Ron,

What a great topic. I love to hear peoples' motivations for collecting.

As far as my motivations...I started out collecting American pocket watches. The American companies which produced watches had a different overall plan than the Swiss at the same time. The American companies saw the need for mass production. They saw the need for both high quality (railroad grade) watches in mass quantities, mass quantities of medium quality but slightly less expensive watches for the masses of workers who wanted to keep time but who did not need to meet RR standards, and some lower production extremely high quality, extremely beautiful watches people of wealth and taste. Most of the American manufacturers accomplished these 3 product goals efficiently by making sort of different versions of the same movement design.

Let's take perhaps the most famous American manufacturer, Hamilton. Hamilton maybe the best example of mass production and the quest for interchangeable parts. Hamilton's slogan was "The Watch of Railroad Accuracy." They made tool watches. However, at the turn of the century you could buy a grade 934, a grade 936 and a grade 938. All of these were 18 size, 17 jewel watches. All have the same exact basic design. All have the same basic mechanical components. The 934 is the everyman watch. The movement with dial and hands might have a wholesale price of $30. The 936 was the RR man's watch. It might have a wholesale price of $50. The 938 was the deluxe version and might have had a cost of $70. The 934 was adjusted to heat cold and 3 positions. It had a rather plain finish. The 936 was adjusted to heat/cold/isochronism/and 5 positions. It had a much more intricate but still sort of a plain decoration on the movement. The 938 had the same adjustments as the 936 but every surface was polished, the screws and all of the exposed metalwork was chamfered and polished. The damasceening or pattern on the movement was very pretty. and the undersides of all of the movement plates were decorated. He higher grades had much more beautiful dials.

The 3 watches are all basically the same watch. A good watchmaker can make them all run the same, and keep the same time standard. As a collector, I look for the 938. The other 2 grades are easy to find. Good examples of the 938 are scarce. Very few people could find a reason the spend the extra 20 bucks so relatively very few were produced. The differences are not easy to spot so you have to learn and be an expert/geek. Most of the examples do not have the grade marked on the movement. You have to learn something to be able to tell the difference. Again, I look for the 938 but I have examples of all 3 in my collection.

Perhaps the reason I was drawn to Heuer is because I think maybe Heuer, in the wrist watch world, provides some interesting analogies to Hamilton. Heuer is sort of a mass production tool watch with some low production variations. Take for instance the automatic Autavia ref 1163. You can find it in a Viceroy, an MH, a T (Siffert), and many exotic variants. These are all more or less functionally the same watch with wonderful aesthetic differences. They had different costs and different popularity and for the same basic reasons as the Hamiltons, different production numbers and therefore different degrees of scarcity in the market of today. I want the Siffert or one of the exotics to turn up at the vintage jewelry store...but I want one of each in my collection. I want to know all of the stupid little individual aesthetic characteristics...the markers, the hands, the case styles the dial printing...all of it. I want learn and to be more of an expert every day. I want to be a Heuer geek.

Heuer and Hamilton are not my only interests and not the only brands which offer the above appeal....but, late in my life, when I finally developed the wrist watch passion I stumbled into Heuer and felt at home. It may also have had something to do with the racing connection too but that's a story for another day.

JohnCote