Why Whimsical Wednesday?

Why did I start and continue to observe & celebrate Whimsical Wednesday?

As you may have read in a previous post, I’m not luxury. I’ve never made a lot of money and I’ve tried to value experiences over things, so owning a watch that costs as much as a decent used car was never a realistic thing to happen for me. The most expensive watch I owned at the time I started Whimsical Wednesday was an Archon Seafarer, which had an RRP of $650, but I got from Watch Gang for $99.

Watch I gifted my nephew

It was early January 2022 and I had just gotten back from a week long trip to California and work was slow as it always is after the Christmas holidays. It was even slower since no one in management seemed to care that some of the things I had been doing for work had not been done while I was on vacation. I was burnt out and took their indifference to mean that I didn’t need to be doing the busy work anymore. Looking for something to occupy some time and bring me joy & I caught the watch bug. I mean I already owned nine watches at the time, but I started hanging out on r/Watches and reading more about them and watching Wristwatch Revival and other watch content on YouTube. Basically, most of my free time was spent in ogling watch pr0n.

A lot of the watches on the subreddit were, of course, serious watches (Rolex, Seiko, etc.), but again, I had nothing really serious; not even a working Citizen.

As a Star Wars fan, I had purchased a novelty watch when The Phantom Menace came out. Lucasfilm had released a quartet of promotional watches; each of a different character in the film. Two of the 4 were ‘villain’ watches (Darth Maul and a battle droid), one was a neutral watch (a pit droid) and the 4th was a hero watch (R2D2). I remember wanting the Darth Maul watch, but when I learned the protruding horns were rubber and not metal, I picked up the bronze battle droid. Then in February 2022 I wanted the R2D2 watch. I looked on eBay and the single watch was going for like $40, but I found the set of 4 for $30, in original packaging! Not that the packaging matters, it was blister packs and I sliced & diced them open so fast when I received them in the mail. NIB? Who cares. LOL. Anyway, now I had something fun & unique I could sort of stand out from the crowd of serious watches with.

So I hung out on Reddit, absorbing watch knowledge, occasionally posting answers to easy questions like “Is it loom or lume?” (It’s lume, BTW), and began fitting in to the community a little bit. This was during the height of crypto (gryffto as I call it) and flex culture was on full display. People posting fully iced-out watches in their Ferrari’s or from Belize and one dude always posting the logo of his Ponzi scheme company. So even though I was being accepted as a member of the community, I still felt quite ‘small’ in the watch world.

So I started posting my Star Wars watches on Wednesdays and hashtagged them #whimsicalwednesday. They started getting a few more likes than my other watches, so I kept it up. then on May the Fourth Be With You 2022, I posted a short wrist roll of my bronze battle droid and at at the end, popped open the head to reveal the time. It got upvoted something like 600 times and was on the r/Watches Top Posts for most of the day.

However, my time on r/Watches was coming to an end. Remember the dude posting his Ponzi scheme company logo? Some members tried to force the mods to ban him. While I didn’t necessarily defend him, I might have told the ban crew they were all being a little too sensitive about it since they could simply ignore him. They did not like that.

I also found myself fitting in a little too well into the Reddit community; scoffing at people asking what I considered simple questions that should be general knowledge and being somewhat of a troll.

I had also added Max’s Watch Crunch videos to my YouTube consumption and checked out the site (no app at the time) and found the small group of WIS’s very fun and knowledgeable and not at all flexing. Sure they still posted their Daytona’s and Patek’s and what not, but it was simply the pic with a “Have an amazing day!” caption. There was no “Look at my new watch I earned by swindling other people in gryffto!” braggadocio. It was really refreshing.

Anyway, back to why I still ‘celebrate’ Whimsical Wednesday. It’s a reminder to me and hopefully to others to have fun with their watches, the hobby and each other. If I can have fun with a $9 novelty watch and confidently wear it wherever, then anyone can wear their $50 Casio Duro in the same manner. It’s sort of a liberation call to all of us who will likely never own a Speedmaster, Submariner or Nautilus. All watches matter and if you like the watch you’re wearing, that should be all you need to enjoy it. Don’t chase the approval of people that aren’t paying your bills.

So until next time, watch friends. Remember, it doesn’t matter whether the watch design itself is whimsical or the acquisition story is (“I saw it and next thing I know I’m wearing out of the store!”), wear those whimsical watches!