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dsio
··Ash @ ΩFWhen I was a kid my much older brother always wore a TAG Heuer, he was 18 years older and on his 19th bought himself a Formula 1 chronograph in orange in 1989, which after being stolen was replaced by another Formula 1 chronograph in 1991. Its that watch that he gave me in the late 90s as my first good watch after replacing it with a 6000 series diver. I wore this thing from then through to 2007, including every weekend sailing from 99-2003 racing Pacers and Lasers in competition and in that entire time I never had a problem with it between battery changes.
That might sound like its to be expected but I'd gone through about 5 Casios and even two "quite expensive" Citizen digital sailing watches in that time, as they just never lasted. Being belted against steel and aluminium every week used to destroy those Japanese models and even the better Citizens both ended up dead under six months one from leaking and the other from a cracked crystal.
The F1 actually had a scratch free bezel when I first got it, and no major dents to the case, it'd been quite well looked after though the tritium had started to flake. Although the bezel looked quite a mess by the end there really was nothing wrong with it when I finally decided to retire it from use, the flush mounted sapphire crystal, almost indestructible fibreglass bezel, incredibly light weight and superb water resistance (expecially considering we never changed the seals in 15 years) made it perfect on the water and the really easy to read chrono hands for both hours and minutes made it perfect for timing race starts (you can even hack it and use the pushers to position the hands back 5 minutes to use it as a countdown timer).
After I'd bought my first automatic we had a full restoration done on it to as new condition and passed the watch on to my brother's eldest son who'd just turned 10, I was really glad to be able to do that as by that stage it was about 20 years old and we wanted to keep it in the family. Unfortunately about a year ago he was surfing with it when one of the original springbars which we neglected to change finally let go and he lost it in the water but we certainly got our money's worth out of it over the two and a bit decades and it gave me, my brother and hopefully my nephew an appreciation of watches that will last a lifetime.
That might sound like its to be expected but I'd gone through about 5 Casios and even two "quite expensive" Citizen digital sailing watches in that time, as they just never lasted. Being belted against steel and aluminium every week used to destroy those Japanese models and even the better Citizens both ended up dead under six months one from leaking and the other from a cracked crystal.
The F1 actually had a scratch free bezel when I first got it, and no major dents to the case, it'd been quite well looked after though the tritium had started to flake. Although the bezel looked quite a mess by the end there really was nothing wrong with it when I finally decided to retire it from use, the flush mounted sapphire crystal, almost indestructible fibreglass bezel, incredibly light weight and superb water resistance (expecially considering we never changed the seals in 15 years) made it perfect on the water and the really easy to read chrono hands for both hours and minutes made it perfect for timing race starts (you can even hack it and use the pushers to position the hands back 5 minutes to use it as a countdown timer).
After I'd bought my first automatic we had a full restoration done on it to as new condition and passed the watch on to my brother's eldest son who'd just turned 10, I was really glad to be able to do that as by that stage it was about 20 years old and we wanted to keep it in the family. Unfortunately about a year ago he was surfing with it when one of the original springbars which we neglected to change finally let go and he lost it in the water but we certainly got our money's worth out of it over the two and a bit decades and it gave me, my brother and hopefully my nephew an appreciation of watches that will last a lifetime.
