Obviously we love watches at Worn & Wound, but our enthusiasm goes well beyond what we wear on our wrists. We’re also interested in gear, tech, apparel, and gadgets of all kinds, and we never shy away from celebrating all the “stuff” that reflects our interests, large and small. This year, we asked Worn & Wound staff and our contributors to write about the best thing they bought in 2025. Not watch related, just a thing that added something to their lives. We got a huge range of responses that sometimes surprisingly tie back to our shared watch enthusiasm (and, sometimes, are just completely distinct).
As always, we want to know what you think. Let us know in the comments what your best purchase of 2025 was, watch related or not.
Nathan Schultz
My outdoor gear philosophy was formed in my early post-college years which were spent car-less and mortgage-free as I bounced between seasonal jobs that made up for in adventure what they lacked in financial compensation. As an avid outdoor enthusiast then and now, I spent my time (and the little money I had earned) between jobs traveling and hiking, finding myself (happily) living out of a tent on more than one occasion. During this years-long period, I developed what the outdoor community endearingly refers to as a “hiker trash” mentality of minimalism that embraces frills free, budget friendly gear- a mentality formed partially out of necessity, but that also felt genuine to the same frugalness that has largely defined my watch collecting journey.
Reflecting back, this mentality served me well, including allowing me to hike the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine on a shoe string budget using a DIY cat food can stove (Google them – a seriously cool tool that I still swear by), a homemade sleeping bag, and one of those Energizer headlamps sold next to the Altoids in the check out aisle. Even as my circumstances have changed as a parent that now has car and mortgage payments, I’ve clung to the idea that enjoying the outdoors usually requires surprisingly little gear or money. Yes, I see the irony in shirking unnecessary “stuff” as someone that owns multiple watches when I don’t even need one. But every time I see an article about a $200 pocket knife that I think looks pretty cool, a little voice in my head annoyingly reminds me that my cheap $10 knife has served me well for thousands of backpacking miles and through countless car camping trips during which my family has squeezed into the same light weight tent (shout out to NEMO) we use for backpacking.
Which brings me to the best thing I bought this year: a big ass tent! More specifically, an almost comically large Coleman 12-person Skydome purchased specifically for times when we have the luxury of driving to our campsite. After years of letting that annoying voice tell me that my current gear is sufficient, and inspired by spending a rainy day next to a wet dog in my “normal” sized tent, to say the uncharacteristic purchase is an upgrade would be an understatement. Sure, it takes up half my trunk, but it also fits three queen size mattresses with plenty of room to spare for a wet dog.
Enthusiasm is all about the journey, and my unnecessarily-large tent is a reminder that gear is meant to enhance (not limit) our experience in the outdoors. For me, a $200 pocket knife may not be the key to that elevated experience (or at least I hope – I can’t afford another hobby) but apparently a tent the size of my living room absolutely is.
Zach Weiss
I feel a little disingenuous with my choice, though I also believe it is objectively true. The best thing I bought this year was a Leica M11. The reason for my concern is that I haven’t had it for very long, thus I have only used it a handful of times. But, the reason I also know it’s true is that, based on my experience with my former Leica, the M-P Typ 240, which was traded in towards the M11, it’s a camera I will own and use for the next several years at least.
If you read my article from last year, “My Road to a Leica: a Tale of Experiences and Acceptance,” you’ll know that I am relatively new to the world of Leica. The tl;dr is that after some years of mainly using Sony to shoot, I was missing a more manual experience in my personal photography, and, given Leica’s reputation and sheer gravitational pull, I decided to pick up the decade-old M-P Typ 240. I am still very happy I made that choice, as it was a more accessible way to try out Leica, which also forced a detachment from more modern technological creature comforts (think Wi-Fi and touch screens), thus putting the emphasis purely on photography. Needless to say, I quickly fell in love with it.
