I remember walking into my parents’ bedroom as a six-year-old and seeing a watch sitting idly on the dresser. It was my father’s AAA US Rolex Submariner replica watches – a ref. 5513 with a matte dial and maxi tritium lume plots. Of course, I didn’t know any of those words yet. For me, this was Dad’s watch, the black one with the white squares and triangles. When I asked about it, my dad told me that he picked it up in Switzerland in the early ’80s before I was born; it was older than I was. That watch was, and remains, important to me. It started it all.

I’ve spoken a lot on HODINKEE about my family watch history – about the high quality fake Rolex Submariner watches that I found in my grandfather’s apartment shortly after he passed away. I inherited the watch, which looks so similar to my father’s. The fact that we then shared the same watch became a point of pride for me. It is also, I think, what really kicked off what would become two decades of sharing together the passions of horology, and of watch collecting.

My dad wasn’t always a watch guy. Instead, he was a guy who had watches, really two watches, that he wore exclusively. There was the Submariner which he has to this day – and an off-beat 36mm perfect replica Rolex Datejust Turn-O-Graph watches, which in later years I pushed him to sell in order to fund a different watch purchase – he regrets it and I feel bad. He had some dress watches, too, for special occasions, an old 35mm Breguet that my mother bought for him (also before I was born) and a Patek Philippe golden ellipse on a bracelet which I also convinced him to turn in (I’m a great influence).

But then there were secret watches, those he picked up but decided to save for his sons. My older brother wears my dad’s old two-tone 1:1 wholesale copy Rolex Datejust Oysterquartz watches, and my younger brother has his two-tone Datejust. Watches were part of his life, even if he couldn’t tell you a reference number or really any singular factoid about each one. That’s not why he owned them. He wanted to wear them and pass them on.

Toward the end of college, I began my watch obsession in earnest, reading sites like HODINKEE and getting into the historical minutiae of the Swiss movements Rolex replica watches I owned and those I aspired to own. It was somewhere around 2012 when my horological enthusiasm really started to pick up. I found myself talking to my dad more and more about watches the same way we would talk about baseball box scores.

He would text me when he saw someone wearing a watch in a movie (I now write a column doing just that), and send me pictures of watches he was thinking about buying. Then one day he told me the time had come: He was ready to buy himself luxury fake Rolex Daytona watches. This was a big deal for him, and the model he settled on was the rose gold version on leather. You could still find Rolex sports models in stores back then – I think that’s an important distinction. The interesting thing was, it wasn’t like he was a lifelong Daytona fan. In fact, this was a model he had discovered through me. Like I said, I’m a great influence.

I remember the texts he’d send me, or invitations to try pieces on with him at watch boutiques. My dad and I were always close, but through watches it seemed we were growing even closer.

I’ve written about my experience buying my top replica Rolex GMT-Master Batman watches before, but there were parts of that story I didn’t include in my initial article. I purchased that watch in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but I lived in Maryland. My dad and I decided we would take the four-hour drive together and make an experience out of my big watch purchase. We got there, chatted with the store owner, made a moment of it. That’s when my dad spotted a blue 41mm cheap Rolex Datejust super clone watches under the counter.

Something about me buying a watch made him want to do the same. Only with my dad, everything has to be a deal. There must be some complexity. He turned to me and asked if he should trade in the Turn-O-Graph on his wrist for the new watch. “Do it!” I said, adrenaline running high. And so he handed his watch across the counter and received a new watch in return. The day went from me simply buying Rolex replica watches for sale, to us doing it together. We would go on to have lunch at an Italian restaurant down the block, only to learn the owner of the watch store had footed the bill. These are memories we share together.

It is true, however, that when we share in the elation we also share in the regret. He mentions to me from time to time how he laments letting his watch go in that trade. In those moments I just try to lift him up. “No regrets, Dad – it’s all part of the crazy journey that is watches.” Whether I believe that or not, is another story.

When the pandemic began, my wife and I stayed with my parents for a few months – my first three months with HODINKEE. My wife, Kasia, began taking pictures for my articles on the site, and I started integrating my Dad into my social media. We would take photos of him wearing his different watches. He was super proud to become a wrist model and read the comments. I crowd-sourced a name for this series of photos and my followers came up with “Father Time.” That series faded once Kasia and I moved to New York, but I look back at those pictures fondly.

Kasia likes to tease me because every time we go home to visit my parents, within five minutes my dad and I are already talking watches. We take our watches off and hand them to each other to try on. He tells me about some cool watch article he recently read, and I say, “Dad, I wrote that.” And now, whenever we see each other, we don’t use a standard greeting like, “hello” or “nice to see you.” Instead, it’s some variation of “What watch are you wearing today?”

The thing is, I never lose sight of where it all began. With his Submariner with the white squares and triangles. The sad thing is, ever since I told him what that watch is worth, he’s stopped wearing it. But don’t worry, I’ll get him back on the horse. I’ve always had a close relationship with my dad. I look up to him and always go to him for advice, which he happily gives. But there’s something about fake Rolex watches shop site that has brought us closer together than I ever could have imagined. I think of our individual collections as one combined collection that we share. He has no idea that I’m writing this story, and that’s good because I didn’t have time to pick up a Hallmark card. But it just felt right to share a little story of the man who made watches extra-special for me. Happy Father’s Day, Dad.