Why Buy A G-SHOCK?

Welcome to Room For Squares, home to the G-SHOCK faithful. I’m your guide, Jack Baruth. Please turn your hymnals to page DW5000-C so that we can pray to Saint Kikuo Ibe, inventor of the “Triple 10” concept, the man who brought us The Original Square. But first, for those of you who are new to The Church of The Square, rest assured that ours is not a violent or exclusionary faith . . .

You’re free to own as many “Swiss shitters” as you want. I have quite a few myself, including an Omega DeVille Hour Vision ORBIS and that one bronze Tudor that got sold out from under your orthodontist by the slimeballs at his local AD. But we will not be discussing those fragile, antiquated, faintly ridiculous timepieces here.

In the days and weeks to come I’ll be offering some opinions on the market value and resale viability of a few different G-SHOCKs. Today, however, I want to state the case for “square” ownership as simply and elegantly as possible.

G-SHOCK equals low maintennce 

You’re probably familiar with the WIS Shuffle: find a watch, wind a watch (or pull it off the winder), set the time, set the date, wait for it to settle down, set the time again a few hours later. It’s a pain in the ass and it has the effect of tying you to whatever mechanical watch you happen to be wearing at the moment.

The worst offender I ever owned in this respect: an IWC Spitfire UTC. It set the date via the hour hand because IWC couldn’t figure a way to jerry-rig a quickset date on an externally-sourced caliber. That UTC jump-hour made the most terrifying click every time you turned the knob. It was only a matter of time before it needed a $700 service.

The G-SHOCKs are different. The best of them are automatically and regularly radio-synced to an atomic clock. All of them are accurate to within a few seconds a month.

Part of the “Triple 10” concept is a ten-year battery life. So that’s ten years that you don’t need to screw with the thing. And the upscale calibers in the line have timezone selection by city, which is a godsend when you travel. Since you never have to reset the time, you can have the correct time just by knowing where you are.

Yes, your phone does all of this, more easily. But every single phone you can buy for under three grand is a Chinese (or Korean) piece of ephemeral garbage. The “smartwatches”? Doubly so. They have a real-world lifespan of two years and they were all made by children in sweatshops. Compare that to a Japan-made Full Metal G. The difference in workmanship and quality is shocking.

The G-SHOCK collector community is active and helpful

Even better, Casio doesn’t deliberately sabotage or play games with its customers. Some of the watches do sell out pretty quickly, and others can be quite expensive. But the company is continually making products with genuine collector interest for $150 or less. And periodically they will provide an outright love letter to the fans, like the screwback, Japan-made 35th-Anniversary watches which can be had for $200 or less.

G-SHOCKs are anti-fashion

The levels of snobbery and reverse snobbery in the Swiss-watch universe are mind-boggling. When I’m wearing my Speedmaster Broad Arrow, I have some mild contempt for the jerk-off who wears a stainless-steel Daytona; he, in turn, pities me because I am poor. G-SHOCK land ain’t like that.

The fellow who wears the $1600 titanium camouflage square (like me) has nothing but love for the dude with the Hong-Kong-locals-only G-Lide that sells for $80 on Reddit (that’s me, too), and vice versa.

Every once in a while, you’ll find someone who points out that the F-91W was the preferred watch of Al Qaeda. Those people are FBI plants trying to see if you’re a dangerous white nationalist, not true G-SHOCK fans. Chances are the Feds don’t even know the difference between a DW5000 and a DW5200.

G-SHOCK – What’s not to love?

You get the idea. Great watches, they last forever, they’re fun to collect (373 current models) and you can sell them easily without descending into a horrifying underworld of scammers and thieves. I wish I could follow up on that by saying that there are no fake G-SHOCKS, but there are. I’ll help you avoid them in the months to come.

Alright. We know each other pretty well now. The next time we talk here at Room for Squares, we’ll investigate the investment ratings of Full Metal G-SHOCKs. Stay tuned.

[Click here for all Room for Squares posts by Jack Baruth]