A surprisingly accurate render of myself and Panda by Mr Jim Dollare$
This is just about the only AI you will find on this blog thank you very much!
Hello my faithful fellow TAG Heuer Enthusiasts. As many of you are no doubt aware, I have been writing this blog for almost ten years now and it's been a brilliant experience, from starting out, joining the THF Forum (or Calibre 11 as it was then) to visiting Switzerland and the TAG Heuer manufacture at La Chaux De Fonds, to getting my first million views (not really all that long ago, and now we're at 4.3M! That's crazy.), it's all been rewarding (if a lot harder work than you probably imagine).
But now I find myself at a bit of a crossroads. My enthusiasm for watches in general has started to wane. I still love the watches I own and I will keep nearly all of them, but generally speaking I just can't bring myself to care the way I used to. Partly it's the prices, the prices are just ridiculous and it makes the idea of owning a brand new watch something of a joke. I cannot spend two month's salary on a Solar Aquaracer, I just can't.
And okay, I've never bought many new watches, the vast majority of the watches I have bought have been pre-owned, and I'm sure if I do purchase any more, they will probably also be pre-owned, because I'm not taking a 40-50% loss on a watch, not when the starting price is so ridiculously high.
I'm not singling out TAG Heuer here, I know the entire watch industry is moving 'up market', well that's fine, but it will have to do it without me, because I can't afford it. Even with no mortgage I can't afford it. Or maybe I could, if I wanted it badly enough... and clearly I don't.
Further to that, not only are the prices ludicrous and ever increasing, but it seems like corners are being cut everywhere. First we had no lume pip on the 200M Aquaracers, how petty is that? How much does that really save? And now we have ladies Aquaracers with fixed bezels, no screw down crown and no second hand. What next? Faced with this kind of nonsense is it any wonder I'm struggling to care anymore?
But okay, I don't really miss the lume pip on my green dial Aquaracer, because I don't dive and never will, so if we leave that aside... I'm still struggling to think of a watch released this year that I would buy if only I had the money. I do not like the glassbox Carreras (or the Extreme Carreras really), I'm not crazy about the new Monaco, the solar Aquaracers with coloured dials look like plastic and the 42mm ones like suspiciously like Paganis, and while the new F1s are okay, they don't have the appeal of the originals for me, despite the size being better suited to my wrist (and they're overpriced).
In fact if you took me down to Oxford Street and said I could chose any watch (free), I'd most likely pick either the Orange Lava Porsche Carrera or the Jack Heuer solid gold panda Carrera (not the glassbox, the one from about five years ago). Which isn't to say there haven't been some nice watches over the past few years, but most of the nicer ones have been limited editions and are long gone.
That's another thing, limited editions are so prevalent now that it's become a bit of a joke. Of the seventeen solar F1's released so far, thirteen are 'limited editions'. Just think about that for a moment. I've never been one to support the Rolex model of making the same stuff year after year, but the overuse of the 'limited edition' trick now renders it irrelevant. Great there's a new limited edition, so what? There'll be three more next week... and the week after that and the week after that.
I said at the start of the year I was going to write less about new watches, and I have. The idea was that I would spend more time writing about older watches, my watches, watches I was interested in writing about. But even though I have dialed back the new release posts, I just don't have the enthusiasm at the moment to be creative, at least not here.
While I am reluctant to let my blog stagnate, is it worse to write half-arsed posts about watches that I don't really care about, or is it better to have a rest, some time away and see if my enthusiasm comes back? I think the latter is the best course. That doesn't mean there will be no posts, it means posts will come when I am inspired to write them.
I will do a quarterly round-up as I promised, so that will be the next post. There are some other posts that are in the pipeline, some contributed by members of the C.O.C.O., they will follow as they come due. So do check back periodically, because the blog isn't shutting, it won't be removed, but I simply cannot post every few days any more.
Maybe I set myself up to fail with my high posting schedule, but I managed it for a long time and created a blog I can be proud of. There are still things that need doing, the History of the 1000 Series is a glaring omission and one day I WILL get that done. But right now what I need is a break, and when I come back, maybe gradually, perhaps I will aim for one post every two weeks or something a bit more manageable.
In any case the tagheuerenthusiastgallery.blogspot.com will continue to be updated as normal.
After all it's not like I ever made a penny out of this blog, there are no adverts here, no Patreon, nothing. So while I hope the views will not fall off too much, if they do, then that's okay. It won't cost me a thing. I do not regard myself as a 'content creator', I am and always have been an 'enthusiast' and right now I simply don't have much of it.
Thanks for your understanding,
Rob / Aqua-G
