The Breitling Watch Source Forums

I agree with this as well. Buying an expensive watch with an ETA base inside is never worth the money you pay for it in terms of the cost of the parts. 99% of the R&D was done back in the 60's (in the case of the ETA2824), so you aren't paying for that. Essentially (and I'm going to generalise a little here) when you buy an expensive watch you're paying for a nicely designed case, dial and crystal, made with high quality materials, and finished to a high standard, with a "prestige" brand name on the dial. The other thing you are buying of course is exclusivity, style and (most importantly IMO) personal utility/satisfaction and enjoyment.... which is hard to put a monetary value on.

Buying a watch with an in-house movement (and I'm including in-house quartz like Seiko and others make) is slightly different in as much as you will be paying for the extensive R&D (assuming the movement has been conceived in the last few years of course). You will also be paying for "even more" exclusivity, especially if the brand doesn't sell it's movement to other brands (unlike Zenith for example), as well as (potentially) other complications/features such as longer power reserves, etc. This is why I personally prefer to buy in-house powered watches these days. That said, even in-house watches are clearly subject to huge mark-ups, but that's the nature of the beast : if you want to play, you have to pay.

I am in no way berating the technical achievements involved with some of the quartz pieces out there, and I'm constantly amazed by some of the functionality that Casio comes out with, especially for the money. In fact, there's a new aviation G-Shock coming out soon, that I will definitely be picking up.......... so I am not averse to quartz if the price is right..... BUT quartz isn't my passion.

For me quartz just isn't my area of interest when it comes to paying lots of money for a watch. I just enjoy the fact that mechanical watches are slightly anachronistic these days. I like it that in this age of smart phones and computers, there isn't anything "high tech" about the little machine beating away and keeping time on my wrist, so personally I'd rather have a (fairly) generic mechanical ETA beating away in a nice case, instead of a battery powered quartz. No rational reason for it (other than what I've said above), but then there's not much about this interest/hobby of ours that is rational to non-believers!

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Driver8

Site Moderator

As is usual for this forum there are some well thought out opinions on this topic.

Please read my review below.

http://www.andrewmichaels.co.uk/blog/se ... atch-ever/

I am slightly biased: I love Seikos (I own 6 of them).

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Forgetting about all the opinions on either side if this, the Astron is an innovative piece of technology as is the EII. Boils down to you money, your wrist, wear what u like.

Would it be the GW-A1100 ?

http://azfinetime.wordpress.com/2013/05/07/casio-basel-2013/

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SuperOcean Heritage 46

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That's the fella.

It's got some great features and it's the first G-Shock with sapphire crystal as well. The functionality of the movement is superb as every hand is driven by it's own motor, so they can all move completely independently of each other, which allows a huge range of functions to be displayed on an analogue dial. For a look at a similar level of functionality, check out the longer YouTube reviews of the previous model, the GW-A1000.

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Driver8

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What a guess! How did I know that?
I'm waiting for them to be available here in the US.
They say Summer and we're almost there...

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HeadOffice...
B1+UTC
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B2+UTC
Chronomatic 49
Emergency+UTC-Yellow
Emergency+UTC-Black
Emergency+UTC-Blue
Super Avenger
SuperOcean Heritage 46

-- Looking for B4B Le Mans

It's going to be a very cool piece of kit, and it's going to be in demand for quite some time I reckon. They are claiming June for Europe, but I'm not sure I want to pay full retail as soon as it comes out as they aren't going to be the cheapest of G-Shocks! Kind of up there with the atomic Frogmen.

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Driver8

Site Moderator

Started my collection with a Seiko Arctura Kinetic Auto-Relay, great accuracy (+/-3s / month), fantastic wake-up feature up to three years. I use it to set the time on my mechanical watches when I don't have the tablet or mobile at hand.

Then bought a Premier Direct Drive Moon Phase. Also fantastic direct drive functionality and great accuracy.

Seiko make undeniably nice watches, but they're on a different league.

No sweeping hand on those quartz movement but at least no need to change batteries when they have a solar power cell, or a kinetic power cell.

Electricity and circuitry can't quite compare with a pure mechanical automatic movement IMO.

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