a sneaking suspicion that no matter what happens the Apple (daily) thingy will be binned a long time before the JLC (Morgan) in both cases. Sad really, all that engineering goes into something disposable. What a mess.

Probably. However, my Huawei Band thing costs £30. So far, it's lasted a smidge over two years - so a little over 4 pence a day. A £10,000 watch would need to last over 700 years (with no additional servicing cost) to be as efficient and as cost effective.

And I appreciate that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but most of the expensive kit is far too bling for my taste.

The obsession with watches is another of my unfathomables. I had a watch briefly in my late teens, but never since then, even before mobile phones and clocks in cars, I got by without one.

In our 'brand obsessed' world, it's become one of the 'must have' trappings in order to display disposable wealth.

Of course people will argue about the undeniable quality and precision in order to justify their obsession. Bit like me trying to convince my Mrs that I needed to spend £17,000 on my Morgan. Athough she did weaken when I produced the Morgan book I bought when I was 8yrs old, and when I told her it was built by my Grandad it was game over....

Yeah......the miniature engineering of watches and clocks is amazing. I really do get that, and the precision clocks made in the 19th Century. We have a carriage clock which belonged to my great great grandmother's family from that era, and it still works perfectly. It's had a hard life because the case is very badly worn.

I'd buy neither of the watches under consideration. For me clarity is everything and you can'd get much better than an IWC pilot's watch (especially when it's VAT free). Apparently the design is based on the JU 52 cockpit - sneaky Swiss sold them to the Luftwaffe during WW2 and us post war.

I like the plain ones best but the chronograph was all that was available when I went shopping. I'd always fancied a Breitling Navitimer but when I came to compare them the IWC won hands down (pun intended). Much greater clarity and much better for keeping an eye on the time when speaking at conferences. I happen to have pretty good peripheral vision and could always read it out of the corner of my eye without deliberately looking at it.

When I lived in Wales my friends had a beautiful old mantel clock in a very simple wooden case. It hadn't worked for ages, but I managed to get it going with a bit of cleaning and tinkering, and it ran perfectly. I tried to get them to let me take it with me when I left, but it was a family piece so they understandably didn't want to part with it. Worth a couple of hundred or so - always on the look out in antique shops for something similar but the cases are usually far too ornate.

The prices watches fetch is a little reminscent of the art world. At some point society has decided that Watch A/Artist A is more valuable than Watch B/Artist B which has in turn made them more desirable and people are therefore prepared to pay massive premiums so they can say that they 'own' one.

There used to be a programme on BBC called fake or fortune, where they tried to attribute paintings to famous artists that could change a price tag from £600 to £60,000. The painting didn't miraculous change or suddenly get 100 times better, it was just the attribution that increased the value. In my eyes the biggest 'fake' was the pretentious art world......

First sign of a mid life crisis....bangles