| The 80's was a great time for many things. Atari, and later of course, the insanely popular Nintendo, video games had just the perfect amount of fun. Unlike today where the video games are too awesome and kids can stay inside for weeks doing nothing else, the old systems had just the right amount of allure. After we had enough game play we would go out and ride our BMX bikes, jump ramps, go exploring, or even build a tree fort. We were very active back then and life was good.
Besides classwork or homework, school was great too. There were tons of new gadgets like Stompers, Handheld Games, and more. Digital watches for example, which were probably better than many made today, were abundent. My aunt had a Casion GM-10 and many other cool watches. My uncle had a different watch every week. From talking and calculator watches to others with weird and unique displays he seemingly had em all. Half of my friends from school wore a digital watch, each having a unique look and function, or a game! Besides eating lunch as fast as you could in order to have maximum kickball time at recess, playing a video game watch was fun too. While many of my friends had cool watches like the all famous Pac Man watch, others had Q-Bert, Frogger, or another cool watch. At the same time, I was lucky enough to have my own unique watch one of great envy. It was given to me by my parents for my birthday, the GCE Arcade Time watch. It had a joystick, wow, and 4 games, double wow! Now I wasn't the one begging my friends to play their watches, everyone was begging me for a little game play.
Later I would go on to receive gift watches from my parents that were unique. Some had neat features such as the ability to store phone numbers while others could tell you the tempurature or even talk! I remember very well wanting to know the tempurature of the pool water I was swimming in. Simple but intriguing to the young mind, it must have made an impression. I had many cool watches and other gadgets that I surely wish I had today. I'm all grown up with kids of my own now but recently asked my Mom, "What ever happened to my old toy box". She said they sold everything really cheap in a yard sale after I left for the army. I told her that I wish she would have stored it away somewhere because I could surely use a cool ten grand in my pocket!
Anyways, as time passed and I grew up, the work life most of us know so well began. Working, raising kids, and then the cell phone came. Watches and surely many other gadgets took a back seat for quite a while. Who needed a watch when you have the time on your phone. I don't think I even wore a watch consistently for more than 15 years. Some things surely forgotten, buried in the distant memories, only to be rediscovered later, and now, as a collectors item. It all started when I glanced at my son Neil who was messing around with his calculator. He had bought the watch from ebay and was using it to help with the math homework. I mentioned to him how I had many cool watches when I was a kid, and together we began to try and find them to look at online. We noticed some were hard to find, or even remember for that matter, while others available for sale! A game watch collector was spawned. Off eBay I bought the Pac Man watch first, and I couldn't stop there. From then forward it was Q-Bert, Frogger, and on and on and on. I've collected other things in the past, namely collectible action figures, but the watch collection seemed to florish more than the others. Now even my son Neil and daughter Jessica has taken a great liking to the game watches with quite a few and their own small, but growing, collections.
Through my life I have always tended to be an extremist in everything I've done. For some reason I just can't force myself to half-ass anything so collecting cool retro game watches was no different. It was all out or nothing. I later used my programming skills to code this website which I hope you will enjoy. It's coded in PHP and HTML so it's very dynamic. Look around, check out my pictures, leave some feedback, or just reminisce.Thanks for reading!
~John |
