Watch Spotting At BaselWorld 2017 – Which Watches Were The Visitors Wearing?

Like every year, we visit BaselWorld to report to you about watches. It is our job. However, we are watch collectors and enthusiasts above everything else. So we always keep an eye out on what other people are wearing. Here is an overview of what we’ve seen at BaselWorld.

Watch Spotting

Spotting watches on other people’s wrist is something ‘natural’ to do for us watch geeks. Depending where you live, a city or a village, what you do etc. you will come across some interesting watches (from interesting people) every now and then. In Basel, where the biggest watch trade show in the world takes place, it is no big deal to find and discover nice watches. However, there is a difference of course in what people from the industry wear and what visitors are wearing. We tried to find some visitors and asked them if we could take a picture of their wrist (with watch). We found a large share of genuinely interested people that were happy to share their wrist with us.

What I noticed in the past couple of years when visiting the annual exhibitions in Basel and Geneva for example, is that although there are so many watch brands out there, it always comes down to those few brands that you will find in the ‘flesh’. Including the watches from our colleague journalists, a few exceptions taken into account, you will find a lot of  Rolex, Omega, Panerai, IWC, Patek etc. on many of the wrists. Perhaps that has a reason. While some colleagues from the trade put these brands away as boring or safe choices, these are the brands of reality it seems.

We tried to avoid taking snapshots of our colleagues from other media titles, and focus on people that appeared to be a visitor of BaselWorld 2017. Besides the usual suspects, as explained above, we did find a couple of exotic watches. Look for yourself, enjoy our watch spotting sessions at BaselWorld.

All images by David Heitz.