It’s Mod Time, but let’s pick another name.

/

Welcome to another installment of the Fossil Times circa 1996. Unlike previous years and future years the 1996 year saw five (5) Collector’s Club newsletters. We’ve reviewed a few stinkers in the past, but this one is one of the better ones for the Fossil Collector. Ignore as always the Issue/Volume numbers on the top and pretend that you see Volume 3, Issue 4. Let’s begin.

The Mod Time was a bust wasn’t it? 22 years later we never see these come up. Of all the options to put on the front cover in 1996 and this was the selection. No more bashing let’s continue onto the Limited Edition Preview and we start with Star Trek. The LI-1435 is okay if you like that sort of thing, but the takeaway is the LI-1436 where only 1000 were produced and these were in special gold. That’s stuff of dreams for the collector imagine the conversations you could have with all your Fossil Collector’s Club colleagues:

Friend: “Well I finally found the LI-1435 and it comes in a lovely black box”

You: (while polishing your LI-1436 to really make that gold stand out) “congratulations you are 1 of 10,000 other collectors who have the same piece”

Friend: “I want your life”

What’s interesting about all these Limited Editions is the regional distribution. In modern times it’s probably impossible (fiscally & legally) to get such a deal, but Fossil managed to release Star Trek, The Beatles, Mickey Mouse and Toy Story all in this newsletter. Some of these 1000 released pieces are some of the more valuable Fossil watches today. The Mickey ones especially with the wooden toys seems to command a premium along with the gold pocket watch LI-1457.

The rest of the newsletter is dedicated entirely to the Collector’s Club and this is why it ranks high on our list. 22 years later there isn’t a lot of information around our club out there and our bathroom monkeys are continuously searching the interwebs for every piece of information they can find. A few takeaways:

  1. Germany (no surprise) had the highest amount of Collector’s Club members outside of the USA

  2. Like the USA, there was a European Collectors Club Meeting along with an Limited Edition Auction on October 26-27, 1996! Pictures please send!

  3. Fossil Pen Pals was marketed as a way for non-USA members to get limited edition pieces not widely distributed.

  4. The winners of the jacket from the previous newsletter was announced. Fred Heedt and Julie Kodama where are you and can we have the jackets back?

  5. The 1996 Fossil Collector’s Convention was a 6 city tour. Where’s that bus?

Okay onto the show. Sorry for the long post, but this is a good newsletter! Ironic isn’t it that in 1996 a print newsletter was used to announce an upcoming web page and now in 2018 we are using “the internet” to broadcast a print newsletter.