So why, just under two years later, did I decide to upgrade to the M11, which is the brand’s latest line? Well, though I loved the feel of the M-P, with its bronze plates, making it amusingly heavy, and the shutter’s very satisfying clunk, the older tech was showing its age. I found that I was running into frustrating situations where I wanted to take a shot but had to wait several seconds for the camera to turn on or wake up, which is more than long enough for an opportunity to pass by, especially when in nature or on a crowded street, where you don’t want to block the way. Once the thought of upgrading was planted, I couldn’t shake it, and as I am weak to such things, I picked up a lightly used M11 from our friends at Camera West. And, well, it’s pretty incredible.
Alec Dent
I’ve spent my whole life living in D.C. and North Carolina, so my experience with winters is limited. I moved to New England this summer and it only took me a few days of fall to realize my cold weather wardrobe was not up to my new latitude. One of my first purchases, and the best by far, was a pair of Blundstone chelsea boots.
Blundstones are everything you could want from a pair of boots. Durable, fashionable, comfortable, and, most importantly, waterproof. I find myself wearing them all the time, bad weather or not.
Tommy DeMauro
It’s the little things sometimes, isn’t it? I bought an assortment of watchmaker’s gauges and tools off eBay earlier this year for around $35 shipped to my door. The vast majority of the included materials consisted of crown measuring rulers, hand hole sizing charts, and crystal gasket gauges, but the piece that really grabbed my attention was a small JB Champion-branded tool. The listing’s terrible photos made it hard to figure out what its purpose was, but judging by what I could make out, it appeared to have some sort of caseback knife apparatus attached to it. When the lot arrived, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was a mini multitool with a built-in case back and two pins for adjusting bracelet clasps. While this is a relatively helpful tool to have, what really amazed me was the portability and size of it. Coming in at 70mm long and 18mm wide, it’s smaller than the typical car key and much thinner. The best part is its thickness: only 3mm. With such compact dimensions and the inclusion of a perfectly placed hole right at the top, this little JB Champion multitool is a hobbyist’s best friend.
I currently own a Victorinox Swiss Army knife that was released a few years back in collaboration with Hodinkee. It’s a standard smaller size knife with a blade, scissors, and toothpick, but what sets it apart from the others in its pack is its inclusion of a springbar tool. It’s a neat piece to have, but these have unfortunately become a bit rare and can typically fetch $40+ on the used market when they occasionally pop up for sale. This little JB Champ tool can be found for under $20 daily online, and while it’s missing a dedicated springbar tool, one could be fashioned by carving into the larger pin attachment if desired (though the caseback knife and microadjust pin are more than enough to warrant the purchase, in my opinion). It’s a fun, niche little tool for the watch enthusiast that will surely come in handy every once in a while. And hey, do you know how cool you’ll look at the next watch meetup with your very own JB Champion multitool?
Meg Tocci
‘Tis the season to be grateful that watches are one of my only vices. And though I did add a timepiece or two to my collection this year, the rest of my purchase history remained fairly lowkey. However, I was in a bit of a pickle this fall when one of my favorite pairs of shoes – my Nike Air Force Ones – had a run-in with a horizontal coffee cup in my back seat during a night of car camping in Yellowstone National Park. I’m sure there were things I could have done to revive them, but I’d literally worn them into the ground after a few years of near-daily wear. Ultimately, I took my shoes’ unfortunate coffee baptism as a sign to move on to the next chapter in my sneaker journey. Enter: the Adidas Handball Spezial.
I picked up these shoes prior to my visit to New York for the Windup Watch Fair in October after reading rave reviews online. Historically, Adidas shoes have not worked well for my feet, which run on the narrow side, and I was skeptical about walking long distances (like all over Midtown) in the Spezials. However, I knew these shoes were great as soon as I tried them on. For those familiar with Adidas’ similar line, the Sambas, these are said to run a bit wider with more arch support. The suede upper construction is easier to break-in than leather, making for a right-out-of-the-box comfort that’s hard to find in many other sneakers in this category. Though I brought a pair of back-up boots to NYC in case of blisters, I didn’t need to swap them out – even after getting lost and wandering an extra two miles back to my hotel.
