Guest Post: A Contemporary Watch Collector Goes Vintage

To my longtime friends in the watch hobby, and perhaps to regular readers here as well, the mention of my name may conjure up a number of connotations: patron of the independents, fan of A. Lange & Söhne, admirer of Patek Philippe grand complications, and longtime customer of Jaeger-LeCoultre, among other characterizations more or less favorable.

But these likely never included vintage maven!

While I own a number of older watches – some quite old, indeed – the great majority of those were passed down by my ancestors (see My Grandfather, The Watch Collector) rather than purchased by me.

Over the years, however, I have bought a few vintage pieces, and as I’ve had the opportunity to see and handle a number of top-notch older watches at the Geneva auctions (see Year-End Auctions 2016: I Came, I Saw, I Learned, I Bought and You Are There: Attending The Only Watch Auction 2015 With Patek Philippe) my appreciation for, and interest in, the vintage scene has increased substantially.

At least for the time being, the culmination of that interest was the purchase of a lovely Patek Philippe Reference 1526 at the November 2016 Phillips auction. But before we talk about that, let’s turn back the clock and check out my other vintage purchases and see what I’ve learned so far.

11 Rules of Grammar

You can reach more bravely into the scary world of sentence construction and accurate communication if you are armed with grammar guidelines. These 11 rules of grammar will help you become a champ at selecting words and punctuation.

Key Rules

1. Use Active Voice

Every human language starts an active sentence with the subject, or the "doer." In English, the verb (what's being done) follows the subject. If there is an object (the receiver of the action), it comes after the verb. The formula looks like this:


S+V+O. This rule is the foundation of the English language.

Here are some examples:

• Mary walked the dog.
• The dog liked Mary.
• I did not like the dog.

2. Link Ideas with a Conjunction

Eight Grammar Survival Tricks

Eight Grammar Survival Tricks

We are pleased to present these grammar tips shared by Tom Clements, an experienced instructor who has spent over 20 years tutoring for the SATs as well as calculus, physics and chemistry. He is a former Silicon Valley freelance writer for tech magazines, corporate trainer for international bankers, and college English teacher. Clements' new book, How to Write a KILLER SAT Essay...in 25 Minutes or Less! is available for purchase at Amazon.com

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In American education, particularly at the high school level, grammar is a lost art. The closest most high school students get to any real appreciation of syntax is by studying a foreign language like Spanish, where the subjunctive, for example, is used extensively. Mark Twain famously said, "Damn the subjunctive. It brings all our writers to shame."

Facetious or not, Twain has had a lot of company over the years as a grammar-hater. This is true not only of the man on the street -- or the typical high school student -- but also English teachers, most of whom avoid the topic like the plague. High school kids are pretty much left to their own devices when it comes to parsing parts of speech. As a consequence, most don't know a diphthong from a dangling participle.