The Oakley Watch Vault: The History of the Greatest Travel Watch Case of All Time
In the 1990’s, Oakley was on fire. Their sunglasses were so popular that it felt natural for them to branch out into apparel and other products, like watches, which they did in 1998. Their gloriously over-the-top watches, which make Invictas seem understated, weren’t aimed at enthusiasts. Quite the opposite–they were high-priced fashion watches with mostly quartz movements. So it’s a bit ironic that the case sold with many of these watches–the Oakley Watch Vault–became an iconic watch travel case among hardcore watch enthusiasts and dealers.
The Oakley Watch Vault: A New Style of Travel Watch Case
It’s unclear when Oakley first began including Watch Vaults with their watches, but it must’ve been sometime between the launch of their watch line in 1998 (with the outrageous Time Bomb) and the earliest mentions of it that I can find on watch forums in 2011. Its simple clam-donut shape really is a great design. It’s one piece–no “pillow” to worry about–and it’s suitable for watches on either bracelets or straps.
Although the Oakley Watch Vault came in two sizes, the “large” one was designed for outright huge watches, so the “small” one–which can handle watches up to 45mm perfectly well–is the one that really caught on. Enthusiasts liked it not only as a travel watch case, but often for longer-term storage as well.
The Craze
Once the word got out among watch geeks, Oakley Watch Vaults began selling out online and becoming hard to find in stores. In a 2013 thread about Oakley’s watch cases, Rolex Forums user Vincent65 remarked, “my two cents are I can’t bloody get one!”
Oakley stores, largely, began to stop selling Watch Vaults separately, instead preferring to keep them for customers of their watches. For a certain moment in watch nerd history, it was kind of a fun thing to stop in Oakley stores and try to score a Watch Vault. Sometimes you could grab one or two, but never a huge quantity.
The Imitators
Oakley simply refused to meet the demand for their Oakley Watch Vaults, and they stopped selling them altogether when they discontinued their watch line in 2015. Naturally, competitors had filled the void by then anyway. Casebudi released their Oakley-clone watch travel case in 2013 and it immediately gained popularity. The quality is good.
Nowadays there are numerous other brands, and yes, you can even buy a branded “Luxury Bazaar” travel case below. But honestly if you search Amazon you can find plenty of random brands like Watchpod, Ohuhu, Cheopz and Helmdy that will all be perfectly fine.
Becoming the Standard of Watch Travel Cases
Over the years, the “Watch Vault” style of travel watch case has grown to be a bit of an industry standard. If you watch Luxury Bazaar videos on YouTube, for example, you’re likely to see people pulling watches out of these Oakley-esque donut watch cases. Part of the design’s enduring popularity is due to its ease of use–just unzip it and pull the watch out. With a lot of fancier watch cases and watch rolls, there are extra flaps and inserts to deal with.
Although plenty of companies continue to design all kinds of new (often expensive) travel watch cases, I have yet to see one that I like better than an Oakley Watch Vault and its many clones. It became a classic for a reason.
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