I promise, I'm not a spy from Citizen. I'm just a curious guy who is new to the hobby. I often watch YouTube videos about watches and it's very common to see "10 AFFORDABLE WATCHES YOU MUST BUY!" or a Teddy Bulbasaur video that says "This watch is super affordable & has an entry level price point" then the watch is $595. Hell, right now I'm watching a video about Citizen & the list is saying affordable is under $1000. My limit currently is $250 for a watch. MAYBE, if I save for a bit I'll raise it to 300. (Disclaimer: I'm in Japan so $250 goes much further. I have a Seiko 5 cement for $120ish.)
I know we all come from different backgrounds and have different financial situations. "Affordable" for you may not be affordable for me. That is perfectly fine. I'm just very curious as when collections are shown in this sub, I like to Google the watch. Often times it's a multi thousand dollar watch.
Thank you all & I'm looking forward to hearing your stories.
I built a nice little collection through the grey market. Just a lot of scrolling and more than a couple impulse buys. I bought an Alpina (quartz), Mido, and Jungans (quartz) for less than a Christopher Ward I bought at retail price as a graduation present. All of these were meant to keep my Hamilton khaki field company. I bought that one on the grey market ~8 years ago for under $600. But I’ve had it serviced twice, and if I need to get it serviced again, I’ll have spent more repairing the watch than I did buying it. The next two watches I want to get are both in the $1,600 and $1,900 range. I figure if I like the watch enough to repair it, I might as well get as good of a watch as I can afford and do my best to take good care of it.