I wrote this review, sold the watch, and only then actually hit submit on this review. I felt it necessary to start with this disclaimer because I didn’t want this essay to be thought of as an ad for my decidedly pedestrian Omega Speedmaster Professional. I have already moved it, and I’m satisfied with what I got for it, all in the pursuit of the next watch (Sorry, Roman!).

So then, how does one review a watch one wants to sell? What preoccupies the mind in the lead up to the sale: Why sell? Why sell now? Why sell wherever the listing was made? Why risk the remorse of hindsight?

The Moonwatch is an appropriately vanilla choice for this case study. Everyone, at some point during their time being an enthusiast, wants one; owns one or several; used to own one or several; has been around long enough to know they’re not to one’s taste. George Daniels enumerated the qualities a mechanical watch must possess.

Historic: have you heard of the race to the moon?
Technical: don’t get the cal. 321 enthusiasts started, it is sufficient to know the caliber is good enough, and important enough, for some enthusiasts somewhere to be this enthusiastic about it.
Intellectual: has Omega single-handedly made possible the resurgent race to the moon by keeping the flame of the dream alive over the decades with limited editions of the Moonwatch?
Aesthetic: inoffensive.
Amusing: have you heard of our lord and savior, Peanuts?
Useful: what could you do in 14 seconds?

It’s a Moonwatch, what do you want? There are many like it, but this one was mine, okay? No, but on a serious note, every review I’ve written has been half review, half excuse to issue a screed (never more than 3,861 characters, though) about some issue or the other in the world of watches. This one ostensibly has been about the Moonwatch; it’s really about why we sell watches.

My Moonwatch came out of a piggy bank. For a year, any time I had spare cash, or received cash for anything, I added it to that piggy bank. After a year, my patience ran out and I busted it open to find that I was close enough to justify the additional charge on my credit card. I bought a Hesalite 1861 Moonwatch from an AD in 2019 (no discount and an additional 10% sales tax) and I walked out with a stupid grin on my face thinking I was done with the Moonwatch rat race for life. I had my one Moonwatch and I would never, ever sell it so I would never, ever need to think about buying another one.

When I was posting nice pictures of my collection on my Instagram profile, in the caption to the Moonwatch I wrote, “It was the one they were making – when I finally had enough saved up to buy one – that was truest to the version that went to the moon, and can be taken out into space even today, and be expected to work. SpaceX didn’t exist 20 years ago, and they’re on track to launch and land a rocket a week this year; where will they be 20 years from now? Where will the space tourism industry be in another 20 years?”

Left unsaid was the desire to still be around in a few decades for the space tourism industry to become affordable for someone like me, and for this Moonwatch to still be on my wrist at that time. I didn’t write it then because it was (and is) incredibly pretentious. I’m writing it now because I feel like I’ve changed as a collector and don’t feel beholden to the same impulses I did back in 2018 when I was just getting started as an enthusiast and a collector and a Hodinkee devotee who must own a Moonwatch and figure out a way to make an ordinary luxury commodity special for himself.

It has been…difficult for me to accept this change but I have been taught by friends the necessity of accepting it. The watch is gone. The geriatric space tourism dream is dead. May you have better luck with your attempt.