Transcript for:
Summary of March Meeting at Horological Society

ladies and gentlemen good evening and welcome to the March meeting of the horological New York my name is John T furred I am the vice president of the horological Society and I'm very happy to see all of you here this evening I was just speaking with Nick a moment ago and to the best of our knowledge this is the biggest crowd that we've had in likely 50 years so it's really exceptional and thank you all for coming out even with the weather this evening so without further ado let's get started HSN why is proud to welcome not just one but two new sponsors this meeting we welcome Mussina lab as a sponsor and also Christie's auctions as a sponsor so a round of applause for our two new sponsors as well thank you as we often do we have an education update coming up in March we have evening classes now available if you're interested in taking some of our or illogical education courses we also have an unusual weekend class which is going to be March the 23rd April sixth and seventh we have a class coming up in Silicon Valley this is going to be hosted by Steven silver fine jewelry and in Houston April 13th and 14th hosted by show part I'm excited to share information with you about the Henry be freed scholarship the scholarship was established recently and in 2019 we have received 22 applications for this scholarship we have multiple $10,000 scholarships that are going to be awarded at the gala and charity auction which is coming up April 17th and this photo is not a stock image this is a photo of the event venue that we've booked for this year for those of you this evening that we're here last year you'll remember that the gala was here in the library and this space really isn't the greatest for a sit-down dinner so the gala is going to have premium open bar it's going to have table service and I hope that I get to see many of you again at the gala tickets are currently available if you're interested we do have a small number of tables still available if you want to purchase a table of ten and we're also accepting donations to the fundraising auction that will be done at the gala HSN why of course is a 501c3 organization so these are tax deductible for more information feel free grab one of us one of the officers me after the the presentation this evening or check out the website HS - NY dot org okay thank you to tease the auction here we have Mr John Reardon and among the auction Lots that we have this year we have so far about ten Lots I'm going to give a little bit of information about a few of them because these are experiential items the first very generously long in Zona has donated an afternoon with a master watch maker here in New York we also have as another lot dinner with Howe dinky Editors Jack Forrester and Stephen pull vermin we have an all-expense-paid horological trip to Switzerland which has been very generously donated by watch and ista and a private watchmaking class with Francois pol Jorn at the HSN Y classroom here at the general Society so these are some very exciting lots that we will be auctioning off at the gala without further ado tonight's lecture many of you already know I'm pleased to have known mr. Eric wind for several years and I'd like to introduce him to you for this evening collecting vintage watches with Eric wind thanks so much everyone for coming very excited to be here just came up this morning from Florida so a little bit different weather but I've got a lot of content so we'll try to sort of speed through it quickly I've been fortunate enough over the last few years to give speeches while I was with Christie's two different groups etc some of the groups a large percentage of people in the room don't even know what a mechanical watch is so if you don't know what a mechanical watches come speak to me after class but hopefully you do so why watches this everyone has their own answer of course time is one of our most precious commodities I actually think it's not just about the watches themselves it's about preserving culture it's about learning to cherish things and cherish possessions treat them well hopefully we treat these things well I'm trying to teach my five-year-old son to treat things well I've given him a few stop watches which he's learning to not throw across the room which is good so I think it is about treating things well appreciating history heritage some people look at watches is very frivolous why would we care about these things but I actually think culture is what makes our civilization a civilization otherwise we're just animals so I think watches are actually very important what makes a vintage watch valuable I'm gonna cruise through this kind of quickly again sometimes I'm speaking to people that have no idea about vintage watches but these are sort of the criteria that I see that makes a watch valuable sometimes it's a combination of all of the above sometimes it's just one will go through quality of course who made it finishing and details of movement Dial case etc obviously sometimes watches take years to assemble with many people working on them sometimes it's a day sometimes it's less than a day but you see the amount of time that's put into a watch just two examples of the same Rolex reference 50:29 just to show you difference similar condition in terms of case the watch on the right is heavy oxidation and watch on the left of course as a normal dial very nice maybe worth $15,000 today reference 50 29 the watch on the right as a cloisonne enamel dial and was sold by Christie's in 2014 for 1.2 million plus so that shows you just small differences can mean the world and just to show you the rise and values that watch on the right had previously sold at Christie's in 2005 so nine years before for only about ninety thousand dollars so really had skyrocketed in the course of nine years complications anything more than just telling time so we hopefully you all know what a complication is but obviously certain watches for petrol calendars perpetual