What is your "beginnings" story in this hobby of ours?

[Raza]

Frosted tips--isn't that a breakfast cereal?

Seriously though, you write too well to be a lawyer.

P.S. I shall magnanimously ignore the Gondolo reference. Or not.

Thank you so much, Ml.

[Raza]

I had an early Ironman model that had the visual sensor, but I just used the cable. The only thing I actually remember putting on the watch is phone numbers lol

I know that seems almost pedestrian now in the age of smart watches that can call 911 if you get into a car crash, but back in the day, man, kid me would have thought that was the coolest thing ever.

[rodia77]

My story is very simple: sometime in 2010, on a knife forum, I clicked into a thread titled 'our watches'. Just a few days later I was an owner of this Realtree camo Timex Expedition. It didn't stop there, but the watch is currently one of my favs and won't come off my wrist!

[Samanator]

I've documented my watches from start to present in "My Watch Journey" threads in the library. I need to update the thread to cover the past two years, but from the start, it is accurate and documents over 400 watches. Highlights include my first watch at six years old, which was a Timex SS case with a white dial and black Arabic numbers. I marched through the quartz years from middle school to post-college and USCG OCS in the 1970s and early 80s. My first automatic watch, a two-tone Rolex Sub blue dial, was bought through the Navy exchange in 1986 for under $900. For over 56 years, watches have been one of my things. I guess the short version of my watch story is my love-hate-love affair with Rolex and Omega watches, which are the current core of my collection. The other three sub-stories are Seiko, Panerai, and Ball watches. Currently, I have none of the three at any level.


My forum time started about 2000 something on the TZ Panerai forum, but after posting a thing or two there, the old guard nearly ate me alive. I refrained from posting from that point on. I sold off my Panerai collection in 2006 since they no longer were mysterious. It was proven by a young kid coming up and saying nice Pam 88 at a mall I was walking through with my wife. He was right on all accounts. After the great sell-off, I found WUS to learn more about other brands, which led to me being one of the start-up people here after the WUS buy out.

I started in 2009 as the WUS Ball Watch moderator (co-moderator). Unknown to me, Ball was moving the TZ for their official forum with the other moderator. This kicked off one of Ernie's knee-jerk reactions, and I was banned there. After that happened, I talked with Rob at Toppers, and they were interested in taking over the Ball forum on WUS. When he approached Ernie, one of the conditions was that I be reinstated as the Ball watch moderator. We always made sure we were the best Ball forum out there. A year later the TZ Ball forum was not what they wanted it to be so it was shut down. Ball made the Topper Ball forum the official one a few months after that. I later was a mod for a few more brands that Toppers sold. At some point during my early mod time there, we also had the Isthmus incident. I can't remember all of what transpired there, but it all came back to Ernie not telling everyone he was gone from the forum due to some incident they had between the two, and a hack.

When we came here, we had ideas of what we did not want to do and how to have a more welcoming forum. For the most part it has worked well, and I'm glad to see we're still going.

I've made some amazing friends collecting watches. The Caplan family at Toppers are great people and I have always been treated as one of the family. The English brothers sent me a great email while i was in the hospital after my heart attack. Many of the people here (I miss our video chats) I consider friends. Eric Singer who will call me at the strangest times to talk and is a really great guy.

[geoffbot]

Like many I bought a tag and the rest is history.

[tribe125]

At some point during my early mod time there, we also had the Isthmus incident. I can't remember all of what transpired there, but it all came back to Ernie not telling everyone he was gone from the forum due to some incident they had between the two, and a hack.

Oh, I remember all that. Together with another moderator (Crusader) I spent a day fire-fighting on the Seiko forum following the departure of Isthmus. I was at work that day but didn’t get much work done.

The hack was related to another moderator, recently departed. He still had access to the moderator’s forum through the company owner of an official forum (who didn’t know that his account was being used). In spite, he copied the contents of the moderator’s forum to other watch forums, who then broadcast it. Gabe, Crusader and I managed to work out where the leak was coming from. I never knew what motivated that bloke, beyond a fairly minor disagreement with Ernie.

Terrible days, and being a moderator at WUS could take several hours out of your day. Sometimes you hardly had time to post about watches. Collectively, and maybe individually in some cases, we worked harder than Ernie, and then he sold it to provide himself with a considerable retirement fund.

IWL was like a newly-created leisure resort compared with that.