AWHILE AGO, as I perused the wristwatch ads in the New York Times, something within me agitated--something that once in a decade, or maybe a lifetime, causes you to wonder about what you do measured comprehensively; like, oh, What percentage of your lifetime do you spend asleep? Or eating? Or--your mind, when roguish, will take you to antic lengths--defecating?

It happened to me at that moment, on the spot. I asked myself, How many hours (weeks? months?) of my life have I already spent looking at watch ads? The question fascinated me in part because my persistent habit hasn't been motivated by any search for the Perfect Watch. This is so because quite by accident, a few years ago, I discovered the perfect watch; so that all the time I spend looking at the displays of watches for sale is entirely platonic. It's just that there is something, for me, simply irresistible in watch ads.

I thought this an entirely personal idiosyncrasy until I devoted a newspaper column to a single Sunday's watch ads. I was astonished by the number of people who wrote to me, or told me to my face, that they suffer from the same addiction. "Suffer" may be the wrong word, because manifestly our fraternity relishes the pastime. Granted, some voyeurs are engaged in the practical pursuit of a watch preferable to the watch they wear, but they would presumably expect that their curiosity would be extinguished upon finding their quarry.

Now, all watch-watchers are given to examining primarily two basic things. The first, of course, is the appearance of the watch; the second, its price. I found that my correspondents share with me the stupefaction provoked by manifest paradoxes--the very expensive watch that appears mundane in appearance, modest in its accomplishments; and, on the other hand, the preposterously inexpensive watch that appears to accomplish as much as models costing one hundred times as much.

The mind wanders ... What are watch-fanciers looking for? By what criteria are they guided? How much of the whole business is sheer guile? Or flighty, evanescent fashion-chasing? Some watch-buyers, of course, are conned, but that is true in every situation. But how many of us? Like 9 per cent? Or more like 90 per cent? What is the force of the guiding hand of fashion?

I had in my mail, reacting to my column, a wonderfully querulous letter from William Manchester, the learned, stylish, peppery historian and biographer. He wrote from his fastness at Wesleyan University. I quote from memory: "I wear a Rolex, but have decided to get rid of it because it is Politically Correct. Please let me know what is the watch you are so pleased with. Yours, Bill Manchester, Eurocentrist, Heterosexual." I decided to pursue more meticulously the questions I had posed in my column.

The front section of the New York Times on that Sunday carried ads for forty watches, leading off with a Van Cleef & Arpels selection, two elegantly plain watches, the primary visual difference between them being that one had a sweep second hand, the other a miniature second hand. "Gentlemen's Quartz Leather Strap Watches. On left with steel, $1,500, and on right with 18 kt. gold, $4,950."

Now that's the kind of thing that causes the gnashing of teeth among us watch-watchers, because of course you ask yourself: How much gold do you consume to make up the $3,450 difference between Model A, non-gold, and Model B, gold? It is a happy coincidence that you recall that an ounce of gold sells for $345, more or less; so that, at the raw gold price, it would take ten ounces of gold to account for that price differential. Come on! I doubt the whole watch weighs more than ten ounces. Those bloodsuckers, huh!

Your eye catches, a few pages ahead, a Mickey Mouse watch. You smile. Walt Disney lives! The eternal benefactor of little children, with their heady little appetites for sprightly, inexpensive, utilitarian adornments! You read on and come upon--stumble over--get floored by--the price. $5,750. Your eye races to the explanation. Could it be that inside each of these watches there is a relic? Maybe a toenail of the original Mickey Mouse? But all the reader gets is: "A $5,750 Mickey--for innovators, watch collectors, and friends of Mickey. Completely hand-crafted in Switzerland." Very close friends of Mickey, one has to assume.

Ah, yes, and we come to: "hand-crafted." You are a grownup reader and so you know that "hand-crafted" usually means, very simply: more expensive. You have idly wondered, over the years, why customers should want "hand-crafted" goods. If it's a painting by van Gogh, you most certainly wish it to be hand-crafted. But what is it, you allow yourself to wonder, that makes a hand-crafted watch preferable to a machine-crafted watch? Isn't it likelier that a hand-crafted watch will err, than that a computer-crafted watch will do so? And if that is the case, aren't you being asked to pay a lot more money for a watch that is likelier to contain an imperfection, probably invisible to the eye of the craftsman, that the computer-laser would detect?

You conclude that you are being manipulated.

And then you focus on an interesting anomaly, which is that the very expensive watches are almost uniformly driven not by a simple quartz battery, but by the motion of the wrist, or even by hand winding. You permit yourself to dwell on the possibility that a watch driven by a battery is less accurate than a watch perpetually animated by the wrist movement of a non-comatose wearer. Might this be so because every day the battery loses just a tiny degree of potency? And before you know it you are, oh, 30 seconds, maybe a couple of minutes, behind true watch time? You make a note to look into that question, because you can't believe that anybody who has the choice of replacing a $3 battery every couple of years would prefer perpetual wrist motion as the propulsive life-force alternative. If you depend on the latter, you have a watch that goes dead on you if it should happen that you left it at your son's house, on your last visit, and didn't get around to reuniting with it for a week or so; or else you needed to call your son and ask him please to remember to jiggle your watch every day until he takes it to the post office. Yes, something to look into.

You explore then the watch as a status symbol, and ogle on the next page something labeled "IWC International Watch Company, Da Vinci." The object is described in that genteel, exclusivist voice designed to inspire: covetousness. "This unique timepiece shows signs of genius. Completely handmade in Switzerland, the automatic perpetual calendar moonphase chronograph even shows the year for at least the next 209 years without resetting the watch." Such a watch as this has got to be exclusive, and sure enough, "Limited Edition. A masterpiece in 18K, $19,995." I love that "$995." You are at this point so indignant that you feel the time you have spent on your idle pursuit has been mysteriously justified: you have exposed sin, and how can sins be purged without first being identified as such?

TO ANSWER some of my questions, I made a date with Alfredo Lopez. He is a salesman for Tourneau Inc., which is the flossiest watch emporium in the country, with six stores in California, Florida, and New York. I have known him for many years, as I go to him to buy watches (gifts), and occasionally to seek horological advice.

He advises me that the watch business is pretty much "Switzerland--and Japan." The way he says it reminds me of the great Spanish matador, Juan Belmonte, early in this century. Asked what was his opinion of the prowess of the young Joselito, a rising star, Belmonte sniffed: "Primero, Belmonte. Despues nadie. Despues Joselito." First Switzerland. Then nobody. Then Japan.

There was an era, Mr. Lopez reminded me, when the United States was a live contender. Our Hamilton chronometers were considered the very best, indeed were standard for our and others' navies for a generation and more. But Hamilton was bought by the Swiss; Elgin went out of business. For a while we tried to build tariff walls around our watches. As ever, human ingenuity found ways around this silly impediment. Our tariffs were written to apply if more than one-half of the watch was assembled outside the United States. This law put the Swiss to the bother of shipping their watches to the Virgin Islands and assembling them there. Even now, when Swiss watches reach the United States they are labeled as "unadjusted," thus lowering whatever tariffs still apply.

So I got to the first question, the business of winding versus quartz. Mr. Lopez was mystified by the naivete of my question. He explained that to buy a very good watch propelled by quartz was on the order of "buying a Porsche with an automatic transmission."

But is there something about self-winding that affects accuracy?