About a month ago a friend of mine listed a watch for sale in our group chat. It was a watch that many readers will be familiar with – it?s one of those nearly ubiquitous watches in our little corner of the hobby that everyone has seemingly tried at least once in the couple of years it’s been on the market. Everyone, that is, except for me. So I messaged my friend and arranged a time to meet. I checked out the watch, we agreed on a price, and I became the happy owner of a lightly used Seiko SPB143. 

So far, I think you?ll agree, this is an extremely ordinary sequence of events. I?d be willing to bet that many readers have gone about their watch buying business in a remarkably similar way. Maybe the transaction was purely electronic and carried out over email and Instagram DMs instead of beers and a plate of appetizers, but the whole ?see a watch, send a message, make a purchase? is old hat for many of us. The thing that made this watch purchase a little bit different from other watch buys I?ve made over the past several years is what happened next. Or, more precisely, what didn?t happen next: there was no ?New Watch Alert? post on social media, or anywhere else.  The ?New Watch Alert,? or NWA, an acronym that carries a very different meaning if you?re a certain age and were raised by MTV when they still played music videos, is de rigueur in our hobby. Buying a watch is often tied into celebrations, so it follows that posting it on social media for th...