My watch collection has just gone from 51 pieces to 40, and the most symbolic departure was the Rolex Explorer II ref. 226570.
It was not a dramatic rejection of Rolex, nor a grand exit from collecting; it was the simpler and more uncomfortable realization that a watch can be excellent and still no longer belong on your wrist.
The 42mm Rolex That No Longer Fit
The Explorer II 226570 is a strong modern Rolex: purposeful, legible, mechanically solid and far more distinctive than many of the safer choices in the catalogue.
At 42mm, however, it is also a watch that needs the right wrist, and mine changed enough that the fit stopped working.
That is a hard thing to admit when the crown on the dial still carries emotional weight, but comfort eventually beats status.
The Big-Watch Problem Became Impossible to Ignore
The Tissot Squelette was another casualty of the same shift, a 43mm skeleton watch bought in 2016 for £1,100 and sold for £700.
It remains one of the more compelling accessible skeleton designs, especially when new examples now sit around £1,830, but admiration from the watch box is not the same as wearability.
The Spinnaker Cahill 300 x Marine Preservation Society also left, despite its strong lume and appealing colour work, because 42mm had become more burden than pleasure.
Fun Collaborations, Painful Bracelets and Watches That Stopped Calling
The Timex x seconde/seconde trio was enjoyable in concept, with playful Rolex-adjacent design cues and a sense of humour that made them easy to like at first.
Bought for £1,440 and sold together for £1,300, they were not a financial disaster, but the bracelet experience was enough to end the relationship.
The Certina DS Podium Chronograph was easier to release, a 42mm quartz chronograph bought in 2017 for £270, sold for £185, and barely worn after the first flush of ownership faded.
The Seiko That Proved Profit Is Not Attachment
The Seiko 5 Sports Kosuke Kawamura SRPJ41K1 was the oddest sale because it cost me nothing in the end.
I had bought several at retail, sold the others profitably, and effectively kept this one for free, which sounds clever until you realise that clever acquisition is not the same as genuine affection.
It was a good-looking 40mm watch, but it never carried the same charm or authority as the older SKX line, and eventually that mattered.
Forty Watches Feels Like a Collection Again
After 11 sales, the collection now sits at 40 watches, which feels less like surrender and more like editing.
The Tudor Black Bay with burgundy bezel, the Seiko Samurai and the Zenith remain under scrutiny because they are on the larger side, but they also still have the emotional pull the others had lost.
That is the real test: not resale value, not rarity, not whether a watch once felt important, but whether it still earns time on the wrist.
For now, 40 is a number I can live with, and the next rule may be even simpler: no more watches than years lived.
