Unless you make music or captain pirate ships for a living, the only piece of non-nuptial jewelry you wear is likely a watch.
Now, many men are under the impression that said watch should cost you many paychecks.
But that’s not always the, ahem, case. To wit: a raffish, flieger-style field watch dreamt up right here in L.A. that won’t break the bank.
The Collins Watch, as it’s called, is the passion project of Jimmy Collins, the brains behind L.A. video-production company Man at Large. The ticker launches on Kickstarter today, and if you reserve your edition posthaste, you could be wearing it as soon as this summer.
As Collins tells it: “We’re putting the finishing touches on an initial run of 200 watches, so they’ll be prepared to deliver by July, which is super fast for a Kickstarter campaign.”
The punctuality owes to the fact that the timepieces — which feature a Japanese Seiko (Sii) NH35A automatic 24-jewel movement — are made in Ohio by a group who typically make standard-issue tickers for military and law enforcement.
The watch’s 41-hour power reserve is housed in a 40mm stainless steel case available in bead blast silver and black PVD. The three-hand dial, with date complication and thickly applied Super-LumiNova Old Radium, sits behind a sapphire crystal with anti-reflective coating. It also boasts water resistance up to 100 meters. For straps, you’ve got your choice of genuine leather or green/black all-weather nylon.
The Collins gets its fonts and design from the the dials and digits on the amps and mixing boards at Bronson Island, a recording studio Jimmy designed where The Strokes, Foster the People and Broken Social Scene have recorded.
They will eventually retail for $325-475, but the Kickstarter campaign is selling them at $225-255. And once production is fully ramped up, they plan to bring the whole operation to Los Angeles.
That’ll cut down the shipping time even further.
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