The Watch Hunt. That’s What It’s Really About.

People ask me all the time why I have over 200 watches. They look at me like I need help. Maybe they are right.

But here is the thing they do not understand. It was never really about the watches.

It is about the hunt.

It is that feeling when you are browsing a market stall at 7am and something catches your eye. A flash of a dial. A case shape you have not seen before. You pick it up, turn it over, and your heart does something ridiculous. You already know you are buying it. You just have not admitted it to yourself yet.

I have felt that feeling in the most extraordinary places.

In Hong Kong I walked into vintage watch shops so packed with history that stepping through the door felt like travelling back in time. The owners could not speak English and I could not speak Cantonese but none of that mattered. We spoke the same language. We both understood what was sitting in that tray. Some things do not need words.

In Dubai, tucked away near the airport, I found an old Pakistani gentleman who brings vintage watches in from Pakistan. No fancy display cases. No marketing. Just watches with stories and a man who knew exactly what he had. Those are the finds you never forget.

In the UK I have spent more weekends than I can count driving to old shops in towns most people pass straight through, hunting for something special. Most of the time you find nothing. But that one time you do find something, it makes every empty-handed trip worth it completely.

And then there is New York. Grand Central Watch is one of those places that reminds you why you fell in love with this hobby in the first place. I got to know the owner Steve over several visits. Two Steves talking watches in one of the greatest cities in the world. It does not get much better than that.

But the hunt does not stop at watches.

I have more watch straps than I have watches, which is really saying something. To me a strap can completely transform a watch. The right leather, the right colour, the right texture and suddenly a watch you have owned for years feels completely new again. It is like giving something a second life and I am completely addicted to it.

I am also no watchmaker and I will never pretend to be. But I love getting my hands dirty trying to build my own mods. NH35 movements, unusual dials, combinations that probably should not work but somehow do. It is messy, it is frustrating and I absolutely love every minute of it.

That is what Just One More Watch is really about. Not perfection. Not expertise. Just a genuine, deep, slightly obsessive love for timepieces and the world that surrounds them.

If any of this sounds familiar, you are in exactly the right place.

Welcome to the family.

Steven John Pile