This week: how I think about buying used, and the when/how I do it; and a note on Austin, Texas.
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Year: 2023
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Grand Seiko SBGX261
Most of my watches are complicated in nature. I don’t really do simple watches — I am not drawn to them. Even my simplest three-handers (plus date), have things about them (like accent colors) which make them less simple. Most of the time, that’s just fine.
Some of the time, it makes life slightly harder to go about. To select a single watch which fits anything and everything I might wear, is complicated by my watch buying tendencies. And I have long held that a Rolex Datejust (specifically the 36mm model) is among the best (if not the best) simple watches you can get, which will work for everything.
Then I saw a video on the Grand Seiko SBGX261 — this is Grand Seiko’s (more or less) entry level High Accuracy Quartz watch. It’s a simple watch in almost every way, and at 37mm, it is a compelling alternate to Rolex’s Datejust, or is it? I don’t know (ok, it’s essentially better).
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Prepping for Commuters
What if we want to take my idea of preparing for bad things like spilling coffee on your pants, or the more extreme where you find yourself in an unplanned overnight stay at a hotel near your office. Let’s take that thinking and apply it to those who commute on public transit and need to do it all in a reasonable sized bag. Can we get all that you need to stay in a roughly 26L bag and keep you from looking like a lost mountain trekker?
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Filson Original Briefcase versus 24hr Briefcase
Now that I’ve spent time with both of the popular Filson briefcase models — the question that sticks in my head is which is better, and which should you pick? The outright answer to this is that the 24hr Briefcase is the better briefcase. If I could only have one, it would be that one.
However, I don’t think the answer will be as cut and dry for everyone out there. So here’s my comparison between the two popular bags.
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Grand Seiko vs The Western World
A while back, after my first purchase Grand Seiko, I had mentioned in a Member Journal that I was considering the Swiss watch market a bit dead to me — that I might go all in on Grand Seiko going forward. It’s kind of a ridiculous statement for those who think luxury watches are ridiculous, or perhaps just think having one luxury watch is enough — completely valid stand points. It’s where I was, and how I am still feeling about luxury watches today.
And as I’ve been diving deeper into Grand Seiko these days, I’ve come to realize that the way I think about watches, and what I care about in a watch, more closely aligns with Grand Seiko’s watchmaking philosophy than it does any other brand. None of this is to say that Grand Seiko is better than Rolex, Omega, or Patek — it clearly is — but rather to say that the way Grand Seiko approaches watches, feels completely unique in the market.
To that end, I wanted to talk about Grand Seiko versus the Western Watch world, and help those who have not owned a Grand Seiko, understand why those who do own a Grand Seiko may never go back to other brands.
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Battle of EDC / Office Bags
This past year was chaotic with my office bags. I thought I found the perfect bag for the office multiple times, and to add insult to injury, I had assumed nothing could beat my Filson Original Briefcase — wrong.
Rather than hash out all the nuances of each bag, and knowing that most of you don’t stock an entire closet in your home with backpacks as I do, I thought I would run through where the top office bags land for not only the office, but for other uses too — maybe this will help guide your purchases.
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My Most Used Gear of 2022 & Gear Changes Over the Year
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Over the course of 2022, I’ve been tracking my gear usage — how many times I have used something, and when I’ve used it. This tracking has given me a ton of insight into what I actually use, and thus what I seem to like the most. With an added benefit of seeing how those preferences changed over the course of the year.
With the new method I used for logging, I am going to talk a bit about not only the top gear, but how my gear changed throughout the year for each of the categories I tracked.
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Prepping as We Enter 2023: Zombies or Poop — What’s Your Prep?
So often the ‘Prepper’ circles focus on making sure they can survive a collapse of the government, a violent rebellion, or a zombie apocalypse. That’s certainly really fun to plan for, but it’s far more likely that what you need to be prepared for is shitting your pants at work, stepping in a comically deep puddle walking to lunch, a national toilet paper shortage, or a temporary destabilization of local infrastructure. Actually, losing your income is the most effective prep you can have, but ‘save more money’ is a pretty short article, let’s focus on the gear stuff.
To this end, I get frustrated when I see posts about ‘get home bags’ which are not focusing on anything but civil war and zombies. (If you are thinking: hasn’t he written this before — I have — past posts here and here.) As with anyone who wants to actually carry useful stuff: I rethink, analyze, and refine this bag all the time. In what feels like the right timing, I wanted to address it now as we start a new year.
If a zombie apocalypse, or civil war breaks out, I might be screwed with this gear, but for anything else — I feel pretty good.
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Filson 24hr Tin Cloth Briefcase
I’ve wanted a Filson 24hr Tin Cloth Briefcase for a very long time, but there was always two things which held me back: the first is that I already had a Filson Original Briefcase so this one seemed redundant; and the second was/is the price tag on the bag.
When I saw this 24hr Briefcase at a really solid second-hand price, I snagged it right away. And like the 48hr Duffle, this bag gives me all sorts of happy vibes, which makes talking about it objectively a lot harder. It’s a very good bag, but most certainly not something that everyone will love, or even like.
