Pocket Watches and Waistcoats

[spr0k3t]

I let my last one go after the watch face began to tarnish excessively. I live in a very dry climate. Maybe it was from body moisture.

That is exactly what happens to my silver one. It gets spotty whenever I wear it from the oils in my hands. When I polish it, that one goes back under the hermetically sealed glass case. I don't like wearing that one, but it's more ornate than the smoothie Omega. The one I linked to is 14K etched next to the makers mark and serial, so barely any polish is ever needed.

[Troglodyte]

Like Jock, I am a life-long user of pocket watches - not that I have anything against wrist-watches except they irritate my skin if worn for any length of time.

As for time-keeping, my watches all seem to be accurate to a couple of seconds a week - which is close enough, as time of day tends to be an approximate thing anyway. You might look at your watch and see it is just coming upto twenty-past - the need to know that it is 18 minutes, 53.7 seconds past is rare.

As for aesthetics, chains or straps are both functional and decorative - they secure the watch and give the option for keeping your latch-key, cigar-cutter, pipe-reamer, penknife, whatever, nice and handy at the other end. Plus, a watch-chain fills the void that is the front of a waistcoat - which always looks better with a chain across it.

Having a selection to choose from is a good thing, too. I find I might wake up one bright and sunny morning and think to myself 'Ah, yes. This feels like a gold half-hunter day...' Other days might be silver open-face skeleton, or...

I would like every day to be a gold hunter-cased perpetual calendar moon-phase minute repeater kind of day, but I've never been lucky enough on that score.