I was ecstatic. Who wouldn’t be excited about a free watch?

When I won the watch I was 24 years old, living in Bangkok, and working as a junior copywriter within the network of WPP ad agencies. I was lucky to have work at all, because I didn’t have a proper work permit back then. Every few weeks, I would leave the country and come back in, buying myself another 30 days until I’d have to do it all over again. I’d check the Air Asia website and find the cheapest flight possible and book whatever budget hostel I could find. I once stayed in Vientiane, Laos, for about 2 bucks a night, and the place wasn’t half bad! I think a single spring bar cost more than that, even back then.

At this point in life, my portal to watch enthusiasm wasn’t through ownership and acquisition, it was through window shopping, consuming as much watch media as I could, and learning to enjoy what I already had. Odd jobs as a rock-climbing instructor and bike mechanic, a few years earlier, allowed me to snag a Bathys Hawaii, a Nauticfish (a German microbrand), and a couple of Seikos. One SKX007 I modified extensively with the help of a friend, and that project kept me engaged and learning, all for cheap. The watch my dad gave me was the cornerstone of my collection, and micros and Seikos added fun and variety – and that helped, because I simply couldn’t swing a new watch for the first few years out of college.

So, of course, receiving a $1,500 watch for free felt absolutely like a godsend. That was about what I made in a month as a junior copywriter. I guess we can’t all be collecting Pateks in our 20s.

There was only one small problem. The LM-7 was merely a facsimile of a watch that I truly loved, the Omega Ploprof. I’m still so drawn to the Ploprof that in 2020 I wrote five thousand words about it after talking to dozens of experts; we even cataloged every example to ever have appeared at auction. I went deep on that watch.

Even early on in my watch journey, I was never drawn to Steinharts or Invictas. The thought of wearing a watch from a small-time brand that was designed to look like another, possibly well-known watch, generally didn’t sit well with me at first. It still doesn’t, but the LM-7 was about to widen my perspective.

When the watch showed up, it was far better than I had expected it to be. It was made from titanium, and blasted titanium has this absolutely gorgeous luster. I liked it even more than the polished steel of the vintage or modern Ploprof it was supposed to look like. It’s funny, because a few years after Ocean7 made a Ploprof-inspired watch in titanium, Omega introduced a titanium model – before that they only came in steel (yes, I know about the Schmitz Frères titanium examples from the late ’60s, but those were prototypes and not production models).

There’s a big difference between counterfeits and homage watches. Counterfeit watches have no place in the world as far as I’m concerned. Counterfeits are made to be passed off as the real thing; homage watches use an original design as a starting point. Sometimes additional modifications are made to a design, and sometimes the homage watch is meant to be a dead ringer. In the case of the LM-7, some changes were made.

Additional beveling and chamfering made to the case gave the Ocean7 a distinct character. Additionally, the hue of blue was slightly brighter than that of the original Ploprof, and the bezel-lock button was a bright orange, too, while the Ploprof wore a darker one.

After owning the LM-7, it became clear that Ocean7 didn’t want to make an exact clone of the Ploprof. It’s far too esoteric of a watch to sell a “copy” of it. The whole thing was simply an exercise in how the design could be pushed. They trimmed up the case, experimented with bezels, and made it in titanium. Ocean7 was never shy about how they used factories in Asia to save on production costs to bring the price down low enough for widespread access, at $1,500. For reference, the modern Ploprof at the time was just under $10,000, and vintage examples were around $5,000. The modern Ploprof boasted Omega’s young-at-the-time Co-Axial Escapement technology, making the price a bit dear.

I ended up loving the way the LM-7 wore. It became a go-to watch for those aforementioned border-run trips to sometimes-dodgy cities where getting the watch nicked was a real threat. I also wore it on motorcycle trips, days out hiking in the thick of it, or any outing when I knew I was going to beat up my watch. It wasn’t that I didn’t subject my other watches to the same sort of abuse, but I liked that the LM-7 was specifically designed for the task. I even took it wild boar hunting in the jungle once.

After wearing it so much, I kind of forgot that it wasn’t an original design. The joy I got from wearing it hard ultimately eroded any of the trepidation I initially felt.

Years later, I let it go and put the proceeds into my watch fund. And shortly after, something new entered my collection: A vintage Ploprof.

Wearing the vintage model, I managed to knock some of the aging lume out of the minute hand, and it just floated freely under the crystal until it disintegrated into a fine powder that dusted the dial. Every time it would rain I would take the watch off and throw it in my pocket because I didn’t know if the 1970s seals were still any good. I could afford the watch, but not a proper restoration (nor did I want to wait months and months; I was still in my ’20s and hadn’t learned to be patient yet). So I ended up in a pickle. I finally had the watch that had come to represent the pinnacle of the tool watch to me, but I felt like I had to treat it like a pocket watch from the late 1800s.

Ultimately, that one went the way of the LM-7, too.

After a long time as a collector, enthusiast, and now industry professional, I can say with confidence that owning those two watches taught me a valuable lesson. The LM-7 was a great watch for me at the time. I wore it with the same enthusiasm as I do wearing many pieces costing exponentially more these days. In fact, it came during those early days when I didn’t know enough to be unhappy with the hobby. I just felt pure unfettered joy from wearing something I thought was novel. And it ultimately led to my ownership of the real thing, anyway. And it turns out I wasn’t as happy with it. You can make the argument that it’s wrong for a larger manufacturer to pour all that money into R&D only to have a small-time player “borrow” it, resulting in lost sales. But in this case, I’d argue that at that time in my own life, I was never going to be a buyer of the modern Omega Ploprof at retail. These are two totally different markets. And I eventually did cross over from the owner of an homage of the Ploprof to the real thing, and the LM-7 helped get me there.

Nowadays I don’t fault folks who wear homage watches. Hell, I was one of them! It’s all part of the journey. I’m not saying everyone should run out and buy an Invicta, but I am saying that a little compassion and perspective can only make our community a better place to be.