I've spent some more money on watches, and the sad thing is, if you want a watch that is superb quality it almost needs to be $500+ even at discounted and even then the quality is not amazing, if you want to save up your money for something outstanding that is the best thing to do in all honesty, I wish I had saved mine instead of getting several entry level Swiss watches, right now I would be wearing the paradigm of hand made watches, a Rolex. There is a reason they are sought after, they keep their value for one, and they really will last a lifetime, and don't need batteries, which is great, give it a few shakes if you have not used it in a while and set the time. People always whine and moan about oh my Casio keeps better time, yes a lot of digital watches do, but the difference is not that bad, and guess what if infrastructure goes to hell and there are no batteries my watch will go until it falls apart, which people have been passing down their Rolex watches to family, I know someone with a 80+ year old Rolex and he wears it almost every day, he took the original band off to keep it nice (keeping the value up). Here is an interesting fact:
"Rolex subsequently received the very first wristwatch Chronometer awards from the School of Horology in Bienne (1910), and the Class “A” Certificate of Precision from the Kew Observatory in England (1914). To this day, Rolex watches consistently receive more Chronometer Certificates from the Contrôle Officiel Suisse des Chronomètres (COSC), than every other watch company in the world, combined." (http://www.qualitytyme.net/pages/rolex_articles/history_of_wristwatch.html)
I really like my Invicta watches, but the downside is they only cater to the big watch wearing folks mostly, which some of their styles are actually really old school, big watches used to be the normal for a lot of purposes, early divers and pilots needed something easier to see, and watches were larger for them and the expense of smaller gear movements also meant that compact wrist watches were an even bigger luxury. Also wrist watches were originally more for women and viewed as a fad (the wikipedia article has a lot of what I am saying, a lot of it comes from the same articles I've read). It was our boys in the War that found pocket watches were impractical and that is why a lot of families with lots of military history have a wrist watch handed down. As with a lot of modern conveniences their real usefulness was not fully realized or even implemented until an ingenious soldier came up with the idea, band-aids are one of those awesome items. German aviator watches are always interesting, and the Germans have been building application specific watches using their own or high quality Swiss movements for a long time. It's hard to find vintage examples of some, but there are modern ones with the giant crowns made so you can have gloves on and still make adjustments, at least that is what I was told by a watch maker. Rolex again was really to credit with their "tool" watch line that has been used by the military and divers since the 50s when they were released, people ask why Bond would wear one, well because it is designed for abuse, a sub-mariner is a perfect watch for beat up use, they can go down to 1000 meters, and have a special helium valve, which any watch that is for saturation diving and goes below 300+ meters needs to have this.
I have have interviewers stop and ask about the watch I am wearing and after research I try to make a statement, and there is something in our psyches that likes a person that wears a watch in this day and age. Just don't keep looking at your watch lol fidgeting is bad! I wear my all black auto with a fake tourbillon, the hands are gold and it has a swarzky crystal at the 12 o'clock mark, it's very conservative, but very striking at the same time, I use it for most formal events. I also love my every-day divers chrono an Invicta Grand Diver, it's a dark grey Ti with polished accents and a black face, it's got a big dial, but the way it's styled it is striking, but somehow understated, it gets a lot of glances. I also wear my Seiko gadget watch, it's very neat looking and different, and somehow very simple and elegant, classic low depth dive watch. My only gripe is I wish the Grand Diver chrono came in a mechanical model, while I know that would carry a price, it would be awesome to have my favorite watch be automatic and thus outlast the zombie horde, I could luck out and the battery lasts till it's over, but I would rather take my chances with an auto :)
Here are some early dive gadgets at the very bottom is a comically large dive master http://forums.watchuseek.com/f74/long-ago-%7B50s-early-60s%7D-there-werent-lot-people-dive-watches-638705.html
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