100+ No BS Watch Tips: For Watch Enthusiasts & Salespeople

I had a blast reading Anthony L's “100+ No BS Watch Tips for Watch Enthusiasts & Salespeople.” If the title even just catches your eye that's enough to make it worth reading, both for the information and the fun.I'm brand new to the world of watches but I gather at the abstract level watchmakers and enthusiasts alike “appreciate the historic, technical, intellectual, aesthetic, amusing and useful qualities of a tiny machine that must also serve a practical purpose throughout the day” (from George Daniels's “Watchmaking, 2011). But at the concrete level there's the day-to-day of learning a trade, scuffling for work, gaining experience, making a living working as an employee or for yourself by servicing watches and interacting with customers as a profession. That's the perspective on offer here. It's a very personal account the author's views and experience after many years at the bench.There's quite a bit of Anthony L's peeves about interacting with customers who have unreasonable or ill-considered expectations and salespeople who, he believes, may not respect the craftsmanship of the person who understands and fully appreciates the watch inside the watch and can maintain it. You'll find lots of quotations and words of wisdom that have inspired him or illustrate a point he's trying to make. But it's a stated goal of the author's to write an enjoyable book: “Take a deep breath and relax. Have a drink. Treat this like a fun read. The watchmaking world is complicated and tense as it is. You won't learn anything if you don't loosen up.” This he has accomplished I think, kind of in the manner of Anthony Bourdain's “Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly” (2000). Anthony L writes of adventures in the horologic underbelly, to paraphrase Bourdain's subtitle, with advice to match, analogous to “if there are seafood frittatas on a Sunday brunch menu stay away because it's likely to be the odd bits left over from Friday's catch.”At the beginning of the book there's a neat little Venn diagram of the set of terms Fast, Cheap, and Good, Tip #5. No surprise, you can't have all three. If you'd like to do a home-based check of your mechanical watch's timekeeping there's Tip #32, a template and instructions to do that. There's technical information only a watchmaker would use but that's interesting to an enthusiast anyway, like the table “Rolex Lubrications and What They're For” on various types of oils. There's actually a fair amount of Rolex information in the book. There's advice on how not to piss off the watchmaker whose help you need. There's a lot of advice on the practicalities of becoming a watchmaker if that's something you want to do, and practical advice for enthusiasts in what I'm starting to think is a domain full of “experts,” braggarts, and blowhards, like Tip #93, Be Careful Who You Take Your Watchmaking Advice From.All in all a useful and enjoyable book.

I bought this book to learn more about the profession of watchmaking, but it is so much more than that. If you own or are contemplating purchasing an expensive watch, you need to read this book, because it gives so much REAL information as to why you may or may not want to buy a certain watch, and how much you might end up regretting your purchase, or not getting your watch properly serviced by the RIGHT professional. The book is written in a no-holds-barred approach. Buy this book BEFORE you buy a watch and if you already own a beautiful watch, buy this book to keep your investment worth its value, and to keep you satisfied with your watch. It's an easy read, very entertaining and most importantly, very informative.

Interesting book with a lot of valuable information.However, it is riddled with grammatical and typographical errors. Very distracting to me. I question whether Anthony L. had an editor. I would have expected someone whose job depends upon precision to be much more careful in their work,

NO BS Watch Tips is a great book that's especially geared towards watch enthusiast. I love how the book is divided into many small tips, which makes it great for jumping around when trying to gain insight on just what you need at that moment. This style makes the book a nice future reference tool. The author is a mix of snarky wit that literally cuts out all the BS and therefore creates a fun read. The tips are general in nature, meaning they do not apply to a direct model of watch, but the overall philosophy holds true regardless of make. I consider this a must read for the true watch enthusiast.

Bought the book about two months ago, but in the process of doing some remodeling on the house, it got packed up with all my other watch books and temporarily relocated. I just unpacked, pulled the book out, and read it from cover to cover in a couple of hours.Let me preface my review by saying that I follow Anthony (the author) on Instagram and LOVE his posts. They’re incredibly informative for the experienced and aspiring watchmaker or hobbyist alike. Anthony has a TON of knowledge when it comes to watchmaking, and that really comes through in his Instagram posts. He’s very thoughtful in his troubleshooting procedures, and shares his amazing wealth of knowledge willingly with others. He uses Instagram to TEACH us about mechanical watches and watchmaking, and to force us to stretch ourselves in our troubleshooting efforts. He’s a true gift for those of us who want to absorb as much knowledge as we can on the subject of watches and watchmaking.Have said that, the book was a bit of a disappointment. The author’s been in the watchmaking business for a long time, and it’s evident that he’s experienced quite a bit of negativity in the business, mostly from customers and sales people. I’d say close to a full 1/2 of the book is basically him venting, and explaining why and how customers and sales people (in a retail setting where he was a watchmaker) ticked him off. It’s as if he’s expecting his audience to be mostly customers and retail watch sales people, and this is his way of telling them to show watchmakers the respect they deserve and not be jerks. I get it. As someone who’s been in sales, and in the direct line of fire of customers for more than half of his career, I can understand much of the venting. But it’s not what I was expecting in a book with “Watch Tips” in the title. Some of the headings in this portion of the book include, “Watchmaking Is Not Fast Food”, “Watchmakers Are Not Second Class Citizens”, “You Don’t Know More Than The Watchmaker”, and my personal favorite, “Don’t be an A!@%hole.” Oh, and now’s probably a good time for the warning. If you’re easily offended by harsh language, this book is likely not be for you. It’s written in more of a conversational tone, with plenty of profanities mixed in. I personally have no issue with this style, but consider yourself warned!Now on to the good stuff. The next 1/4 of the book had some great data on watches, technical jargon, how to decipher time grapher plots, charts on ETA and Rolex calibers, the truth behind in-house vs. off-the-shelf movements, water resistance testing, explanations behind COSC, Rolex’s Superlative Chronometer, and Omega’s Master Chronometer certifications, etc. The final 1/4 of the book talked about the ins and outs and pros and cons of becoming a watchmaker. He covers the various paths to learning, the basic tools needed to get started, the art of oiling, how to prepare for a watchmaking bench test, developing good habits, and being careful of your learning sources (In other words, don’t take every YouTube video as gospel.)This second half of the book is what I expected the entire book to be about. I wanted to absorb more of Anthony’s vast amounts of knowledge and get a glimpse under the cover of a very secretive industry. Being one of his followers on Instagram, I suppose I should have expected some amount of venting, but I feel that it made up too much of the content, and I doubt many of the types of customers and sales people he’s focusing on will be seeking out and reading this book. For all of his incredible knowledge, I feel that much of it was wasted in this effort. I’d love to see Anthony come out with a second volume that expresses less of his frustration with uninformed customers and pushy sales folks, and focuses more on helping all of us watch geeks learn more.