{"id":13166,"date":"2021-07-20T05:34:18","date_gmt":"2021-07-20T12:34:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=13166"},"modified":"2021-07-20T05:34:18","modified_gmt":"2021-07-20T12:34:18","slug":"pandas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2021\/07\/20\/pandas\/","title":{"rendered":"Pandas!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"That Seiko watch you see on the right, known informally as “The Panda” in watch collector circles, is perhaps the best watch I’ve ever owned.\u00a0 I bought it at the Kunsan AFB Base Exchange when I was a young Army dude in 1975 for the princely sum of $76, which was a bit of a stretch for me.\u00a0 Oh, I had the bucks.\u00a0 The Army didn’t pay us much, but we didn’t have expenses, either, so $76 was eminently doable.\u00a0\u00a0In fact, I bought Seiko stainless steel chronographs from the Base Exchange for my Dad and my grandfather, too.\u00a0 Their watches were only $67, but the Panda had the day and the date on the face, and three timing features:\u00a0 Seconds on the main watch face, minutes on the lower subdial, and hours on the upper subdial.\u00a0 It was a beautiful thing and it was all mechanical.\u00a0 I wore it for about 10 years, and then when Ebay started to get popular I auctioned it away.\u00a0 I was quite pleased with the results.\u00a0 The watch that originally set me back $76 went for just north of $200 on Ebay 30 years ago.\u00a0 Today, though, that same watch brings around $2000. I sold too soon. Go figure.<\/p>\n

Anyway, being the watch junkie that I am, I was more than a little intrigued by a very similar watch now being offered by Breitling<\/a>.\u00a0 It is also an all mechanical watch Breitling<\/a> calls the “Premier.”<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

I’d call it a Panda, and I’d sure like to own one.\u00a0 But the Breitling<\/a> MSRP is a lofty $8500.\u00a0 They are just over $6,000 on Amazon, but that’s still way above my pay grade.<\/p>\n

In poking around on the Internet looking at the Breitlings, I learned that they offer several versions of their Premier.\u00a0 One is a model that pays tribute to the Norton<\/a> motorcycle, which has different colors, old school numbers on the face, and a band that, frankly, looks cheap to me.\u00a0 \u00a0The colors don’t really work for me, either, but maybe that’s because I want my Panda to look like a panda.\u00a0 If I wanted a Norton motorcycle, I’d buy a Norton.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Seiko<\/a> is back on the Panda wagon, too, as is Citizen<\/a> and perhaps others with modern versions of this classic watch design.\u00a0 Their prices are way more reasonable, too, being in the $200 to $300 range. But the new Seiko and Citizen Pandas are solar-powered quartz watches.<\/p>\n

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There’s nothing wrong with electric watches (in fact, their accuracy is astounding), but I’m a mechanical guy.\u00a0 I own a few solar watches and several battery-powered watches.\u00a0 I like them all.\u00a0 But there’s a certain cachet (a fancy word for cool) associated with a mechanical watch, even if you give up a little accuracy. I would like to wear that Breitling just to pretend I’m still a yuppie, but it’s not gonna happen.<\/p>\n

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