Watches, Pens, and the Craft of Analog Living
Ellen Ashford · August 25, 2026
A refinished dial — a redial — is a dial that has been stripped and reprinted at some point in its life, usually during a service decades ago when it was considered a straightforward tidy-up rather than an act of vandalism. It was normal practice. It also, today, removes most of the value from a … Read more
Ellen Ashford · August 25, 2026
I have written before about the five-minute inspection I run at any watch table — the crystal, the crown, the shake, the sniff test. That post is about how to check a watch. This one is about what to be looking for in the first place, because a triage routine is not much use until … Read more
Ellen Ashford · August 9, 2026
I’ve done my estate sale watch inspection routine so many times that it runs on autopilot now — five minutes, same sequence, every table, every time. It didn’t start that way. It started with a $200 mistake on a Saturday morning in a stranger’s garage, a watch that looked perfect and turned out to be … Read more
Ellen Ashford · July 31, 2026
A Watch Buried Under a Tray of Rhinestone Brooches No listing, no catalog entry, no manufacturer copy will ever tell you that a decent watch sometimes surfaces face-down under a snarl of costume jewelry on a folding table with a moving blanket draped over the legs for warmth. That’s a Sunday-in-late-October detail, and it’s the … Read more
Ellen Ashford · July 3, 2026
Estate sale season always starts the same way for me — the first warm Saturday after a long grey stretch, when families finally get around to clearing out a parent’s dresser drawer and half the tables in someone’s garage are suddenly covered in old jewelry boxes and wristwatches nobody wound in years. That’s how a … Read more
Ellen Ashford · July 1, 2026
Open the second drawer of my writing desk and you’ll find an old cufflink box doing double duty as a watch tray — eleven pieces inside, not one of them over $200, and right up front sits a $45 Seiko 5 I almost passed on because I figured anything that cheap had to be trouble. … Read more
Ellen Ashford · June 30, 2026
Right now, on the felt tray beside my loupe, sits the watch that started this whole expensive habit: a $45 Seiko 5 from an estate sale, its case back rattling and its crystal so scratched it had gone milky. I figured a wipe-down and a fresh strap would sort it out. I had no real … Read more
Ellen Ashford · June 28, 2026
Nearly every beginner walks into a vintage watch purchase assuming that a clean-looking dial and a confident seller are proof enough of originality — and that assumption is exactly wrong. It’s why I once stood frozen in front of a tray of watches at a Portland flea market, listening to a seller swear up and … Read more