Short answer:
No. There are so many better things you can do with your time.
But.
Watch collecting, or any type of collecting for that matter, is quite a nice activity. It’s a short lived pleasure however, just like watching sitcoms or having sex with people you don’t know.
So I just threw watch collecting into the same bag as one-night-stands? Yes I did that.
For a fulfilled life (forget about pursuing happiness, it doesn’t work) you want long lasting effects. Invest in relationships, invest in your purpose, invest in developing yourself. Collect experiences and memories.
That’s the simple formula. And watches aren’t part of it. But that doesn’t have to stop us from acquiring a new one every now and then. Pleasure is important (be it watches or one-night-stands) but it shouldn’t be at the expense of that other stuff mentioned above.
What’s the danger with watch collecting?
There’s a reason ‘watch porn’ is a term. One can get obsessed with watches, browse Instagram feeds for hours, ebay for days. That’s not healthy. And it might actually be a sign of procrastination and avoiding something you should be doing but don’t want to deal with.
And because watches are relatively harmless there is little stigma in obsessive watch collecting. It’s easy to find like-minded people in various online forums that will happily echo your sentiment in order to confirm and support their own skewed view on what brings value to their lives. 200 watches sitting in neat rows in a dozen boxes in their dresser don’t. They might think they do but then they don’t get life.
Of course I’m projecting a bit here, because my philosophy is ‘one watch per occasion’, but I cringe so hard when I read about people brining five watches on a weekend trip or collectors changing watch three times a day just to rotate their collecting.
Hey collector, collect whatever you want to collect. Do it your way and own it proudly. It’s your life, and if watch obsession isn’t a waste of time in your eyes then it isn’t.
And if you have 199 watches and looking for that #200, maybe a cushion shaped bamboo watch is exactly what’s missing in your collection.