no_u came across as a troll in his communication sometimes, but he actually knew his stuff and you could tell he was also passionate about watches. I don't know him well, but I certainly wouldn't call him fake.
The_Pika, you seem pretty passionate about pushing this narrative about me that I'm a show off. And while I don't have to prove otherwise to be able to look at myself in the mirror, I will talk a bit about myself as it does bother me when these assumptions get thrown at me despite people being completely uninformed about who I am, yet making in depth analyses about who I have to be.
I was born in the US, mom is Swiss, lived here in Zurich 95% of my life. I'm 33 years old, I was 15 when I made this account. Been visiting this site for longer than most of you (early 2000s) and been posting on CE since 2006. 17 years by now!
I wasn't born into money at all. In fact, I come from a middle class (and I don't mean upper middle) family. I would wager many of you were more fortunate than I was, growing up. Oh, and spoiler alert:Living in Switzerland doesn't automatically mean you're rich. Really seems like that has to be said.
I have several passions, as many of you have pointed out I like to show them off. Not all my passions are linked with money. I've become a food / cooking enthusiast since the pandemic. I could make a bowl of pasta before that, no more. Motorcycling is a passion of mine too, something my brother got me into when I turned 18. Worked my ass of over every single vacation, put every single penny towards a bike, and purchased a 125cc Honda at 18.
Video games is another one, why else would I be here. I still adore video games and play them whenever I have time. First daughter was born in 2018, second in 2020. So hard to find time, but I do try to play between 10pm and 1am, which is the only time I have for leisure. 100%ed Elden Ring finished Hollow Knight very recently too (love that game) and playing Hades now.
Watches became a passion of mine since I was in my mid teens and a rich friend of mine got a Navitimer at 16 for Christmas. Typical me: I vowed to own this watch one day because I love the design so much. Fast forward 10 years where my wife and I married, and she surprised me with a brand new Breitling Navitimer. I got deep into the rabbit hole of watches and started learning more and more and more. Got even more fascinated, and started saving money from my salary (which wasn't, and still isn't huge, mind you) and put them towards watches. Yes, a substantial part of my net worth is watches, irrational? Maybe. But I do enjoy it. I bought it way before the hype. Example: My Speedmaster Professional Meteorite dial, bought it for $2900 in 2016. It's worth about 23-24k now. That's more than the Patek I just bought, and I got in for less than 3k. So yeah, 20k is fucking expensive for a watch, even for me, and it took balls to make the purchase.
How do I afford all these watches you ask? Well, it's not because of I have some crazy salary. It's thanks to being financially responsible, putting every single penny towards keeping my costs low. I bought my apartment together with my wife. We down paid about 200k which was about 23% of the place we were buying. My wife and I cleaned out our pension, took every penny from our savings, borrowed from our parents to be able to make the purchase. Again, we put together a nice situation here, but not because we (or our parents) were rich. My wife comes from a lower middle class family, her parents were refugees when they came here, with nothing. We were just responsible and on the same wavelength when it comes to spending habits. We hardly ever eat out, don't go on lavish vacations, and instead indulge in investments that make sense to us. Luckily this apartment purchase helped us keep our costs low. We live in a place now that would cost about $3500 a month, yet we're paying $800 a month mortgage and extra fees. That's a difference of $2700 a month. With our regular salaries, that means I could theoretically buy a watch of this caliber after 7-8 months thanks to one of the best decisions I made in my life (buying our apartment). Again, the luxuries I'm able to indulge in, is mostly thanks to spending habits.
Now, why did I make this topic? There are topics here being made with the title "would you have this girl her sit on your face for 3 hours?" Or "check out all these sexy asses", or clickbaity political horse shit by biased new outlets, or "rate this girl out of 10" or "JK Rowling is a racist transphobe".
All I'm doing is posting something that people here aren't posting about. A bit of variety. A bit of passion sharing. A bit of fresh air. Is that such a problem? I shared my food videos with recipes to show how easy and cheap it is to make restaurant quality food. I posted my Orient Bambino Small Seconds as a watch people here should look at because it's an insane value proposition, I posted a recipe about no-knead bread because of how simple yet delicious it is. I post about video games on other boards, because this board is made for people who want to talk about all the other stuff.
Should I only post the expensive watches every fifth topic I make? No. I'll post about whatever's on my mind. I love a good discussion/debate, and when people disagree with me, I love hearing their angle. More insight is always welcome!
I've recently had articles published on legit platforms. These articles generate thousands of clicks, get shared all over social media, get referenced etc etc. It's a lot more (positive) attention then anything I'd get here. I'm just sharing it here too, because I thought the idea of coming to a VG board (which I love and have been posting on for almost 2 fucking decades) with something fresh, and something no one else posted / talks about wasn't something that would piss off so many people.
I make maybe 4-5 topics a year, and yes, most of the time it's "hey look at this, what do you think?". Or "Check out this recipe I've learned (recipe inside)".
I do post in other people's topics. Not as much as I used to, but I still do that. So when people say "all I do is post about my wealth". Yes I've made topics about cool stuff I own, but I post in other people's topics about all kinds of different things. Financial advice, relationship advice is something I'll enjoy helping with. Video game topics as well of course.
Anyway, it's not my goal to change your opinion about me. It seems like your opinion has already been formed. The point of this wall of text was to shed a bit of light on myself, and to tell people I'm not who you say I am. Best to hear from the person themselves.
PS: I don't have a security detail. I laughed out loud when you thought I had 1 maybe2 people looking out for me. LOL thanks for that man.