I opted for the Earth Strata/Off-White colorway, which is a muted brown suede with a rubber outsole. Mine came tied with white laces and an additional brown pair in the box. I swapped the two around as the brown laces gave the shoes a more uniform look which fit my preferences better. Since getting them in mid-October, they’ve become my daily walking sneakers and can now be slipped on without pausing to untie them.
As an Irish dancer in my down time, I really appreciate the comfortable high arch insole which provides more support than other shoes I’ve had in the past. I’ve been considering adding another pair in a different color in order to have more options day to day, though their $110 pricepoint has made me a little more patient in “adding to cart” so soon after my first purchase. Overall, these Adidas Handball Spezial sneakers have been a great addition to my shoe collection and definitely deserve to be crowned the winner of my purchases in 2025.
Christoph McNeill
I’ve been a collector for as long as I can remember. I love vintage stuff: watches, soda bottles, toys, books, 1933/4 Chicago World’s Fair memorabilia, and basically whatever else strikes my fancy. But the thing I’m most passionate about collecting is comic books. I’ve been collecting them since I was a kid, buying Fantastic Four and X-Men comics off the rack at the local 7-11 back in the day. I started really collecting seriously in the late 1980s or so, and it’s continued to this day. I’ve picked up a few comics this year, and one of them is my choice for the best thing I’ve bought this year. The comic of which I speak is Rangers Comics 33, published by Fiction House in February 1947. This copy is graded by CGC as a 7.0 with white pages and is from the Promise Collection pedigree. And now let me explain all the things that make this my favorite purchase of the year!
Comic books are divided into groups by their age, and this book is from the Golden Age, the period from 1938 to 1956. Golden Age books are definitely harder to find in high grade condition due to their age, the quality of paper used, and the fact that kids read them and didn’t usually take great care with them. Thus, surviving examples in high grade are scarce and highly desirable. Professional grading companies like CGC grade comics on a scale of 10, and also note the page quality, with White Pages being the best. Grading is of course highly subjective, but CGC does a decent job and is mostly consistent in their grading. However, there are a wide variety of defects that affect the grade. This example is a 7.0, but the main defects that lower the grade are on the back cover and are hard to see, so it presents much better than the grade. Also, white pages on a Golden Age book is not so common, and is definitely an added bonus.
Fiction House was a prolific publisher in the Golden Age, putting out a plethora of titles that range from science fiction to jungle action, to war stories and more. I love Fiction House books because they have great art inside, and some wild stories, and most importantly for me, amazing covers. Many of the covers have what is called Good Girl Art, featuring beautiful and scantily clad ladies that can be action packed or in precarious predicaments. I’m a huge Fiction House fan and collect most of their titles, including Rangers Comics. Speaking of covers, this epic cover by the great Joe Doolin has it all: An underwater cover with a shark, sunken treasure, a skull, and a bikini clad diver fighting off the shark.
The icing on the cake for this one is that it is from a pedigree collection. Certain original-owner collections have been designated as pedigrees. They usually have large runs of many titles, are typically in higher grade, and were bought by the owner from the newsstand (or wherever they bought their comics). There is often a cool story behind the collection, as is the case with this Rangers Comics 33 which is part of the Promise Collection pedigree. This collection is one of the largest pedigrees, having over 5000 comics, many of which are the highest graded copies known. It was amassed by a young man in the 1940’s and 1950’s. One brother was drafted into the Army to fight in the Korean war, and the younger brother enlisted to keep an eye on his older brother. The younger one asked his brother to promise to take care of his comic collection if anything happened to him during the war. Tragically the younger brother died, and the older brother fulfilled his promise and meticulously packed away and stored the comics. Decades later the collection was discovered, and the Promise Collection came to be recognized and was auctioned off.
