I like Barton for silicone.
CNS has a great selection of NATOs. I especially like their paratrooper straps
professorfunkenpunk
joined 1 year ago
My general rule is to only buy what I can get without impacting legitimate financial needs.
If Rolex availability improves in the future you MIGHT be able to get a GMT II for 11k but right now probably not. That is one of the hardest to get. You’ll wait years to get one at retail from an AD and may not get one at all without a purchase history. Used ones are 12k and up, grey market more like 18k. It’s a classic for sure, but in your shoes, I’d look for something else to scratch the itch
You’re not going to buy a bad watch for 4k. They’re mostly high quality but have different styles. It would help to get a feel for what style you like. Diver? Dress? Chronograph? GADA (go anywhere do anything)?
I guess since this is a gift, you’re on a bit of a tight timeline. My advice was going to be to buy 3 cheap watches, live with them for a while, figure out what you like and don’t like about each and use that to inform your 4k watch purchase.
Barring that, get a Tudor black bay 58 and call it done
My Hamilton has a big ding in the bezel. I wonder if it is made of softer steel than some of my other watches. I have some with scratches and such (I just wear them) but none of the others have dents in them
Thinnest is a quartz skagen (none of my mechanicals are thin). Thickest is my Bulova Mil-Ships
It’s a king khaki. I just wore mine yesterday. Nice watch. Mine came with a lighter strap. As others have said, no great loss to replace the stock one, they aren’t great.
Nodus has a really cool looking orange sector.
In the cheap, you can get orange natos with black stitching, black natos with orange stitching, and Barton does a two tone orange and black silicone strap (I have the black top orange underneath version.
Personally I just buy what I like, mostly under 500 bucks. The only time I ever really looked for something specific was the last watch I bought, where I really wanted a diver with lumed numbers on the bezel and spent some time searching options.