Feature: The Perfect Three Watch Collection (Affordable, Midrange and Expensive)
If you want that perfect three watch collection, you’ve come to the right place. I’ve put together three different selections for three different budgets—affordable, midrange and expensive—each one featuring a dive watch, a dress watch and a chronograph. I think they’re perfect.
Affordable
Let’s start things off with the affordable end of the spectrum. You might think getting high quality watches at the cheaper end of the market might be difficult, but actually there are more great choices than ever before. And you don’t have to compromise on quality. Improvements in production technology mean you can spend a few hundred on a watch and trust that it’ll last the stay.
First in the affordable collection is the chronograph, and it’s the most expensive item here. It’s the Maen Skymaster Thunder Grey, and it costs just under £900. For that you get a classic sixties chronograph layout with a splash of colour in a sensibly sized 38mm case. Not too big, not too small. But the most impressive part is that this includes a Swiss made ETA 2894 chronograph movement, and it’s not often you see a Swiss mechanical chronograph in a budget watch.
Still in the hundreds, but at several less is our diver, the Halios Seaforth. At first glance it seems unremarkable—it’s not flashy and chunky, and it doesn’t have the bold colouration of the Maen, but what it is loaded with is high specification. For a bit over £600, you get a 41mm stainless steel case—or titanium if you’d prefer—a 120-click sapphire bezel with luminous numbers, and a water resistance of 200m to keep the Swiss Sellita SW200 calibre dry.
Coming in at the rear is our dress watch, and you’ll be pleased to hear it’s even cheaper still! Okay, so it’s not the model of Swiss perfection of the other two, and it’s not exactly the most traditional of dress watches, but at £195 and evoking the calmness of Autumn with its swirling leaves, the Perfectly Useless Morning by Mr Jones is a watch that could honestly find a home in any collection. Artist Kristof Devos hasn’t just captured a scene, but a feeling as well.
Midrange
Time to up the ante and the budget for our midrange collection, starting with a lovely little bronze number, the Longines Legend Diver. Talk about combining good value with punchy looks and a little extra spice to boot. The 42mm case starts off a rich rose gold colour, which, over time, forms an organic pattern that people who collect things call “patina”.
Whilst it’s not exactly leagues ahead of the Halios’ specification for the cost, the £2,570 does get you into a Swiss brand that’s got twice as much heritage as a Rolex, that doesn’t look like yet another generic dive watch in steel with a black dial. Here you get the compressor case style with the twin crowns—one for the time and the other for the internal bezel—plus a smoky green gradient dial that hints at the colours you’ll get when the bronze starts turning. Longines even did us a solid and got rid of the date at three o’clock like it has on the standard model. Slightly less practicality for the upshot of uncorrupted good looks.
Dressing it up a bit is the Bauhaus leanings of the Nomos Tangente Reference 139, which, for £1,660, offers up way too much for the price you’re paying. Sure, it’s only 35mm, but when you see the punch it’s packing, you’ll wish you’d never questioned its size. It’s a German watch, so you’ll get the ridiculous attention to detail the Germans seem incapable of avoiding, from the silver dial—metal and colour—heat blued hands and in-house Alpha calibre. You’ll honestly be hard-pushed to find a watch with more for less than this.
To round out our midrange collection, we’ve got the Hamilton Intra-Matic Chrono, a throwback to Hamilton’s glory days as one of the greatest American watchmakers to ever put cog to spring. They’re made in Switzerland these days because of reasons, but nevertheless the watch still carries all that spirit in its 40mm case, deep within those two big eyes. It’s decently spec’d too, pumping out 60 hours of power reserve from the calibre H-31 and 100m of water-resistance without needing screw-down pushers. When it comes to Swiss made chronographs from brands that changed the landscape of the entire industry, you can’t do much better than this.
Expensive
If you’ve made it this far, then perhaps you’ve been saving your pennies or got a good bonus, because now we’re talking expensive watches. I haven’t gone ridiculous mind, so perhaps there’s some future food for thought here if your current plans align a little closer with what’s just been.
Let’s start with the dress watch first because, well, why not. It’s Grand Seiko’s 38.5mm Omiwatari, the SBGY007 to give you the boring version. Omiwatari means “Path of the Gods”, because this a watch that has a dial inspired by one of the most biblical scenes on this pebble we call home, the frozen Lake Suwa near Shiojiri, the birthplace of Grand Seiko’s Spring Drive technology.
So, of course, the Omiwatari gets a Spring Drive movement—and this is no ordinary Spring Drive movement. Not that any are ordinary. This is the 9R31, which borrows its architecture from the hand-wound 9R02 found in the £52,000 Grand Seiko SBGZ003, which in turn borrows its architecture from the 7R14 found in the incredible Credor Eichi II. All that and the £7,770 asking price doesn’t seem quite so much!
Let’s come back to Switzerland for our dive watch, to the watchmaker that did titanium dive watches before they were cool. This is the Omega Seamaster Professional 300m No Time To Die James Bond limited edition. If you’re not a fan of Bond, however, it doesn’t matter, because unlike previous iterations, the only tell is a little logo on the case back. The remainder of the 42mm case is unadorned by such product placement, instead earning a vintage-style military makeover that’s made this version incredibly sought-after. Only difference is that Omega actually made more so people who wanted one could have one, albeit for £8,600.
To round off our expensive collection, we’ve got not just a chronograph, but a calendar as well in the Jaeger-LeCoultre Master Control Chronograph Calendar. What Jaeger-LeCoultre lacks in imagination when it comes to naming conventions, it’s saved for the main event, the watch itself. Not only is the 40mm steel case exquisitely proportioned, the dial within is too, housing multiple layers of complexity with ease. The calibre 759 is equally stunning, leaving no doubt in anyone’s mind as to why Jaeger-LeCoultre earns the respect it has. The £14,800 price isn’t cheap, but it is enormously good value.
If there’s one main takeaway here, it’s that there are good watches at any price point for any buyer. You can spend a lot but you don’t necessarily need to. The watches in the affordable collection would look just as cool alongside those from the expensive, and that’s what makes these selections so special. What three watch collection would you put together?
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Shop pre-owned Hamilton watches
Shop pre-owned Jaeger-LeCoultre watches
