Rolex "Batgirl"
#16
Santhosh Paila
United States
Santosh lives in Eastern Washington, in a landscape of hills carved from the Ice Age Floods.
“It’s basically a desert with really fertile dirt. Remember the old iconic Microsoft Windows XP wallpaper with the green rolling hills.”
He works as a health coach, and is also deeply interested in photography and videography. He studied engineering in college, but leaned toward building his own business instead.
“I’m more entrepreneurial. My dad has his own company too. It runs in the family.”
His connection to watches began after college.
“I watched YouTube and saw the blue Bambino. Simple mechanical movement, mineral crystal. I broke it four months in.”
From there, he went deeper.
“I had a SARB035. Then a SARX047. Honestly, the dumbest rationalizations for why I needed them.”
When he turned 25, he picked up a Ball watch.
“I was really into the Webb. C Ball story at the time. Ball makes good watches for the price. Good finishing, over-engineered.”
As he kept learning, his interest expanded.
“I got into Vacheron and Patek just from researching and listening to people talk about them.”
But in day-to-day life, he keeps it practical.
“My most worn watch is a G-Shock.”
Rolex was never a priority.
“I didn’t really consider buying a Rolex, considering the current situation regarding allocation for a desirable model being rather challenging”
He found Wolf Watch Club through The Time Teller.
“I saw the Sprite drawing. I’ve always liked the GMT-Master.”
When the Rolex “Batgirl” competition opened, he bought three entries.
On the day of the competition, he saw the reminder email and checked the odds.
“My odds were like 1 in 600. That’s better than Powerball. That’s basically just the cost of admission to a fair. Maybe I win, maybe I don’t.”
He bought three more.
A little while later, he checked his phone.
“Then I saw that I won. I rewatched the recording and heard Jory calling my name.”
When asked why watches matter, his answer was simple:
“It’s kind of a man thing. You get into objects where people put their heart and soul into creating them. Even if you don’t want to own a lot of watches, you want to be part of the community.”
On raffles and value:
“Dude, it’s not an investment. The return is the excitement. Just audit your budget and allocate towards a competition you want to participate in. These are good odds for a competition.”
He also had thoughts for the future:
“You should do a Vacheron Overseas. That would be pretty great.”
And on community:
“A Wolf meetup would be cool. Like a RedBar thing. A real community vibe. With the pandemic, a lot of watch nerds got into watches. People would show up.”