How It Started

A new year, in fact a new decade has just begun. Outside it's raining cats and dogs (maybe even cows, by the looks of it). This gets me in the mood for reminiscing, how it all started… my interest in Orient watches, that is.

Collecting watches is usually a hobby one picks up as a grown up, when fascination with mechanics (or history, or design, whatever it is that drives one into watches) is met with sufficient income. For me this hobby did not start with Orients… I must have had at least a dozen other watches before getting my first Orient, a vintage Chrono-ace.

It was actually much later that my renewed interest in the brand brought up distant childhood memories of my first real watch, even before the ubiquitous Casio calculator… yep, that was an Orient, given to me by my dad when I was around 10 years old or a little later – and if memory serves me right, it was his watch that he gave me once my wrist was large enough to accept.

Large wrist or not, it was a massive piece for a kid. I remember the heft of its steel case very well. While watches were quite small back then, compared to today's case sizes, to me it seemed big enough.

One other thing I remember well, is the lume. The thing had some serious lume on it. I'd stay up well after lights-out just to watch that Orient shine in the dark in blue and green (markers and hands were different shades). That image, in fact, must have burned deep into my mind, as it kept coming in dreams years after. Yes, it's true: I'd dream of watches. Weird, wonderful complicated ones with plenty of buttons and functions.

So it came to be that memories of my old Orient crossed paths with this new hobby. I like many other watch brands of course, but keep a special place for Orient.

And now, that it's not just a new year that is starting, but it's actually Orient's 70^th anniversary, I wonder: what new models will 2020 bring? I guess we'll have to wait and see! Stick around and keep following the blog, it will surely be interesting!