calendar chronographs have much more value these are a few pieces from the Oh ding key talking watches with jean-claude be their condition the dial the case the movement originality of parts does it have box and papers stuff like that just the watch on the Left versus the watch on the right both sold by Christie's the watch on the left very well preserved watch but had gone back to Rolex and had the hands replaced with tritium hands if you see the hands are that wider case was polished when it went back to Rolex as well the watch on the right had dial that had turned tropical brown with sort of UV aged humidity heat etc and the case was lightly polished but very strong the watch on their both four line models so this is the the nuances of Rolex collecting these are both big crown watches where the the crown that you used to wind the watch is very large of course this was made famous in the the James Bond movie dr. no with Sean Connery wearing these so these watches are called James Bond submariners but the watches that have the officially certified chronometer on the dial at the bottom are worth significantly more than those that are to line that do not have that text and did not go through the additional testing at an observatory to test the watch before it was sold for accuracy but the watch on the Left sold for a hundred thousand all in even though it was a really exceptional watch and the watch on the right had sold for over five hundred thousand so it just shows you the differences in value with what to most people would be pretty minut differences scarcity and rarity obviously have a big role to play in watches as well and and what they're worth so the two watches on the Left are both unique pieces as far as we know the watch on the far left was a steel Patek perpetual calendar that had sold for almost four million dollars the watch in the center is a fifteen twenty seven that for many years was the most expensive watch ever wristwatch ever sold at auction that had sold in 2010 at Christie's for 5.7 million and then the watch on the right was very interesting I sort of out play a role in finding this watch from the original owner it's was a watch that came in with a group of watches from an older gentleman and his early 90s while I was there and you know there were a few sort of average but what you in the Christie's world not very exciting watches but an Omega flight master some other things he had accumulated over the years as gifts and there was this strange watch that had these pearl hour markers that you know you could immediately kind of guess was an aftermarket addition but one of my colleagues had said you know none of these watches are really for Christie's but he showed me the list and wanted me to double check it and I thought this was an interesting watch so I went to John Rearden and asked him if who was my boss is the head of watches at Christie's if he had ever seen a paddock with pearl hour markers and he said he had not and it was worth further investigation so my colleague Brandon phrasing and I rented a car and drove out to Greenwich Connecticut to go see this watch open it up we asked the gentleman where he got the watch and he said it was a gift from the ruler of Bahrain to him in 1957 who was a close personal friend and so he said Wow well this definitely will have warrants ordering an extract from the archives of Patek Phillipe to see what it says and of course you know about a week later we hear back and we get the extract and under notes on the dial it says pearl our markers so we we decided to call it the Pearl of Bahrain he had been a business associate and had helped the ruler of Bahrain and interestingly enough one came to market several years later but this watch was tough to value because this was a pretty small watch 33 millimeters the lugs are tiny it wears very small and without the pearl markers the condition by the way as well was outstanding it was men unpolished he really hadn't worn it very much because it was pretty ostentatious for his taste we put an estimate of ten to fifteen thousand dollars because this watch in yellow gold was maybe eight thousand dollars and of course the auction date comes up it happens to be the National Day of Bahrain which we hadn't planned and about 10 minutes before the lot people start streaming in and all different staff from around Christie's and they're kind of like what's happening here there's two phone banks where you call bidders that registered a telephone bid and there were over thirty people registered for the phones now your average lot might have as many as three four five people max on a watch so to have 30-plus was really unprecedented for the watch department and when all was said and done it sold for four hundred thirty seven thousand so it was a very was about a eight-minute bidding battle and was very exciting but that's sort of the fun aspect of of this obvious well finding things like that style is also very important for value these are two oversized watches very rare to find watches from the 40s 50s and 60s with these sort of 40-plus millimeter sizes provenance can mean everything for the value of a watch as well the watch on the Left might be $1,000 lawn gene but because it was Albert Einstein's it sold for over five hundred thousand already almost a decade ago that very worn pocket watch that might be an $80 $100 watch on eBay today if it was just by itself silver that was actually Mahatma Gandhi's watch and had sold with a collection of other personal items for over two million dollars provenance as well plays into this role of collecting because the watch on the right was owned by Henry graves it was the man who commissioned graves super complication so anything that he's owned is worth a significant premium particularly with a personal crest and that was a watch that was a minute repeater obviously very special and it sold for around two million and then the watch on the right that's famously john f kennedy's omega which he wore for his inauguration that watch might