Elodie Townsend
I was very torn considering this, as I did make two (wow!) very impactful purchases this year. So, I am going to do what all honest people do: cheat.
The first of my two “best” purchases is rather predictable, if you know me. In July, I drove an hour north to Vallejo, California, and bought a 1983 Volvo 240 DL with 312,000 miles on the odometer, for $1,500. Finished in a very classy beige-over-brown and equipped with a 4-speed manual transmission (with overdrive), I couldn’t have predicted how much joy my new project was going to give me over the next few months. With the help of my good friend Ansel—an excellent mechanic and Volvo and Mercedes enthusiast—I got to work getting my Volvo in tip-top shape. Thanks to excellent parts availability despite the 42 years under its belt, my 240 is now running better than ever, with even more mechanical upgrades and cosmetic restoration on the way. It has by far been the most fun vehicle I have ever owned, and to find a classic that isn’t a death trap for such a low price (yes, $1,500 is sadly considered cheap these days) is a dream. Car shows, road rallies, Sunday cruises, and adventures with my chihuahua, Tilly, have already made my Volvo era one to remember.
My second purchase is entirely thanks to fellow Worn & Wounder Kat Shoulders, who nudged me towards purchasing a used Fujifilm X-T5. Having shot mainly film for the last ten years, the leap to mirrorless digital photography was a huge one for me, and Kat’s guidance lent me the confidence to take the leap and switch from Canon for the first time in my life. The result? A vigorously renewed love for photography. With a gentle learning curve but high technical ceiling, the delightfully mechanical-feeling X-T5 has been a pure joy to take to car events, on daily walks around San Francisco, and to gatherings with friends. Diving further into prime lenses, filters, and more has allowed me to vastly improve my photography and push myself creatively in a way I haven’t experienced since high school AP Photo class. And yes, I have taken many photos of my “new” Volvo with the X-T5. Thanks, Kat!
Brett Braley-Palko
I’m going to be honest with you, reader. I’ve bought a lot of stuff this year and most of it was good (and the things that weren’t were regifted – I love this time of year). But the absolute best thing I bought? Well, it will surprise no one to find out it was a pen. A Pilot Vanishing Point to be exact.
For those who are on nodding terms with fountain pens, then it may surprise you to know that there is an entire subsection of the instrument that can click and retract, similar to a ballpoint — without the cap. This alone, for novelty’s sake, has made the Vanishing Point something of a curiosity among collectors. And, I’m man enough to admit it, that’s exactly why I originally bought mine, too. I mean, you can only have so many capped pens before you have to start venturing out of your comfort zone a little, right?
But, what I found with the Pilot Vanishing Point (fine nib, in case anyone wants to send me a late Christmas gift) is an extraordinarily smooth writing experience. With a smaller inlaid nib and a slightly ergonomic body, the pen itself feels more solid and more adaptable to being held in one’s hand — similar, I’d say, to a full-tang knife in which the knife is made from a single piece of steel. There’s a rigidity that works to the Pilot’s favor and is particularly well-adapted to my handwriting style, which is best described as chicken scratch on jazz — free-flowing, scribbling, and varying between print, cursive, and shorthand.
The Pilot Vanishing Point will run you about $176 and, truth be told, is a bitch to ink up. But once you get past the sticker shock and a bit of ink on your fingers, it’s all smooth sailing from there.
Richard Chau
The best thing I purchased this year was a plane ticket to Japan. This is a trip that I have always dreamt of and in the Summer of 2025, I finally accomplished that dream. The two weeks spent in Tokyo are probably the greatest two weeks I have had this year, absorbing a different culture and experiencing new things every single day. The most memorable part of the trip was, of course, the food. Don’t listen to any content creator who says you HAVE to try any specific restaurant. If you get to have the pleasure of travelling here (and anywhere, frankly), just throw a dart and explore. I promise you, you can’t go wrong.
