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Unsupportive family and friends


P4GTR

Do the people closest to you loathe your hobby?  

109 members have voted

  1. 1. Do the people closest to you loathe your hobby?

    • Yes
      29
    • No
      80


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My family and friends are good.. my two bosses are both watch nuts.. one sells new gen Breitlings in his spare time and the other just a collector with over 50 Gens almost all from the 1960's-80's. My dad loves watches too and has one gen Datejust that i gave him for his birthday last year. None of my friends are really into watches though..

Lonnie

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kenny_craig_02.jpg

"Look into my eyes, not around the eyes, look into the eyes....one, two, three & youre under....

Unsupportive unbelievers, you must make it your mission to kill everyone of them.

Now I'll count to three and you can go back to maniacal irrational rep buying

one,

two,

three,

& youre back."

.

Edited by narikaa
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I live with my girlfriend in a nice apartment in the suburbs. We work hard and receive no spoiled handout's from our families.

I drive and pay for my '04 (bought brand new) Nissan SE-R SpecV. I've got a couple thousand dollars in NISMO upgrades (I/H/E/MM etc..). I love cars but its too expensive for me to build what I want right now. I downgraded to a less costly hobby!

ser.jpg

I'm with you. I have a 96 BMW 328IS which I have thrown some serious cash into with Racing suspension, Super Charger, short shifter, new lights, blah blah blah. :drive1:

But, then two kids came along. :doh:

So that car sits in a garage going nowhere. I had to come up with something else - much cheaper. B)

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No one is really unsupportive or supportive. Most will think that I'm wasting my money though, and maybe I am. I don't have a car or my own place, all my money seems to go on whatever OCD obsession I have at the time - I have over 100 football (soccer) shirts, over 50 pairs of trainers (sneakers), over 20 leather jackets, thousands of records and CDs (though my excuse is from my DJing days), and now it is even worse as I spend more on watches than I ever did on anything else. I should really have got a car and my own place by now -_-

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Pretty new at this, only 3 watches, but I'm still in that heavy study phase. Where im learning about the movements, materials, history and other oddities. So its not so much the purchase that some find odd...its the off beat obsession with education that i get knocked for. went as far as to start looking for horology classes, by the "family support" i received you would have thought i was dealing heroin to middle schoolers.

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went as far as to start looking for horology classes, by the "family support" i received you would have thought i was dealing heroin to middle schoolers.

Maybe they thought you mean "wh0re-ology" :lol:

Edited by Chronus
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I never would've expected to get such a negative response from family and friends over this hobby.

My girlfriend hates hearing about the watches. With a grand total of 3 watches + one more planned for my birthday next month, is it really that extreme? She also is of the opinion that she is owed a piece of jewlery now. Maybe so. :rolleyes:

My father asked me what I would like for my birthday the other day. I don't want anything. I don't need anything. I said I planned on getting a SFSO if he would like to contribute to that purchase. His response was "how many watches does that make it now?", followed by a "don't you have anything more responsible to spend your money on" pause for effect.

Why am I being put on the defensive? I'm going to be 30 next year. My bills are paid, I am generally a very responsible person. There is no reason for me to attract this kind of negative support.

There are so many other things I could waste a few hundred dollars on in the course of a weekend, and have nothing to show for it come Monday morning besides a nose-bleed or a sunburn and a hangover. I don't spend a fortune on clothing, I drive a moderately priced car. Does it not seem like for every desire, there is double the reason to begrudge yourself of it?

Some of you probably remember that I recently picked up an almost-brand-new, genuine TAG link for $800. The watch retails for $2000 (ok, you guys could probably find it for a bit less, but let me make my point). My family, girlfriend and friends [censored] themselves at the fact that I spent that much on a watch. My father passed up on stealing a SS Submariner for a couple hundred dollars in 1978 because I was just born. You would think he would want me to grab that TAG, but instead it made him pretty standoffish.

I just don't get the negativity towards this hobby. The watches are not replacing meals on the table or the electricity bill. I've never spent much money on myself, and up until recently, it felt really nice to be able to.

Do any of you go through this as well? I can't believe you all have significant others that LOVE seeing you unwrap one heavily taped package after another. Maybe I am in wealthy company here, and it's just not that much of an issue to you all.

I get the same beef from my fiance about my watch collection, although she's quite happy for me to spend money on a watch for her to wear. Actually, that's not quite the truth. On viewing a watch (the HBB Aspen) she wasn't particularly fussed either way if I bought it (for her step-sister) the instant she actually saw it for real, she strapped it on her wrist and it hasn't come off since. Her mum has also previously joked about the amount of watches I have, but has always said they looked nice, and, when I actually showed her them all laid out, she said that a few in particular (the modified Aqua Terra particularly) were really nice, and she then decided she wanted a Rolex for herself, and started browsing the net for something she wanted (which I've said I'll buy her) for her birthday. My fiance's step-dad used to take the [censored] a bit, saying that quartz watches were better, but, since I gave him a Panerai for father's day, he hasn't repeated such comments, and often wears it :D

Edited by TeeJay
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I guess I'm lucky, no one close has given me any flak over the watches yet....

