Lowly Caliber is a blog to discuss watches on the lower end of the price scale. I will especially concentrate on the Timex watches I like to collect as well as many other brands. Mostly I want to write about watches I have acquired for under $500 – most under $200, and many under $50! I love watch stories about why their owners love them—the design, emotion, history, memories, not about the specs or value or precious materials or exclusivity.
Lowly Caliber will give stories and impressions about preowned finds, estate sale finds, hand-me-downs, grey market and sale finds that fall into the various types of watches I collect, old and new. Hopefully I can relate the joy I get from those ever-rotating things on my wrist. A few posts may be about watches nearing the “entry level luxury” range, but only if acquired preowned and at substantially less than new prices.
While I love reading about all kinds of watches and regularly read many different watch-related blogs and websites, most of the sites offer news, specs and reviews of the latest releases from luxury brands of watches I will most likely never own or collect. I can appreciate the materials and processes, the workmanship and quality, the design and beauty of these products, but I don’t think I have ever seriously considered buying any watch over $2000? That is not my world. I’ll leave releases on the latest and greatest to other sites.
Watch-related sites also can become very technical with an emphasis on specifications to the point that we start chasing specs and forgetting why we actually liked about a watch to begin with. I am no expert on the inner workings of mechanical or quartz movements. I won’t be spending many words on the technical details as much as on the visual design, aesthetics, form and function and the feelings the watches evoke.
Bob Reiner
13 March 2023