Customer Reviews

Watches: The Ultimate Guide

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I was hoping to find a book that explained a lot about collecting watches, watchmaking terms, insight into the various brands -- including those sold on TV, or that a normal person can afford. This book is really disappointing in all those regards. It might point out which watches are the collectible elite, but leaves a lot to be desired if you're trying to educate yourself. The font sizes, layout of the book, and illustrations included are all a bit infantile. Certainly not worth the subtitle, "The Ultimate Guide". Whatever you do, do not pay full price for this. I can see now why it has a clear plastic cover on it -- to keep potential buyers from looking through the book before paying $45 for it at a retail shop.

There are some interesting warnings written about "never buy on the Internet", "beware all the fakes and forgeries", and "there's a lot of lying and cheating going on out there". But other than telling you that you really can't afford to collect those watches from the real Masters, it does nothing toward telling you what is important to look for, which brands are built decently, why you might want to buy one movement over another, or anything worthwhile toward starting to build a modest collection.

Total disappointment. Look for this at your library and be glad you saved that money.

Covers a lot of watches, from very expensive through Swatch, but all European. No mention of either American classics or the high end Japanese watches, to me a bit of a disappointment.

I would buy this reference again. It is basically a coffee table book, but with decent information. Certainly not a technical treatise.

As a newbie to the science of horology I felt this book provides a good starting point with the "meat and potatoes" of the industry including key terminology, competitors and brief historical facts (and tidbits of knowledge). when I was searching for a book covering this, it was hard to find something brief in nature and this did the trick.

For the size of the book, I think the author did a solid job of covering a very diverse industry!

It's a great book for the price.