Also, yes, I did visit Nakano Broadway. No, it is not an exaggeration to say that you can’t go five feet without finding another watch store there. You can find pretty much anything you could want at Nakano Broadway, but it’s the vintage watch scene that really shines. In fact, I picked up one myself—a 1968 Grand Seiko 57GS commissioned by Toshiba.
I’m sure you’ve heard over and over about people’s trips to Japan at this point. I would like to report that it lives up to all the hype and then some.
Kat Shoulders
My favorite purchase of the year wasn’t a watch, but it’s something that I’ve wanted for a very long time. This past spring, I bought a white 1979 Volkswagen Beetle convertible, which feels both entirely on brand for me and long overdue. I’ve been wanting a convertible for long weekend drives for years, and a vintage Bug just fit the bill perfectly (fun fact: my very first car was a lime green turbo Beetle, which explains… a lot). These cars are built differently—small, tough, and a little stubborn. 1979 was the final year Beetles were manufactured in Germany, which makes it feel like I grabbed the end of a very long, very charming era. I bought it from another woman who had owned it since new, which somehow made the whole experience that much cooler.
The car needs a bit of work, and half the fun has been learning as I go. Luckily Beetles were so popular that there’s an endless supply of parts, opinions, and passionate people ready to tell you exactly how you should be doing things. Every small fix or tweak feels like a win, and every drive feels earned. I’m slowly bringing it back to life and hoping to tackle some bigger upgrades (new floor pans, yay me!) over winter break when I’ve got a little more time, but even in its imperfect state, it’s already become my favorite way to spend a sunny afternoon.
Griffin Bartsch
I spend a lot of my time talking about gear. In writing, on video, in podcasts, through Instagram DMs, and behind closed doors, gear — which I will broadly define here as just about any piece of kit you can hold, buy, use, or wear — is and has been a core fascination for me. Watches are, as one might expect, central to that enthusiasm, but, as I said in my gear wrap-up last year, “I’m not interested in watches in a vacuum.” The same obsessive fascination that draws me to watches also drives my broader pursuit of great things.
This year, I bought and was given many great objects. My new MacBook Pro has been a genuinely transformative tool in my professional life, while my iPad mini has quickly become my favorite travel companion, especially in concert with my Trakke Merchant Tote, which I bought shortly before the brand’s short-lived death and which has been not only an awesome addition to my stable of everyday bags, but the bag I reach for whenever a longer trip is on the horizon. 2025 has also been a year of great denim and merino wool t-shirts from Huckberry, incredible sweaters, and awesome outdoor gear from Fjällräven, Patagonia, and Mystery Ranch.
But the best thing I bought in 2025 was none of that. It was something far more personal: a new pair of glasses. Specifically, it was a pair of custom-fit, 3D printed glasses from Breezm, a Korean eyewear brand that opened its first US showroom (and fitting space) earlier this year. I got my pair back in June, and I can now comfortably say, six months on, that these are the best glasses I have ever owned, and it’s not even close. I’ve been wearing eyeglasses since I was eight years old, and over the twenty years since, I’ve run the gamut of eyewear offerings. I’ve bought glasses from eye doctors, through massive DTC brands, from the largest retailers and brands (well, brand), and even from small one-off boutique opticians. Nothing has compared to Breezm.
The experience is simple, at least if you can make it to New York City (more US locations are slated to open in the coming years). Just book an appointment, head to their showroom in midtown Manhattan, and let the process happen around you. A visit to Breezm is a mix of old and new, with 3D face scans and digital facial analysis matching up with more familiar steps to create a custom pair of glasses perfect for your face. There’s still plenty of room for aesthetic preferences, and the use of 3D printing for frames means you can, if you want, opt for some out-there designs in colorful materials.
