Let's talk about watch movements.
Many of you are likely aware that watches come in 2 basic variants: quartz and mechanical.

- Quartz watches use electricity (usually from a battery) to make a tiny quartz tuning fork vibrate really fast and create oscillating electric currents that can be used to keep track of time. They tend to be cheaper to produce.

- Mechanical watches use the energy stored in a spring to power a complex mechanism of gears which can only move in tiny increments at the frequency dictated by an oscillating wheel with a tiny spring in it. They're much more expensive to produce.

In either case time is kept thanks to an oscillator with a set frequency. For mechanical watches that frequency ranges from 3 to 5 Hz whereas for quartz watches it's usually 32,768 Hz or more. Because of this quartz watches are significantly more accurate, usually losing less than 1 second per day compared to mechanical watches which can lose up to 30 seconds per day.

Still, many people prefer mechanical watches and I can think of many very understandable reasons for that. Making them requires impressive craftsmanship, fully analogue, mechanical devices are super cool, they have a sweeping seconds hand that's satisfying to look at, they don't need to have batteries changed etc. Most people who own mechanical watches have them not for practical reasons but rather because they appreciate the craft of mechanical watchmaking and I fully get it.

BUT!!! There is a "but" and it's important for me to address for the benefit of future mechanical watch owners:

Some people invest in a mechanical watch, specifically an automatic one where the spring is wound through the movement of one's wrist, because they believe the watch is this perfect closed system that will keep going indefinitely since there's no need to change batteries. That it's a one time purchase that gets you a timepiece for life. This isn't the case. More in the follow up post.