be $2,000 thousand dollars on its own a worn dial etc but because it was his and it sold for three hundred fifty thousand back in 2003 the ultimate sort of problem had to watch the paul newman paul newman this watch had a worn dial which i can only surmise was because if you see photos of paul he often had the crown out because he didn't want to be bothered winding it in so probably moisture and it got in to the dials it's got this discoloration would definitely be under 200,000 on its own but that in that condition maybe under a hundred but because it was his it sold for seventeen point eight million so there you go and that's sort of a combination of things it's because it was his but it's also because it's an important watch it's because it's important for watch collecting it's sort of a whole breed of multiple factors that created a really knock-on effect this is one of the more odd Association watch is Nina rent most people probably haven't heard of Nina rent she was the wife of an Austrian race car driver Formula One I remember this watch when I was first getting into watches I thought it was one of the coolest looking universals and I remember bidding on two back in 2011 on eBay I was under bidder on both one one for 2300 and one one for 2800 then you know about a year later someone finds this photo of her posted on Omega forums on the universal shouldn't have forum people start calling the watch the Nina rent and by 2015 the watch on the right which was really exceptional condition with box and papers had sold for forty seven thousand five hundred so that was within a four year time horizon to see something like that and then last sort of three determinants of value freshness to market has it been to auction previously it's the watch previously unknown like the Pearl of Bahrain no one knew that existed as but as a watchman sitting around for sale for years that's a good way to kill a watch if it's something special competition is also an important fact factor particularly when it comes to auction if someone feels they need it for their collection sometimes there's bitter rivalries between people and I hear the would hear the phrase and still hear it make them pay it's a keep bidding to make sure the other person pays our other X Factor's thematic auction our nan watch collectors bidding sometimes watch museums are bidding for their museum collection and will go very high obviously because they want to secure it and they can market it etc and the social media factor is very important so that's sort of what makes a vintage watch valuable in my eyes so we'll start with the biggest mistakes I also see that vintage watch collectors are making I've got a whole list here birth year watches I really hate birth year watches generally and I think it's important someone says something about it because I get asked probably multiple times a week to help someone find a birth years of or birth year GMT or something like that I think it's very arbitrary because you're putting that is the first first thing that you're looking for rather than the best example of the watch and the other thing that people don't realize is that there's a multi-year process from when a watch was first sort of made the case was made in one year for instance with Rolex that's often engraved on the inside case back pre 1972 then they have to put the movement in which I'd be a year later then it goes to four chronometer testing which might be the next year depending on how it falls and it might not sell for another five years after that I've seen watches I've seen a watch that wasn't with a case made in 1958 that was sold in 1965 from the son of the original owner all the paperwork invoice etcetera the watch was sitting around so what year is that is that a 1958 watch as a knight and 65 watch it's just to me is crazy and then you've got it's for me it's a nice cherry on top if it happens to be a birth your watch but you really should approach collecting looking for the best possible example looking for something that speaks to you rather than looking for something very average that you just like because it was the year you were born you think but probably not I think something a little different is if you want to buy a new watch to put away for a child my wife told me to put that in that's okay he said don't be too critical don't be too cool this is another thing that I often talk to people about when they're first getting into collecting even people who've been collecting for years don't really think about this but I just call it the passion to value scale of where you're thinking about your purchases we each have sort of a hundred percent and most collectors are sort of 50% passion they're buying something they like but 50% value or I hesitate to use the word investment because someone told me if I start talking about investment I might SEC might come in and arrest me or something because that's a totally different classification for talking about things I'll say value or passion investment but I've had collectors come to me that say I want to buy a watch but I need to know that I could sell it for what I paid tomorrow and I say well I don't know like I can't really be helpful with that because I don't have a crystal ball about tomorrow watches are not that the most liquid investments it's not like a stock or if you're really concerned just keep cash in a money market or something or in something else the it's very important that people think about this because other people are really like 60% passion to 40% investment and those are generally the people that I see get the best returns because they're willing to overpay in today's prices for something really exceptional and really nice and obviously as a dealer or most people there might be a time where you're just buying something because you can know you can make money for instance if you get offered a new Pepsi GMT I think everyone in the room would probably figure out a way to buy it and make it seven thousand dollars within an hour stuff like you