It’s Only a Matter of Time!

I came across an old advertisement for a Tudor watch recently, bearing the confident headline:

‘THIS MAY BE THE LAST WATCH YOU’LL EVER BUY.’

I am eternally grateful that the Tudor watches I purchased in 1998 were not the last I’ve ever bought for a very good reason: taking them to Rolex recently for a service, after the years of hardly any use, I was politely informed ‘it is with regret that we must advise that we are unable to offer servicing facilities for either of your watches.’

That came as something of a surprise given that I’d originally paid the then not insignificant sums of ￡1,400 and ￡1,100 for the timepieces in the clearly erroneous belief that ‘this may be the last watch you’ll ever buy’.

I’d always viewed them as potential heirlooms, something to pass on to my offspring. Sadly, not without a watch-spring (if such things they have): it seems they will make delightful ornaments but precious little else and certainly incapable of providing the service for which they were designed beyond their current remarkably short life. It may well have been the last watches I’d ever needed to buy but not if telling the time, over time, was an important factor in the purchase decision.

The not unreasonable reason given was that ‘these models were manufactured many years ago and the required components are now out of production’.

Many years ago: that’s 19 years by my calculation. Not even two decades.

Thank goodness my own mortal existence is not subject to a similar obsolescence strategy. I am reliably informed that I should be able to get a replacement hip, or knee; even a heart for many years to come. But who can be certain?

Indeed, on the same basis, my 17 year old son would be looking at just another 2 years before throwing in the eternal towel.

I’m sure you’ll all be thinking that’s rather an unfair comparison but the point I would like to make is this: I could have purchased a much lower cost watch (that may or may not have had a similar period of unqualified obsolescence); but I didn’t, because I naively believed that by spending more I would own a watch capable of a much longer lifespan than it’s lower-cost competitor. And there-in lies the rub: am I being unreasonable to think that implicit in a longer lifespan is a longer availability of spare parts? 19 years seems a remarkably short period of time.

I’ve decided not to throw my Tudor watches away – they are rather beautiful after all.

Instead I’m going to purchase a statue of Old Father Time and attach one Tudor watch to each wrist: just to remind me that, for all of us, it’s only a matter of time!