As with most things in life, people should choose whatever makes them happy. If you want a digital watch that receives your emails, counts your steps, monitors your blood pressure and politely informs you that you have been sitting down for seventeen minutes too long - good on you. Personally, at some point I would find my wrist becoming rather too involved in my private affairs.

But today I want to talk about something entirely different: watches that have lived. Not watches that have been carefully polished every few years until half a century of history has disappeared beneath a buffing wheel. Not a 50-year-old Rolex made to look as though your uncle presented it to you yesterday as a graduation present.

I mean watches with scratches. Faded dials. Worn cases. Plexiglass carrying little scars. Bezels that have lost some colour and bracelets that no longer look as though they left Geneva on Tuesday. These watches have a story.

Perhaps it sat on the wrist of a pilot staring across an instrument panel somewhere over Australia. Perhaps it belonged to a miner working in the dust around Coober Pedy. Perhaps it crossed deserts, oceans and borders. Maybe its owner simply wore it every day for forty years. We will probably never know. And that is precisely what makes them fascinating.

When restoration removes the history

There is a peculiar obsession in the vintage-watch world with making old things look new. Cases are polished. Scratches disappear. Plexiglass is replaced. Bracelets are refinished. Dials are cleaned or restored. Eventually you are presented with something manufactured in 1976 that looks suspiciously as though it was manufactured last Thursday. Technically, it may look "better." But is it?

Every time metal is aggressively polished from a vintage case, something original disappears with it. Sharp edges become softer. Original proportions change. And aesthetically, something else can disappear too: the evidence that the watch actually had a life before you owned it. Patina is not necessarily damage. Sometimes it is biography.

A tropical dial, faded bezel or scratched case can make one watch completely different from another example carrying exactly the same reference number. That individuality is difficult to manufacture - although plenty of people try. There is a fundamental difference between ageing and artificial ageing. One took decades. The other took somebody an afternoon. I know which one interests me more.

But not every watch should look like it crossed the Sahara. There is, however, an important distinction.

Context matters.

Take something like a Patek Philippe Ref. 5015. It is a dress watch. I would expect a vintage example to show its age, certainly, but I would be considerably less enthusiastic if it looked as though somebody had worn it while rebuilding a Land Rover. A dress watch should have lived the life of a dress watch.

You wouldn't do the gardening in a dinner suit. You wouldn't climb Kilimanjaro in handmade evening shoes. And therefore a beautiful Patek dress watch covered in enormous dents and battle scars doesn't necessarily become more romantic simply because they are old.

A Rolex Explorer, Air-King, Submariner or an old Tudor Oyster is different. These were watches designed to be worn. Tools before they became collectibles. Their scratches can make sense. Their faded dials can make sense. Their battered cases can make sense. They look right with some history attached.

A watch should grow old with you

There are different stages in life when we buy watches. After graduation, perhaps your father hands you an envelope. You could spend it on an overseas trip, put it towards your first car or, if the envelope is particularly impressive, the deposit on your first apartment. All perfectly sensible choices. But you can hardly start too early with a decent watch.

Buy the right one when you're young and it can become your companion for decades. It goes to your first proper job with you. It travels. It gets rained on. It sits beside you during disastrous meetings and excellent dinners. It witnesses promotions, weddings, arguments, flights, holidays and decisions you probably shouldn't have made. And somewhere along the way it gets older. Just like you.

It acquires scratches. You acquire scars. It gets a dent. So do you. The bracelet becomes looser, the dial changes colour and the case stops looking quite as crisp as it once did. That isn't depreciation of character. That's history.

Of course, you can also be 42, walk into a Rolex boutique, buy a brand-new Sea-Dweller, wear it three times a year and return it carefully to the safe after dinner. Nothing wrong with that. But I don't think that's what a Sea-Dweller was born to do.

It wasn't designed to spend its life between a restaurant and a bank vault. It is an absurdly capable piece of engineering created for an environment in which humans aren't particularly good at remaining alive. It was made to conquer the world. So wear the bloody thing.

And there is another aspect of watches that people sometimes pretend doesn't exist: other people notice them. At a dinner table, watches are read in much the same way women often recognise another woman's handbag. Not necessarily because of the price, but because these objects communicate choices. A battered old Explorer says something very different from a diamond-covered sports watch. A discreet vintage Patek says something different again.

The same thing happens at work.

Before you've finished explaining your achievements in an appraisal meeting, people have already registered your shoes, the cut of your jacket, how you carry yourself and, quite possibly, what is on your wrist.

None of these things proves competence, intelligence or character. Judging someone solely by them would be ridiculous. But pretending they communicate nothing would be equally ridiculous. Style is a language, and a watch is one of its quieter sentences.

Which is perhaps another reason I prefer a watch that has actually been worn. A pristine watch tells me what somebody bought. A well-worn watch might tell me where they've been. Buy the watch, not somebody else's idea of perfection

There is no universal rule.

Some collectors want immaculate examples. Others want untouched ones. Some want box, papers and every receipt since 1968. Others couldn't care less about the box because you cannot wear a cardboard box on your wrist. And that is exactly how it should be.

The important thing is understanding what you are buying.

A heavily patinated watch shouldn't pretend to be pristine. A restored watch shouldn't pretend to be untouched. A refinished dial should be described as refinished. And a genuinely old watch shouldn't have to apologise for looking old. Personally, I find something wonderfully appealing about an old tool watch whose scratches haven't been erased.

I don't need to know whether they came from the cockpit of an aircraft, an Australian opal mine or simply forty years of opening doors, carrying suitcases and living an ordinary life.

I just like knowing that somebody was there before me. Because sometimes the most beautiful thing about a vintage watch is that it doesn't look new.