Fossil DF-5000 Series - A Luxury as Fine as This I’ve Never Known
/Fossil Defender. It has been a minute since we’ve posted about anything related to a fan favorite, the Fossil Defender. I was cleaning out some inventory recently and came across a Defender that I completely forgot I had, a DF-5003 from the second run of Defenders.
I bought this a few years ago from eBay and the seller had listed it as brand new. It was not brand new when I received it, but very close with slight signs of use. The case shape and 34mm size is not a combination I would wear in the late 90’s or today and as such will be selling this piece very soon on eBay to make room for new Fossil watches.
A quick post on the beauty of this watch is warranted and let’s document it here before sending it off to the next owner.
The DF-5003 came from a family of 24 DF series watches launched in 1999. The 5 styles of the DF series took a different vibe than the DE series and came in priced very high and marketed as such. The 5000 styles of these watches were nautical in theme and aptly named Starboard.
Three items I wanted to highlight here.
The original price was $350
Tonneau case shape is a strange one for Fossil. Not many watches look like this from them in the past.
The movement is a Time Module Inc (TMI) VX36, which is a subsidiary company of Seiko. Lately it’s been good to see Fossil moving a lot of their new watches over to the more reliable Japanese quartz movements and the Defender DF-5003 was a trendsetter!
