My Father's Patek

When I got to an age where I started getting vaguely interested in watches (around 11-12), I was into collecting Swatches and trading them with my friends, but then I finally noticed the watch my Father was wearing. Basically he had been wearing it all my life but somehow I had waited 11-12 years until I asked him to see it. It was a white metal (I thought it was in steel: I didn’t know that white gold or platinum existed!) with a grey/silver dial and a black strap. Damn it was boring! It was given to him by the late Shah of Iran in the '60s and had great sentimental value for him. Well, very unimpressed I was and went back to my Swatches and other watches that gave you the time in red lights once you pressed a button on the side and others with lots of cool thingamajigs on them made of a much nobler material, plastic (what was great about plastic was that you could chew on the straps when you were getting really bored in maths or geography classes!). Anyway, as I grew older and started getting more and more into watches (I say watches and not horology) I got to know that Patek was a historical name and all the way on top of world class horology but what I was definitely interested in was getting my Father to let me wear his Rolex Oyster Date (from the '50s) since that was what I needed to impress the girls!! (Well come on guys, give me a break - I was in my '20s!!) On a sad January night my Father passed away and, after a few days, my Mother presented me with my Father’s watch. It now had a whole different meaning for me, it was the watch I had seen my Father wear all my life, it was his most personal object and now it was on my wrist. Now, the glow of the case (I later found out that the watch was not in steel but in white gold) and the sheen of the grey/silver sunburst dial were no longer bland and boring but shone for me like beautiful winter morning light. I was very proud to wear it, my Father’s watch, and a Patek on top of it! I walked taller and held my head up high. In fact it’s the watch that really got me seriously into watch collecting, it set the standards high. I rarely wear this watch, only for very special occasions. The last time was at my wedding, at the end of May. I regularly take it out of the box, wind it, polish it, caress it and put it back. I don’t want it to become an ordinary watch, because it’s not. I don’t want to get in the marketing hype with the "You never really own a Patek Phillipe" which is a really stupid slogan, in my opinion, but I’m planning on giving it to my son (not that I have one, mind you!) on the first major event of his adult life. I would be very proud knowing that he wears his grandfather’s watch. Patek Philippe ref 3445 circa 1965 AlexG ThePuristS Home page  | ThePuristS Patek Philippe forum Comments, suggestions, and corrections to this article are welcomed. Please e-mail comments or sign the guestbook. Copyright September 2002 - Alex Ghotbi and ThePuristS.com - all rights reserved