No 178 - Jaeger LeCoultre Reverso

Today it is exactly three years ago that I was on my way home on the subway with this beauty on my wrist. I consider this piece to be perhaps one of my most memorable and beloved watches that I have ever owned. To me it was the perfect watch to wear on my wedding day. It was the Grande Taille version that measured 42x26mm and I wore it on an ostrich leather instead of its original croc strap. A timeless classic without a date and with a manual winding movement. I did such a good job of convincing my wife that there was no other watch in the whole wide world that I wanted more and she felt that she really wanted to give it to me as a wedding gift. 

#178 - The Jaeger LeCoultre Reverso Grande Taille, ref. 2708410. On the subway on my way home just after I'd picked it up.

Ready to get married. The only thing missing is the ring!

My bestman Martin helping me to get ready.

An unforgettable moment. June 2013. Rome, Italy.

Chilling at a random café in the backstreets of Rome.

Up at the Villa Borghese garden.

Enjoying a special brew at the BONCI Pizzarium.

Just about to leave for the airport.

“Cool! So this must be one of the few precious keepers he has mentioned!” some of you might be thinking and some of you might go with “I bet this asshole ended up selling it!” My intention was of course to find a watch that would stay with me for as long as I live. That was the whole purpose! It turned out to be absolutely perfect for the big day but as things got back to normal I ended up using it mostly on Sunday’s or at other special occasions. I could never get comfortable wearing it as my daily beater. And because of its polished and delicate case I quickly ended up with a lot of hairlines and even a little dent somewhere. I just couldn’t stand it. Even though I loved the look of it it always gave me anxiety when I wore it. But the anxiety I got from not wearing it was even worse. So after almost a year, even though I had made a promise to myself, and to my wife, to always keep it, I sold it. Or actually I traded it for something else that I was convinced was going to be the new lifelong keeper. I was of course wrong again but that’s another story… Call me a crazy person if you want. No news to me.

Back in Stockholm. Summer of 2013. Dinner at Raw.

Off to Paris! September 2013. Dinner somewhere in Montmartre.

I had the best steak tartar that I've ever had at this restaurant where I took this wrist shot but I can't remember the name of it!

Even though it felt horrible to betray my wife like that (she was even starting to suspect I wanted to divorce her when I told her I could no longer keep the watch) I haven’t regret the decision I made. It would have been a shame to keep such a fantastic watch like that lying unused in the closet. At least it got to see a few parts of the world during the time I had it.

Back home again. Morning coffee.

Wrist shot at work.

Had a customized hand-crafted stingray strap made for it by a friendly watch colleague. Pretty badass!

One of the last pictures before it had to go.

The Reverso, in all its varieties, is probably my favorite dresswatch of all time. But that’s where it ends. It can’t be something more than that. Just a dresswatch. Flipping the case over to protect the watch face is a tooly feature, sure, I'll give it that. But it's still a dresswatch. And even if it's a damn good looking one, I've realized I don't do dresswatches so it doesn't matter.

© All pictures by a Watch Flipper's Diary unless noted.

No 177 - Longines Heritage Conquest

This was a serious attempt trying to find a watch for my upcoming wedding. Considering my becoming wife and I had put a whole lot of dough into this event I was aiming to find something classic but in a lower price range and when I found this Longines Conquest Heritage in the end of May 2013 it felt like a good choice. It was far from perfect but I figured it would have to do. 

#177 - The Longines Heritage Conquest, ref. L1.611.4.75.2.

The horrible thin black leather strap it came on was immediately removed and replaced with a brown croc strap. Looked way better. Its size, 35mm excl. crown, made it a good dresswatch and the acrylic crystal gave it a nice vintage touch. It actually looked really classy and elegant.

Seriously, that's a pretty good looking dresswatch!

It was only a week before our wedding day that I realized that “shit, this feels wrong! I can’t do this!”

Oh, I was referring to the watch, not the actual marriage! No, a Longines wouldn’t do it and I had to take care of business really fast. Luck was with me and I managed to get a hold of the perfect object that felt worthy enough just a couple of days before we flew off to Rome for our big day.


To be continued.

© All pictures by a Watch Flipper's Diary unless noted.

No 140 - Breitling Emergency

I remember back in 2006 when everybody started talking about this crazy guy on Discovery Channel who was dropped in the wild to find his way back to civilization and was only to rely on what nature had to offer. The guy was none other than Bear Grylls and the show was called Man vs. Wild (Born Survivor in some countries I think). This was just when I had started to pay real attention to watches and while everyone else were discussing all the disgusting things Bear was eating I was more interested in the Breitling Emergency on Bear’s wrist that I immediately noticed. “Wow! That must be the ultimate survival watch if Bear’s using it.” He was using both a yellow faced and a black faced Emergency but the yellow one was the one that got stuck in my mind. In the later seasons he became sponsored by Bremont and wore their ALT1-P chronograph and Supermarine diver. He was also seen using several different Casio’s.

Buying a used Emergency is a little different from buying other used watches. The watch has to be registered in Breitling’s customer register. The seller I bought mine from didn’t mention this which meant that if I would have activated the distress signal by mistake he would have been held accountable. I however chose to get it re-registered in my name at a Breitling AD and when I later sold it I demanded the new owner to do the same and to show me a copy of the re-registration papers. This service was free of charge from Breitling and went very quick to accomplish.

#140 - The Breitling Emergency ref. E76321.

Wore it on my favorite Breitling rubber.

When I finally decided to seriously start looking for one I couldn’t find a yellow one so I settled with an orange faced. I was confident that an Emergency would turn me into a natural born survivor machine the moment I put it on my wrist but no. It was awesome to wear though. Big, sure, but due to the titanium case and rubber strap it weighed close to nothing.  Looked super cool in my opinion! But was it really such a good watch for survival? Not so sure about that I’m afraid. I wouldn’t say it felt fragile in any way but with a WR of only 30m I’d hardly dare to wear it in the rain under my rain jacket. If I’d be shipwrecked on an island I think I’d be better of wearing a tough solar G-Shock instead. I suppose the Emergency is pretty useless after the distress signal has been activated and the battery is finished. 

A cup of coffe in the sun post lunch.

There are a couple of versions of the Emergency. The one I had is the one I like the most; the superquartz. It looks better than the first version and the latest version, The Emergency II, is just too big and bulky for any human being to wear without looking ridiculous. Not even The Rock would pull that one off in a decent fashion. Then there was a version called Emergency Mission with analog sub dials instead of the digital displays. Didn’t like that one. I’m not 100% certain of this but I heard rumors that the frequency the Emergency is transmitting on had been taken out of use so I don’t know if the old Emergency lost its rescue ability. Without it it’s not that cool. Then you’re better off with a regular Aerospace which basically has the same functions except for the distress signal.

© All pictures by a Watch Flipper's Diary unless noted.