A Guide To Holiday Watches and Our Showcase Event

This week we held another Virtual Showcase event. We talked about watches you wear on holiday, and people talked about quite a variety of timepieces. Nick talked about his Corum Admiral’s Cup, describing his love for it, the semaphore flags representing the numbers, and the positive comments people made about it. He did admit that while he liked it too much to risk wearing while he was sailing, he often took it on less active holidays.

Two people spoke about their Casio G-Shocks. Hamish, our CEO, proudly showed off his all metal B5000D, a modern recreation of the original model from 1983. It is battle-tested on ski holidays as well as city breaks. Tash presented two recent additions to her collection, a pair of new model G-shocks aimed at women. Not from the Baby-G line, these are nicknamed “CasioOaks” as they look slightly like the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak. Being Casio, they are 181x times less expensive, but still feature some fantastic gold-coloured accents. They are also much more robust than their lookalikes and as they contain a world-timer function, they are useful when travelling overseas.

What Makes A Good Holiday Watch?

Holidays watches need to be stress free above all. No one wants to worry about damaging or losing a watch while on holiday. It also helps to wear one that is unlikely to be stolen. While some holiday activities might require very specialised watches, digital watches with GPS, or Dive computers, most people will feels safe with a watch that ticks these boxes:

• Waterproof
• Automatic
• Sturdy case and bracelet
• Unflashy

We have talked about many categories of watch on this blog that would fit these requirements. For example; steel sports watches, dive watches, pilot watches, and chronographs such as the Zenith El Primero. Outside of these examples, watches designed for, or similar to, military watches may also be suitable, as well as the huge category called “Field Watches”. These are watches supposedly designed for use in outdoor activities without fuss, and come most famously from American watch brand Hamilton, and you can read a detailed history here.

Automatic or Quartz?

We don’t have a preference between automatic or quartz here at the Watch Collectors’ Club. We also love manually wound watches. We think that on holiday they last thing you want to worry about is winding your watch every day so recommend one that powers itself. As a reminder, an automatic watch is one that contains a rotor within the mechanism that winds the mainspring up using the movement of the wearer’s wrist. Quartz watches are powered by a battery. Either way, taking one of these pieces away with you will be more relaxing, especially if you are lucky enough to be travelling to a different time zone.

Should You Take An Expensive Watch On Holiday?

Many people prefer to take a less expensive watch on holiday, as they fear they may have higher risk of theft wherever they are going. While this clearly depends on location, we understand that losing a precious watch on holiday would be a massive disappointment. For totally stress free travel we recommend leaving your most fancy, flashy, or complicated watches at home, and taking something that might suit every occasion. As mentioned earlier, may tool watches, or plastic cased watches from other brands, such as the famous Swatch, might be suitable. There are also a huge number of watch microbrands focussing on ease of use and rugged construction. We will consider microbrands in a series of blog posts this summer.

Is There a Best Watch For A Holiday?

We at The Watch Collectors’ Club don’t believe there is a best watch, for holidays or anything else.

This guide simply comes down to: Take what you most enjoy wearing without worrying.

We will continue to explore all kinds of watches, and many of those are suitable for the majority of holidays. If you’d like to explore with us, keep following us here, on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn. If you know anyone else who might be interested, please let them know where to find us.