Unfortunately, this is true. Sadly, it happened with my daily watch. It did not fall down, it was not damaged by any other means as far as I know. A good thing to know about me is that I take genuinely good care of all my possessions. Watches especially. So how did the watch stem break? I really do not know.
Since this is a watch with automatic movement, I do not need to wind it every day. The only time I pull out the crown is when I have to set the time on Mondays because it stopped working during the weekend. As you may already know I have a separate watch for weekends.
Recently while at work and having a break I decided to set the time down to the second. I took the watch off my wrist, opened the Hodinkee app and swiped up their clock, and was about to set the time when by pulling out the crown it ended up in my hand. I was shocked. I was speechless. You could even say that I felt pain at that moment.
As far as I could tell nothing else is damaged. The watch and its movement works, there are no scratches on the glass. Furthermore, even if it did get dropped, how would you explain this particular damage? The stem broke off at the point where it was attached to the crown. You can see it in the attached (blurry) photos.
Either the stem itself was faulty and this was just a matter of time. Or there is something supernatural happening. Meaning, this watch got jealous that I am about to buy a new watch that may get more wrist time than it. I am not saying that watches or objects in general have feelings, but watches being very personal items there may be some other forces at play.
Anyway, we will try to get to the bottom of this. Hopefully, the place where I am about to buy a watch has a repair service that is going to be able to replace the stem. Also, since this watch was bought almost two years ago, I would say that the service of the movement was already due. For good measure, and to check if the movement is working properly.
It is painful. Not only because this watch has been with me almost every working day, but also because it was a gift from my wonderful woman. It feels that I let her down by not taking good enough care of the watch. She told me not to worry, anything could happen, and so on. But it still is hard. It will continue to be hard until the very moment when I get the watch back from a watchmaker who managed to replace the stem. Because I love this watch. It was on my wrist when I got my current job, and it has been with me all through my probation period. It has been to places and it has seen some things. Thus it needs to be kept and taken care of.
While that happens. I am back with my Seiko as a daily driver.
I need more watches.
Kind regards,
Olaaf