know the Patek Phillipe Nautilus deal if you get offered a 5711 for twenty nine thousand I think people will try to figure out how to make it work so they can sell it for forty thousand plus even if they don't like the watch but I really think it's important people think about where they are on the scale and in general I will say that there's a lot of greed among both collectors and dealers but people that are collectors that are buying a watch cannot expect to get every dollar out if they decide they don't like it and there's been more and more people I think talking to other dealers that are saying you know I paid ten thousand for this I need ten thousand out and they're very upset if they get offered nine thousand back or something if you're going to have that attitude it's probably not the best field to be involved in and there's there's a lot of financial speculation with watches which I think creates market distortions we'll talk about in a little bit but I think it's important people kind of think about where they are on the scale I know some collectors that are really 70% investment a 30% passion they only really want to buy something they see is moving up or something like that which is you know at least they know that and it's important that they are aware of that at least approach this is a great quote from a very good collector who John Reardon knew one must know how to purchase exceptional objects today at tomorrow's prices and that's probably the best advice I could give someone who's very serious about watch collecting the third thing I think there's a big trend to just focus on Rolex Patek Phillipe and the icons the iconic watches and I think it's important to think independently many collections are looking the same with more and more headed in that direction everyone with a Daytona GMT Submariner Nautilus or Royal Oak or both speed master etc I think there's more to life than Rolex and Patek Phillipe not everyone has to have the same watches and it's good to be curious and different in your collecting at this I'd like to point out a good kind friend in the audience Greg souch who I think is a really cool collection he's got a lot of everything but he likes watches that show their age as he calls them hammered and watches that look like they've been through a couple of wars and there's some of the most beautiful things when you actually kind of look and appreciate the stories that these watches must have but you know it takes sort of looking at all these watches to really appreciate it and then you kind of say well this is as cool as a warden military jacket or something else that shows its age a car that's unrestored that you know is really worn but all original that's I think really interesting and sort of a new approach in collecting I also will say that talking to other dealers there's a lot of em and people coming to me as well focus only on full sets particularly Rolex watches with box and papers there are thousands of Rolex watches with fake papers in the marketplace maybe tens of thousands and other brands - these booklets were often not even filled out at the time of purchase but give came along with the watch of course people get a pencil or pen and fill it in people find old paper and old typewriters and do all kinds of shenanigans and so newbies come into the market and somehow have an idea how to know where originated is that full set is a safer purchase and better value but for me condition and provenance is much more important than whether it has papers in a box a crappy watch with papers and box is still a crappy watch so I always see it as a cherry on top particularly if it has good provenance and you know it is but other people would would say these papers are as worthless as toilet paper to use an Instagram quote with unless you know where it's coming from I will say just on a personal level there was a gary Stein guard who's a good friend and client who wrote a good book like success which I recommend he had bought a GMT master I helped him find and he wrote a nice piece in The Wall Street Journal about it that watch happened to have the original box and papers that had been sold at Christie's while I was there from the original owner who worked for NASA and Gary of course mentioned in the in the article that had the original box and chronometer certificate and guarantee and I got probably a hundred plus emails after that of people wanting to say like help me find something like that I'd offer them a really nice GMT and they'd say it doesn't have box and papers I'm not interested I was like oh geez I wish where she had picked a different watch if he could have picked the Explorer that did that box papers to write about this the other thing that I think is a common mistake for new collectors is focusing on rather than condition so they think that it's better to get like a rolex submariner with an underlined dial rather than a best condition one with the normal dial for me condition Trump's rarity for sure and just tees Rolex as an example it's better to have a great Samarin er from the 1970s or GMT with the matte dial than one that's very poor condition from the 1960s for me unless you like the look and and it looks very good in his coherent for you but you know this one of the biggest trends I impress upon people and I brought it up at the hotel key 10th anniversary dealer panel is that the multiple between really excellent condition and average condition keeps increasing so I've talked to dealers in the 1980s when vash is sort of time only gold Vacheron watches were really hot overall all over and time oddly Patek Phillipe and these funky cases everyone wanted those but it didn't matter if the dial is completely reprinted or not they'd sell it for exactly the same price but there's a real as people become more educated as there's more information obviously online over how these things should look Instagram etc there becomes a big difference between really excellent condition and average condition or poor condition and for me I