watch Gang Review - Black subscription - 1st month update
Updated: Jul 24, 2019
I posted a couple of weeks ago that I was going to try out one of the premier watch club, or monthly mystery watch box services, just out of curiosity to see if the hype was everything they claimed it would be. Well, I just made the subscription cut for the August shipping, and pictured above is my first subscription watch.
As a refresher, the service offers three different tiers, or level of service. Original tier, Black Tier, and Platinum. I chose the Black Tier subscription for $99.00 per month, which guarantees to send me a timepiece, each month, with a retail value between $150.00 and $500.00, and the watches are mine to keep. Many of the brands offered through the subscription are micro-brands, so not many household name-brands to be had each month. They do offer the opportunity to purchase higher-end, name-brand watches through the site, and there is a large forum member population which offers items for sale or trade. So how did they do this month?
The timepiece I received is the Out Of Order, Casanova. Yes, the name is actually Out Of Order. OOO is a micro-brand out of Italy, and their niche is to construct watches that look distressed, or worn, trying to take advantage of the current fad within the watch market, where the worn, distressed, and vintage look is the in thing. On the OOO website, they are selling the watch direct to the public for $431.73. The quality of the watch is decent, but I certainly wouldn't consider this close to a $500.00 timepiece. The Victorinox I'm wearing today is a Swiss Made, quartz timepiece, with a fully-functional chronograph movement, and retails online for $188.00; do I think the OOO Casanova is of higher quality than the Inox, absolutely not. The accuracy of retail values, as far as watches go, can always be debated.
I do think the OOO, Casanova is highly serviceable as a daily wearer, and I put it's "worth" in actuality, somewhere between $99.00 and $125.00. I'd call it a win for this month, especially since the OOO timepieces seem to have a fair amount of popularity among the subscription forum members, and I got a 20% discount off my first months membership fee. We'll see how I fare for my September selection.