There’s been some movement in the watch boxes! A few new straps too. So where are we now?

Here’s the Casio box, mostly G-SHOCKs. A few have moved in and out lately, as G-SHOCKs are the most resellable watches in my collection. Sizes range from normal, to big, to really big. These are my “go-to” watches, as there’s very little that can hurt them, and there’s so much variation there’s always something to match with whatever activity I’m doing, the mood I’m in, or even what t-shirt I’m wearing that day. The GW-9400 Rangeman was sold and replaced with a GW-9500 Mudman, which then led me to finding that old-school G-9000 Mudman a retailer just wanted rid of. The GSG-100 Mudmaster was a surprise recent addition, I was looking for a big case analog G-SHOCK, when two of them popped up at great prices – I got both, flipped one for some profit, and kept the other. I’ve decided to put the “wavy marble” GA-2000 for sale, and only keep the one GA-2000 in brown & orange, a watch I do wear often. The “Casio Royale” models now both have stainless steel cases, and upgraded straps, which improves their external shortcomings to match the brilliance of the watch movement.

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What’s missing: a newly-acquired GBD-100-1A7, which will be my sports/cycling/softball watch.

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The “AliExpress brands and builds” box. Weekend fun watches. A few homages here (the bottom row), of Rolex, Halios, and Helm, which not only are unattainable for me, but I wouldn’t want the hassle of owning such an expensive piece of jewelry. The SKX, Samurai, Turtle “Manta Ray”, Capt Willard, and Tuna (the whole top row) are builds and mods, all with Seiko NH36 or NH36 movements, aftermarket bezel inserts, dials and hands, all variations on the originals: for example, the Samurai case and hands has a “King Turtle” dial and day/date movement; the SKX has semi-skeletonized bright orange hands, double-domed sapphire crystal, and an Omega-style bezel insert. This is my most favorite group, each watch is really fun, straps and bracelets change easily, they look and feel great to wear, the 1000m diver is ridiculous, and each cost <€100. Building (assembling) a watch yourself is great fun, you have freedom to do whatever you like by choosing the movement, hands, dial, crystal, and case style; and if your watch ever breaks, you know how to fix it.

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What’s missing: my Heimdallr homage to the Seiko MarineMaster, which has a monobloc case and very cool little “shark” logo on the dial. I happened to be wearing it at the time of the photo!

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The “nicer ones” box. Here we have actual Seiko models, a weird art-deco Soviet-themed dress watch, an interesting bright Chinese compressor-style diver, the domed-sapphire-crystal-mod Casio Duro, and a few gifts. The vintage Seiko 6309-7040 diver is the one that started me down this rabbit hole. I don’t wear these as often, though I probably should. I really like that Seiko 5 Sports “Diastar” SSA285 (center top), it is now discontinued, they were never terribly popular, but I think it’s aged well.