There is a question a watch of this kind is meant to answer — whether the €900 heritage feel can be had for a fraction of the €900* — and I intend to answer it, in full, below,¹ where “below” denotes the note appended to this note, which appends itself to a certificate of authenticity that certifies, upon inspection, chiefly its own inspection.
¹ See the entry marked “Best Overall,” which is not overall so much as first, “first” being a position I have been advised not to confuse with a verdict (as previously noted, though it has not been noted). The reader may reasonably wish to know which of the three I would carry. The reader is directed, with all courtesy, to the cross-reference — the certificate references the maker’s charter, the charter references a movement, the movement references the caseback, and the caseback, in the case of two of these three, is transparent, so that one may at last see the mechanism and confirm that it, too, defers: gear to gear, escapement to balance, the answer perpetually one wheel further in.
The certificate, I should clarify,* is not the watch. This is the single fact I am able to state without appending it to another. A certificate is a document attesting that a thing is the thing it is — a claim the thing itself makes more persuasively simply by being on your wrist and keeping the time (cf. the earlier entry, which does not exist). Where the certificate says guaranteed, it means subject to the conditions herein; the herein is a second card; the second card is, in my experience, blank.
All of which is to say that I have handled the three below and formed a view.** The view is filed with the verdict. The verdict is, as ever, present and one entry further down, and the entry further down reads only (as above) — above being, in this document, a place the eye has already passed and cannot return to, the margin having closed behind it like a door onto a directory of other doors, none of them the
*I am, myself, the undersigned. This resolves less than one would hope.
**A view is not a verdict. A verdict would require a signature, and my signature is, per the nameplate, “(see note).” No one has found the note.
