Little brother, best friend, and all around cool dude is graduating after selling his soul to 8 years in school in order to shoot stuff into space. Kid needs a graduation present from his big bro who is incredibly proud of him.
I love watches but am fairly new to the game. I need help.
Requirements
-
Can't break the bank. Getting him something expensive will make him resent the watch and feel guilty. The guys been making min wage to put food and cheep beer on the table for the last decade
-
Versitle. The kid is going on dates now that he's a free man, he loves the outdoors, and loves chilling with friends watching college football. The watch has to be appropriate for a hot date at a nice restaurant and a Saturday with the boys.
-
No electricronics or quartz (idk if that makes sense I'm new to this). He's an engineer. The idea of gears perfectly aligned, clicking and clocking on his wrist is the exciting part.
-
Engineery. Vague and a made up word I know. But something to tie into that idea of him building and creating rockets and solid state fuels and things that go boom is a plus but not as necessary as 1-3.
What do you guys think? Do I go field watch for versatility? Slick dive watch for the extra clicks and clacks? Maybe a dressy watch that still looks ok while hanging with his friends? Sport watch for that clean finish all around?
I'm lost. Please advise
You could look into aerospace related watches. The Speedmaster has been mentioned before but it’s way out of budget sadly. An alternative with history and similar looks is the Bulova Lunar Pilot. It has a great watch movement and as an engineer by training I enjoy mechanical and good quartz movements equally. It’s super large though and while some watches can get away being rather large, the Lunar Pilot can be too much. Pilots watches could be an other option. They have a lot of history and usually also look pretty clean. And, compared to some other types, you can get very good models at many price ranges. Between Lacos entry models and IWC high end models, there is one for most budgets and almost all are very nice. You can look at Laco for traditional ones (they also made the original ones for the German airforce among other manufacturers), Stowa is another great recommendation more under the radar. Some slightly different models come from Sinn or Guinand as an alternative.
As another, less mentioned option, would be Fortis. The new models are a bit different and imo expensive for what they offer but the older models might be worth a look.
One of the most „Air related“ watch is the Navitimer which is also out of budget but Hamilton has some alternative and the Seiko Flightmaster is also a great option!
The Sinn 144 is also very nice; Sinn in general has a lot of flight related stuff since the founder was an avid pilot. It might be hard to find one for the price since it sadly got pretty expensive lately. The 142 and 157 are also nice. Guinand again offers very similar options (same founder I think).