Any watch experts out there?

My everyday wearer is a Boschett Cave Dweller with an automatic movement. My second watch is a quartz Marathon JSAR. I found if I take the auto watch off for couple of days, it wound down and required me to manually wind it. I eventually had to buy a watch winder for weekends, etc. when its not being worn. The quartz, however, is self sufficient and requires nothing but a new battery after about three years. Bottom line...I prefer the quartz movement.

 

That is typical of most automatics. They are a nice hands-off if worn daily, but not if they are an evening/church watch.

Quartz movements simply lack the "mojo" that watch snobs want, even if they are more accurate. It's like honing a straight razor on a stone, vs synthetic stones, vs lapping film, or simply shaving with a Mach-3.

 

I thought you said..............SPIDER!

 

I've never seen a quartz movement with anywhere near +/- 10sec/day.

Normally more like +/- 10sec per year.

Surprisingly, the least accurate quartz movement I've ever seen is my wife's new Citizen Eco-Drive "Happy Flight" Solar Atomic.
It syncs with Ft. Collins every night, but by midnight (it starts trying to sync at 2am) it's about 1/2 second fast.

 

My quartz fossil watch was always spot on when I would put it on once a month or so. I don't wear watches. Finally I quit wearing it all together, the battery died, and the quartz lost charge. It's a paperweight now.

 

New battery will bring it back unless there's something wrong.

The circuit just applies a voltage to the quartz which makes it oscillate. That oscillation is divided (by 100's of thousands) to tell the watch when to tick off one second.
The quartz has no "charge" to lose.. it's all in the battery.

 

False. I sent it to fossil and they said that the quartz lost all charge and can no longer vibrate properly. It wasn't covered under warranty because I allowed the quartz to die. They would charge the quartz if I wanted to pay whatever it cost, but I never wear it so I said no.

 

They fed you a line of bullshit.

The quartz is a simple flake of a stone that has been on this planet for a few million years. It has no charge, but it vibrates when a voltage is applied to it.
It becomes a part of a tank circuit that sets up a resonant frequency that the watch measures and uses as it's time standard.