12 years ago, Christmas day 2003, my wife (then my girlfriend), game to me a Timex Carriage watch. For the last 12 years I have worn said watch and it shows it’s wear. After the band started to fail, and has been repaired, I decided I needed a new watch. Being short of cash flow, and always interested in something different, I decided to go the used watch route. In this case, very used. I stumbled upon an interesting phenomenon where there are many manual wind watches from the early 1970’s to mid 1980’s being sold on eBay from India. These watches are frequently cleaned and the dials repainted, then shipped out to the US. I found a 1975 vintage Fortis watch, 17 jewel ST96 swiss movement, in great shape for $12.50 shipped to my door. The band it came with was new, but garbage. It broke when I tried putting it on and wasn’t going to be repairable. So it is wearing the gray cloth strap I wrote about earlier. Pretty slick, right? And at 34mm case width it is the same width as my Timex and perfect for my slim 6.5″ circumference wrist.
** Edit **
I let it run out to see how long it’s power reserve is, 49 hours 20 minutes! Since I wind it every morning I have no concern about it running down on me now.
1975 Fortis manual wind watch, swiss ST96 movement
