Fossil Times, Fossil Breaks New Ground with Dirt
/Even the best curator of all things Fossil makes a mistake every once in a while. In prepping the list of posts and ideas for 2021, I found a mysterious Fossil Times edition that I marked as Q4, but in reality it was Q1 1998. Let’s blame 2020 or let’s blame a certain administration with an orange man – either way it is time dig into the LAST USA Fossil Times edition that I have access to. Volume 5 Issue 1. We do not have access to the Volume 5 Issue 4, which I believe has a pair of glasses on the cover.
Fossil DRT (Dirt Resistant Technology) watches have always been a meh amongst the collector world. I have a few of them and so do most collectors, but none of them have really stuck out as collectible. The cover image here features the DT4016, the cream colorway in a series that featured green, brown, black, blue and white. DRT was a short-lived series that was all gone by the year 2000 and the coolest item in the line IMO was the DT-4025 which was a combo analog/digital face.
One last call to join the 1998 Fossil Collectors Club shows up in Q1. No mention if 1999 was going to be a thing or not, but in Q1 1998 one could still join the Club and get all the goodies that we expected when we signed up in 1997. AOL Keyword – Fossil
The highlight of this issue in our opinion is the 2-page spread to talk about Fossil in cyberspace. At this point Fossil.com was 2 years old and most companies were just now realizing this internet thing wasn’t going away. The comparison between surfing the ocean and surfing the net is quite hysterical – worth a read! We’ve posted before about the old Fossil site on archive.org, but if you haven’t checked it out ever take a look for all your vintage Fossil pictures, watches and information – your friendly moderator here checks on it often for points of reference.
The big spread in Q1 is I LOVE LUCY and it’s a big spread! Really nice work around the show and the history. No pictures of the limited edition watches are shown, but in April of 1998 you could get the #3 watch in the series in standard or gold.
Wrapping up this issue is the recap of the fifth (and final?) Collector’s Club Breakfast in Nashville, TN on November 22, 1997. Mentioned as well is the Fossil Germany Collector’s Club Breakfast on the same day! Very cool and certainly something Fossil should consider going forward are some events for their fans. Later in 1998 there was a mall tour for Collectors and one was in my own backyard and I missed it by about 23 years! On that bad joke, here is the Q1 1998 Fossil Times – enjoy!
Please forgive the oddball sized scans here — this is one copy I didn’t have the actual tangible copy of. The full pages will appear when you click.
