It looks horribly crafted to me. Look at the close-up of the finishing on the hands here: https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/ibkZQA68NpX... . Look at the uneven thickness of the hour hand, the roughness of the finish around the screw, the uneven application of paint on the font. This is shoddy at best. A $50 automatic Seiko has more finesse than that. Don't even get me started on a completely generic fashion watch dial design and the scratch magnet bezel.

Even the printing on the face looks terrible (top of the E and X in Timex).

Weirdly enough, the E in America has the same bite taken out of the top of it as the E in Timex

Makes me wonder if that close-up is a shot of a fake Timex.

but not the E in Made ;)

Wow, great catch! That is absolutely shameful.

Agree completely. However I’m pretty sure theres a cartel (ETA?) for automatic Swiss movements that Timex doesn’t want to cater to. Which basically leaves this watch in the “overpriced fashion” category. And they probably don’t want an Asian movement cuz that appears cheap (although there’s some good ones out there).

I think it’d be awesome to see a USA made movement again in this price point, but I’m not holding my breath.

ETA is owned by Swatch group, which owns a ton of watch brands[1], including Hamilton, which I would say competes head-to-head with the most Timex pieces (at least in the $500 price range).

There are other Swiss automatic movement makers though, like Sellita (the SW200 is basically an ETA 2824[2]).

1: https://www.swatchgroup.com/en/brands-companies

2: https://www.christopherward.com/etasellitastory.html

Konrad Damasko is basically just a guy working in his garage, and he managed to do it.

Someone above mentioned Shinola which is, sadly typical of "US products" -basically they're LARPing at "quality" -selling to the type of people who pay $100 for a trip to a 1950s looking barber shop, or who go on expensive trips up the coast on the Jeremiah O'Brien liberty ship.

I am also not sure if they actually want to promote American craftsmanship or just want to sell cheap stuff while taking advantage of ”made in America”.

Automatic! Get off my lawn! You youngsters wasting all that weight and thickness because you can't be bothered to wind it yourself.

I would love a hand wind watch but those cost even more :).

I was starting to get into "Russian/Soviet" mechanical movement watches a few years back:

https://wornandwound.com/an-introduction-to-russian-watches/

...but then with everything that has happened politically, my one purchased has remained that; I don't have a real good logical reason for not continuing my collection.

But I started out well (I think) - I ended up getting this particular one (not from this shop - I found it on Ebay):

https://www.russian-watches.info/shop/raketa-24-hours-watche...

...somewhat unique, because it was a 24 hour movement, which I'd never seen before. Plus the unique face color, etc.

Not always. Timex also recently released a reissue of their 1965 Marlin for $200 which is a manual wind watch, this time using a Seagull movement rather than what the original used.

I got a domed sapphire Hamilton hand wind for just over a hundred. And don't ignore used. My favorite was just over 50 USD but it's from the late 60s. Domed acrylic hand winds are the best.