How to Start Collecting Watches, One Beginner's Honest Account

From Beginner to Expert is a monthly series that follows one writer as she goes from a few watches and her father's piece on her wrist to navigating the watch world. There is no single way people come to watches, and this is one version of it, told as it happens. Alison Fox, a journalist of more than fifteen years, starts where she actually is: a few pieces in, newly and genuinely curious, still working out what she's drawn to and why.

I grew up surrounded by watches. Only, I never paid them much attention.

My father is a collector, enthralled by brands like Blancpain, which I had never understood the significance of, not because he didn't try, but because it just didn't interest me. I'd later learn Blancpain is one of the oldest watch names in Switzerland, dating to 1735, and that the brand has famously never made a quartz watch. Watches are complicated, full of intricate movements with precious gems hidden from view. And they didn't make sense to me.

Jewelry, on the other hand, I understood. From vintage 80's-style costume pieces to delicate yellow gold chains and stackable rings, I could never fill my top drawer with too many pieces. When I began seeing ads on social media for the seemingly growing trend of slim bracelet watches, my interest piqued. 

These weren't the chunky watches my father had collected with thick stainless steel bands or dark leather bracelets. Instead, they were more akin to the jewelry I was already wearing, but with the added benefit of a usable function. This intrigued me.

It came as no surprise that I found myself, on a chilly winter day in London's Notting Hill, perusing vintage bracelet watches. Most didn't function and the ones that did were manual wind. They were beautiful, but had seen better days and I knew I could do better.

I'm a journalist. When something catches my attention I chase it until I understand it, a reflex I'd spent a career pointing at airports and hotels and places I'd never been. I realized I was slowly training it on watches.

I started searching, then obsessively looking, for a watch online that had the look I was after (and actually worked) without breaking the bank. I knew what I didn't want: no leather, stainless steel or any of the rubber.

Drawn to the more rectangular Tank style, I preferred a thin band I could opt to stack with other pieces I already owned. I Googled gold watches, thin gold watches, Cartier and Chanel, and any other variation I could think of. And that was where I first discovered Citizen Petite Palidoro.

A gold-tone watch with a 14 mm case, it was reminiscent of a cross between the Tank Américaine and the classic Panthère (which I'd only just started to learn the difference between). The difference, I was learning, is partly one of intent: the Tank takes its shape from the flat rails of a tank's tread, a watch first, while the Panthère is really a piece of jewelry, a supple bracelet with a dial set into it.

At less than $400 on sale, the Citizen also fit the budget. With a striking black dial and crystal embellishments, it reads more expensive than it is. I'd later learn the benefits of the Eco-Drive technology and not having to worry about new batteries, but at that moment, the main draw was it simply looked the part.

I started wearing it all the time. I wore it stacked with my other bracelets, on its own, in my home city of New York and on the road, taking it on ski trips to Park City, Big Sky, and Lake Placid, to visit my alma mater in Madison, Wisconsin, and on a quick jaunt to Amsterdam. I even got myself a watch travel case, gifted by a friend, to keep it from getting scratched.

But like with my love of jewelry, I found I could never have too many options. So with that thought in mind, I decided I should add a round dial to my fledgling collection.

After ordering several options online from Olivia Burton, Daniel Wellington and even Etsy, I settled on the Longines La Grande Classique, dainty at only 24 mm with a yellow PVD coating, which I learned was way less likely to rub off than the typical gold plating. The classic white face with roman numerals appealed to me in the way a vintage find might, and its light weight and slim profile meant it was easy to stack as well.

This also marked a milestone in my journey: I was going up in price.

Though if I'm honest, going up in price is the easiest kind of progress to mistake for the real thing. I have a budget like anyone, and I'm not going to pretend a number on a tag is nothing. But it tells you almost nothing about why a watch is good, and the further I got, the more I wanted to understand the things price can't explain: the proportions, the finishing, the reason a movement is built the way it is. I didn't want the cost to be the constraint.

We don't need watches to tell time anymore. I check my phone. I ask the smart speaker in my bedroom. The one job a watch was built for, we have handed off. I’m just learning that it’s okay to give myself permission to love a watch simply for its beauty and not allow myself to be overwhelmed by what tends to be, admittedly, an intimidating industry.

Of course, I didn't keep my new found love of watches quiet. For someone who didn't pay any attention to watches for the better part of the first three decades of my life, I suddenly couldn't stop talking about them.

I’ve already borrowed my dad's Cartier Santos Galbée, inexplicably falling in love with the sporty stainless style and expanding my horizons on what I thought I liked. I would skip the lounge at airports and instead spend time browsing high-end watches.

The question I kept circling, the one every dealer seemed to be waiting for me to ask, was about movements: quartz or mechanical, and why a collector would happily pay more for a watch you have to wind yourself. The difference is simpler than it sounds: a quartz watch keeps time electronically, powered by a battery, while a mechanical one runs on a wound spring and a train of tiny gears, with no battery at all. 

Admittedly, I still didn't know anything about the movements contained within but there was something beautiful about taking a practical and functional instrument and elevating it to an exquisite piece of jewelry. I’m all in.

I should be honest about the size of the word expert, too. People give their whole lives to this, and not only their own lives: the knowledge moves down through generations, one workbench to the next, centuries of people refining the same small problems and finding new solutions. I am never going to catch up to that, and I don't pretend I will. What I can do is learn to see, which feels like a worthy enough place to begin.

This is the part of any assignment I love most: the reporting. I’ve set out to try as many watches as I can, comparing sizes and styles, metals, and brands. I’ve walked into high-end Cartier boutiques, scoured resale websites and reputable auction houses, was honest about my novice status with sales reps, and filled my Instagram For You page with unboxing videos.

My watch journey has already begun. Becoming an expert, I already suspected, would take a great deal longer.