He lowered his voice and asked where I’d gotten the watch. I told him it had belonged to my father and that I’d inherited it after he passed. The man turned it over again and pointed to a tiny engraving inside the back edge that I’d never noticed in all the months I’d been wearing it. Then he asked if my father had served overseas when he was younger. I just stared at him because the answer was yes.
The man introduced himself as a collector. He explained that the watch itself wasn’t particularly rare, but the engraving changed everything. According to him, a small group of servicemen had commissioned matching watches after returning home decades earlier. Most had disappeared over the years, and collectors had been trying to track the remaining ones. He wasn’t looking at the brand. He was looking at the inscription. Before handing it back, he told me there were people who would pay serious money for it.
I’ll admit the number got my attention. After everything that had happened with Dad’s estate, part of me enjoyed imagining the look on my stepbrother’s face if he found out. But the more I thought about it, the less interested I became in selling. Dad wore that watch through every job he ever had. It was on his wrist in old fishing photos, family vacations, and every holiday picture sitting in our albums.
A few weeks later I found an old photograph tucked into one of Dad’s toolboxes. In it, he was standing beside three friends, all of them young, sunburned, and grinning at the camera. Every one of them was wearing the same watch. The collector was right. Suddenly the scratches, the cloudy crystal, and all those repairs looked different to me. My stepmother’s family had rushed to grab the truck, the boat, and everything they thought had value. What they overlooked was the one thing I would’ve chosen anyway.