Once again I am humbled by your introduction. When I die, remind me to ask you to write my eulogy.
While I was at it with TheJohnP’s watch, I figured I might as well do something a tad more out there and creative for Yinzburgher. With the second place finish watch, I took a slightly different approach.
I took inspiration from the Jet/Ergode fiasco of 2019. The great Jet/Ergode ‘deal’ was close to being one of those epic deals that lives on as legend in the annals of watch deal threads. So much potential, yet this deal just didn’t deliver in the way that when the tale is told a year from now that you would be met with incredulous internet comments only to shut people up with a link to the original posting itself which proudly declares for all time that Yinzburgher was the one to break the deal and share it with the unworthy masses. That didn’t happen.
In short, the deal was close to being great, but fell short. From this idea, the name Close to Greatness was born. I tried to make everything just a little short of what someone would want in a watch. With PetWatch helping me with some of the design decisions, I think it came out close to something you might shove into the back of a sock drawer to be found many years later by your next of kin and make them wonder ‘who was Sporkboy?’ and ‘what’s a Yinzburgher?’ just before tossing it into the bin.
For the base watch, I chose a gold nugget style Gruen that is shockingly similar to one that my dad wore on dressy occasions on a cruise ship in the early 90’s. True to the era in which it was created, it clocks in at 33.5mm and sports an integrated bracelet that you can never really get clean. It has no micro adjustment and a limited number of links, so let’s hope you get lucky with the fit.
Since stainless steel is just a fad, I went all out with gold, case, selected markers, hands and the dial text. Speaking of dial text, check out that font- the ever classy Comic Sans. There are a rare few occasions when it is appropriate to use this font, and I think this was one of them.
Markers are a mix of gold and silver circles and triangles, lumed at 1, 5, 6, 7 and and 11 (primes except 3 is missing and 6 isn’t prime...you figure it out.) That might be helpful if there was any lume on those gilt hands... but wait, there is! That’s right, this watch has the ever elusive and nonsensical black lume. Who here has a watch with lume that bad ass? That’s what I thought.
It a pitch black room, you might be able to take a guess at the time. It even has my signature painted caseback (not pictured for legal reasons).
While this was the second place watch, it took a lot of effort to get the details not quite right. Hopefully I was at least able to create something memorable.
Love it or hate it, it’s a prestigious award so Yinzburgher has to keep it. It is always LWDS compliant, so I look forward to seeing some interesting posts.
This was a lot of fun to design and build, and surprisingly difficult to design something intended to be ‘bad’. It brings me great pleasure to be able to present this never to be repeated crime against horology to the one and only Yinzburgher.
Now it is back to our MC and resident race-master for another dramatic conclusion to this year’s awards ceremony. Take it away PetWatch.
