Most sentimental watch?

[watchspike]

I find it really sad that this forum, once a parish for irrational lovers of shiny trinkets that denoted emotional value, has descendent into a forum for investors and speculators all either getting anxious about the state of the Rolex buying market or rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of procuring said shiny bauble while the whole world is on fire, no doubt hoping that once they source one of these "assets" that the world corrects itself again and prices rebound, thus jumping back on the speculator train and turning into hypocrites.

Having read someone posting about how fed up with these threads they had become and wanted a classic WIS topic, I've decided to start one about which watch in their collection has the most sentimental value.

For me, that watch would probably be my first ever Rolex, a modest yet beautiful stainless steel Date, a gift given to me by my late mother. I was given a choice of any in the display case and choose it because of it's subtle beauty and because it didn't shout Rolex like the Datejusts or Subs did. My mother actually told me she liked the new anniversary sub and suggested I should choose that one in the display but I went with the pure aesthetics of the Date over the green of the "kermit", something I only regret in passing as it's now one of the 'hyped' references and should I ever get one in memory of my mother, would have been less costly then compared to now. Truth be told I felt a bit guilty or out of place at the time, choosing a luxury watch as a gift at an age when most of my peers associated Rolex as an old man's watch.

The gift was to mark a coming of age and set me on this path of being obsessed with watches, particularly Rolex as it helps form a mental and emotional bond with my late parents. For them, Rolex watches were special not necessary for their monetary value, although that does play a role, but more that they were bought as gifts to signify a special occasion or event in life. It began when they got matching sets of Datejusts for their wedding which have pride of place in my collection.

As a side note, having lost my parents to cancer and technically becoming an orphan before turning 30, I find I'm mentally more prepared to deal with this pandemic then most people, having experienced things a lot of people twice my age have yet to go through. That's not to say I'm blasé to the idea of losing loved ones, I still have concerns for my older relatives, but that I'm neither panicking and thinking the worst, nor do I have my head in the sands, being in a state of denial due to an uncontrollable fear of losing people close to me.

I thought about this a couple of weeks ago when I was wearing the Date in my rotation and as I was stepping out of the car, a rare moment of sunlight shone on it, catching it at just the right moment, as pictured in the photo's below.

Would like to hear of other peoples experiences with their watch collections.