Fun article, and it hits on the main trick: buy old, used watches. eBay, watchuseek forums, wherever. You can get sweet old, mechanical watches for like $20-200 all day long. And they come in reasonable sizes, modern watches are almost always way too big IMO.

I snagged one of these on watchuseek 10+ years ago, remains my favorite watch: https://www.fratellowatches.com/citizen-homer-second-setting...