I didn’t go in that direction, but even still, these glasses feel a world away from many of the others I’ve worn over the years. They’re lighter, more robust (and actually repairable should something happen), and just better fitting than anything else I’ve encountered, with no pain or pressure points, and great lenses from Zeiss. I know that to look at me, most wouldn’t even notice that something had changed, but trust me when I say, something absolutely has, and I’m not going back.
Zach Kazan
I bought some great watches this year, but when it came time for me to consider the best “thing” I purchased in 2025, I never had any doubt about what I’d choose to write about. Because while the watches I was fortunate enough to pick up this year are wonderful and I enjoy owning them and wearing them, I can’t say that they improve my life in a meaningful way. This is true for most of the stuff we acquire, but I’ve come to feel it’s actually problematic with watches because of the way they’re positioned as luxury objects. My purchase a few months ago of an Ecovacs Deebot X9 Pro, a robot vacuum and mop, cracked open my idea of what meaningful luxury is. I can’t think of a consumer product that has more quickly improved my life in the recent past than this vacuum. That right there is a combination of words I couldn’t imagine stringing together at the beginning of 2025. But here we are.
In early November I was having brunch with my friend, who also happens to be my next door neighbor in the apartment building we call home in downtown Concord. At one point she mentioned quite casually, the way one does when they employ a robot vacuum cleaner to do their bidding, that it was almost done vacuuming and cleaning her floors. I asked her to explain. She showed me the app that the Ecovacs robot uses, and how she can, from anywhere, tell it to start cleaning her apartment in any number of ways. It’s mapped her floorplan, of course, and cleaning can be customized. Vacuum only, mop only, individual rooms, double pass, double speed, etc.
I made fun of her, because it seemed a little ridiculous. How hard is it, really, to vacuum the floors of a small apartment? It’s not hard, but it takes time, and she explained that the convenience and satisfaction of getting a mundane household chore off her plate made the relatively high cost of the X9 Pro more than worth it. When we made it back to our building she invited me in to look at her floors. They were impressively clean, much cleaner than mine, which I’d recently mopped the old fashioned way (well, with a Swiffer Wet-Jet). What really impressed me, though, was how cool this thing was as a gadget. It impressed me in the same way a really mechanically complicated watch might. Somebody thought of this! It has a dock that it returns to automatically when it’s done to charge, automatically clean itself, empty the dirty water, and so forth.
I was sold, and I bought my own on Amazon later that afternoon. It arrived a few days later, and after setting it up and letting it get its first few cleanings under its belt, I realized how dramatically better my life was about to be. When I told my friend how impressed I was she gave me a much deserved “I told you!” and commented that every unit in our building should just come with one of these ready to go. A network of robot vacuums working together is a fun idea that only slightly frightens me in a Terminator 2, end of the world kind of way.
I’m lucky to own some great watches, watches that almost anyone would classify as “luxury.” But the truth is, I’m mostly surrounded by pretty ordinary things. I relax on a couch from a discount furniture store. My clothes are all bought off the rack (and you can probably tell). My cutlery is pretty embarrassing. I will say, though, that my TV is very nice. I went all out for that.
So I have a bit of a complicated relationship with the idea of luxury. I like nice things in the realm of watches because, well, I love watches. It’s irrational and I don’t really need to explain it here. But I never bought a high end hand made sofa because the one I found at the department store is comfortable enough, and I don’t really like to cook so I’m not going to spend a fortune on exotic knives made from fancy steel or some other higher end material.
It’s always felt a little weird to have all these cool watches but for everything else in my life to be fairly average. Luxury watch marketing doesn’t show you a guy wearing a Royal Oak and driving a Camry. In real life, you invest in the things that make you happy. Watches are great, and I’ll keep buying them forever. But what really makes me happy is going to brunch with my friend, and coming home to freshly mopped and vacuumed floors, and having the rest of the day to do whatever I want. That, to me, is luxury.
The post Year in Review: the Best Things We Bought in 2025 appeared first on Worn & Wound.