Although like a lot of other folks here, hobbies can be addictive:

758RWHP

IMG_0954.jpg

I was almost going to sell this and buy a Ferrari 512TR, until my friends convinced me that I would miss the 717ft lbs that go along with all that hp!

Oh yeah, VERY nice sir. C5. Z06? Supercharged, intercooled, wet N2O setup, aftermarket throttle body, carbon fiber everything.. Lets see more! Its my thread, I say its ok!

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Oh yeah, VERY nice sir. C5. Z06? Supercharged, intercooled, wet N2O setup, aftermarket throttle body, carbon fiber everything.. Lets see more! Its my thread, I say its ok!

Thanks!

It's lots of fun, and has absolutely insane amounts of power. C5R 427 completely built and swapped out for the original. Those brass fittings going into the intake upstream of the throttle body are methanol injection. No NOS on this puppy, as she makes all that power on pump gas & methanol at 11psi boost. Not bad for a pushrod engine B)

IMG_0959.jpg

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  • 2 years later...

I don't know of many hobbies that are supported fully by family and friends. Many hobbies are looked at as obsessions one way or another. If you were into collecting comic books or model trains the response would be the same.

Do what makes you happy and others should be happy for you. If they aren't then don't include them in your interests. You have 20,000+ here that understand.

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I think generally, 70%+ of people don't support what they don't understand...WHATEVER that is.

Luckily, my wife hangs around true collectors a lot for work, so she understands the collecting mentality. I don't understand some of her things but accept them and vice versa.

I would guess P4GTR, you are beyond just 3 watches now. Hah hah...

My in-laws don't understand how much we pay for a small house downtown in a big city, when for the same price we could get a massive house out in the suburbs.

Anybody that disagrees with the hobby I just tell them that I had to switch hobbies because my lap dance and online porn costs were killing me. ;)

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I would guess P4GTR, you are beyond just 3 watches now. Hah hah...

Anybody that disagrees with the hobby I just tell them that I had to switch hobbies because my lap dance and online porn costs were killing me. ;)

LOL and I'm sure by now you've learned how to get your pron for free!

I'm going to trim the fat off the original post. I'm much less of a sad cause then I was then. My fiance is great, still a woman and as such not into watches so much. More for me. :thumbsupsmileyanim:

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My in-laws don't understand how much we pay for a small house downtown in a big city, when for the same price we could get a massive house out in the suburbs.

Ditto that. I would rather have 1000 sq ft in a major metropolitan city (which I do) than 3000+ sq ft in the 'burbs. (Been there done that 3200 sq ft, but all the neighbors cared about were their lawns and sports center - yawn, never going back) :) Gotta have the pulse of the city.

As for the hobby, my family and 'city slicker' friends support me/it.

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Never had any issue with my hobby and how others perceive it. My wife is quite supportive, and when I took a break from watches, she had asked why I stopped and suggested I get back into it. The only time she's shown frustration is when I sell my watches. She doesn't understand why I'd put so much time and effort into building something only to sell it.

My kids rather enjoy watching me put things together and have shown interest in the hobby as well. My son (5yrs old) has already built his own watch from some of my spares and my daughter (2yrs old) has demonstrated her ability in handling a pair of tweezers and small parts just fine. So, who knows? It could become a family kind of past time :)

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Thanks!

It's lots of fun, and has absolutely insane amounts of power. C5R 427 completely built and swapped out for the original. Those brass fittings going into the intake upstream of the throttle body are methanol injection. No NOS on this puppy, as she makes all that power on pump gas & methanol at 11psi boost. Not bad for a pushrod engine B)

IMG_0959.jpg

Nice! I had a '03 ZO6 w/ 800rwhp built by Lingenfelter. Sold it with plans to buy a '09 ZR1, but now I work for the "Other guy" so I had to put one of these in my garage.

600Hp package.

GT500.jpg

I have been fortunate with my wife as she has been supportive of my watch "problem". Now she was not always this way. It changed just after we got married and I took her to my local AD as they just got the Baton Dial Breitling SA in stock. After trying the different color dials on we both agreed the blue was the best color and she told me, "To get it." For some reason I talked myself out of it at that time. Turns out that was the best thing I could have done. 3 days later I got home from a hellish day at work, went into the kitchen mixed up a dirty martini when my wife surprised me with a gift. It was the SA I talked myself out of! :Jumpy: It turned my day completely around and she realized the joy that watches bring me. She realizes that watches are the only piece of jewelry that most men wear and thinks of them as accessories just like her MULTIPLE piece of jewelry and shoes. Before leaving for work in the morning she looks at my wrist to see what I have on and either approves or tells me to go put another watch on. Who am I to argue? She has kind of turned into a "Watch Snob", as she rather see me have 10 high end watches then say 60 Invictas or other ShopNBC brands as some of my friends do.

A few of my friends question how I can spend so much on some thing that tells time, to which I reply "How much did you spend for that piece of rock on your wife's finger?" At the end of the day I care less about what people think as long as I enjoy it.

:drinks:

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