The Fourth Wheel, Issue 57

The Dating Window: Watch Collecting As Tinder Encounters, by Justin Hast

Hello and welcome back to The Fourth Wheel, the weekly watch newsletter that is taking a break from Big Serious Stories to bring you some light-hearted fun. It is Friday, after all. I’ve got a Seiko 5 wrapped around my neck¹, and I am excited to welcome Justin Hast as this week’s guest contributor². Justin needs little introduction: he’s the publisher of The Watch Annual, the man who sent a MoonSwatch to the edge of space, a permanently exuberant presence on social media and watch media’s resident gym bunny. I also think there’s a good chance he smiles more than anyone else in the watch industry. For this issue we agreed to play a little horological hot-or-not, as Justin shares some of the unexpected hits and misses of his collecting courtship.

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First of all, a reminder that you can still vote for your top twelve most significant watches OF ALL TIME, as arbitrarily chosen by me. I am really intrigued by the results so far (which is my polite way of saying boy, aren’t people wrong, and aren’t I going to have fun writing about why…).

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A short message about our complete lack of sponsors

I know from my all-seeing mastery of the newsletter stats that a lot of you are quite new to The Fourth Wheel. In fact, subscribers have gone up by about 50 per cent since I installed a paywall in April. I love seeing new people discover the newsletter, and I thank you all for taking the time to read it. But this also means a lot of you won’t have read the back catalogue (available to paying subscribers) or, most importantly, seen the post where I explained why I did that. You can read that here - I think it’s useful to understand why I think the newsletter is worth paying for.

The elevator pitch, though, is that The Fourth Wheel isn’t like the other watch media you’re reading. I don’t bother churning out endless ‘new watch’ stories or wham-bam extended captions on who wore what courtside last night; no repetitive listicles or misleading headlines about Rolex here, because I’m not trying to maintain traffic figures that will let me sell banner ads or sponsorships. I don’t care about that stuff: my pledge to you is that in return for your support, I won’t sell your data on to others, distract you with advertising or let anyone else influence what I write. All I want to do is give you something in-depth, intelligent and interesting to read every week³.

I’m not saying other watch media is bad - in fact, every week I dedicate my time to finding the very best stories you need to read, watch or listen to, from all over the world. But I am confident that right here, week in, week out, you’ll find a balance of honest, informed analysis, no-bullshit reviews and entertaining, irreverent writing that just doesn’t exist elsewhere. And some really cheesy jokes for good measure. So, if you want to make my day (and ensure that this newsletter lives on, and grows), why not see for yourself what all the fuss is about?

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The Dating Window: Watch Collecting As Tinder Encounters, by Justin Hast

Depending on your age (and style) you will no doubt have come across the dating app Tinder. If you are over 40 or in your early 20s you will likely not have used it. You will either not have had such a thing in your life or have moved onto the likes of “Bumble”. I talk from experience when I say Tinder is a hit and miss piece of kit. A few years back I can remember spending many a lonely Saturday night “flicking” and subsequently failing – in a myriad of various ways – but alas, those are stories for another time. And probably in person. But - but! - the whole dating app thing got me thinking: we all have emotional experiences and encounters with watches in our lives (after all, they are intensely personal things). Some you hit it off with immediately – some you never do so! And as with real dates, the ones that hit hardest are the ones that go significantly better, or worse, than anticipated.

So here are three watches that on a personal level have surpassed expectations in the metal – immediate, your-place-or-mine successes - and three that have left me flat, picking up the bill deflated at the premature end of the date.