think this multiple will increase I would say one of the biggest things that I've seen the last three years since I first joined Christie's in 2015 to today is more and more awareness about condition and I think that's important it has its own negative effects too including restoration in order to sort of deceive but we can talk about that soon this is just a minor note but I think it's very important to record serial numbers of watches you own and your collection have a photo because if you do have them lost or stolen you can report it and put it in the police department report make sure that gets shared with the company I'm aware of people that had their watches stolen in hotel rooms etc and then they actually had Rolex contact them 25 years later and say hey your watch just came in for service can we ship it back to you which is very nice so that's very important I would say one other aspect that would be really good is if someone did a better database of stolen serial numbers because as it is they're sort of piecemeal databases obviously Rolex has their own information which they don't share but there are insurance companies with their own serial numbers there are sort of Art Loss Register --zz and other companies that have it police stations have it etc if someone could really get all this information it would be much better and I would say this is very minor but most of what you feel on your wrist when you're wearing the watch the majority of it is the strap or the bracelet and I think it really makes a big difference in terms of overall feel and look I will say that there are watches I owned in the past that if I could go back and get them I would because I didn't have really have the right strap or bracelet for it and it's very important to find you know the right the right strap or bracelet for me smaller sized watches I really need a thin strap if it's too thick or or stiff it's not comfortable and you know you've got to pay sometimes for for a nice strap even if it's $160 if you paid fifty thousand for the watch maybe it's worth buying the strap I'd like to talk a little bit about Instagram which is one of the biggest things that has affected our hobby the last few years I'd say it's one of the best and worst things to happen to watch collecting good there's many more people aware of vintage watches and interested in them as a result or watches generally bad there's a lack of curiosity watch forums are really dying I would say and as a result of that there's a lack of scholarship being developed about watches and there's also this idea that everyone wants the same sort of eight models it gets really ugly when you get jealousy and the rise of sort of trolls and village idiots on Instagram which there are many but you just see crazy things written you know and it's I think part of it might be people that are unhappy with watch values obviously increasing so much over the last eight ten years and I think some of it is just people that shouldn't have that have too much time on their hands and yeah I don't know what else to add but unfortunate I will say that is important people actually learn and study and try to try to learn at least one thing each day about vintage watches I feel it's not a successful day if I haven't learned something and I won't name names but there's a lot of bad people on Instagram so just be careful and then the bad the really ugly part of that is you get a lot of people following some of these accounts and then they believe everything they say is true when maybe half of it's true and then you just see nonsense all the time and then people parroting it and it's a very negative the other aspect of Instagram is whether it actually makes watch dealers more expendable and auction houses as well because if you want to watch you can write the owner directly there's a huge awareness of what people own and a lot more liquidity and relationships between collectors which I think's okay and it's very good these networks of people are good but it does I think effect dealers being able to get product and they don't just have to rely on the auction house to buy in to sell there's a whole world out there if you just type in a hash tag of whatever model you want you can get thousands of photos coming up I would say people also often don't have an exit strategy for their watches when they're buying it particularly when you're thinking about six-figure watches so if you decide to sell a watch I think particularly when you're new in the game you might not know how to best sell it and I I'm always surprised when someone buys a watch from a dealer they offer it back to the dealer and the dealer says no thanks and you begin to wonder as they're serious as she hid the watch and as a worse case might be putting it at auction but you might really get killed on the what you returned back I said right rules I've been right tools not having the right tools UV flashlights is very important for looking at watches with loom or what we call luminous material that's on the dial or in the hands a Geiger counter is very important for watches prior to 1963 with loom to measure their radioactivity loupe is very important for looking at the details of the watch the serial number details of the dial etc and it's important to learn to use them properly you know I see all kinds of people putting Geiger counters on watches wrong etc and not really knowing what they're doing but it's these are just tools that once you know how to use them help you validate there are all kinds of things to deceive people of course including putting Geiger sort of radium dust on watches to make them Geiger etc so you kind of need to do a combination of things when you're looking at it to see if it makes sense this is a photo from shifted magazine but this is an early Submariner radium loom often looks like this particularly from the 1950s where it's kind of gritty black in it and it should match between the dial on the hands as a general rule so when you put the UV light and you take it off the decay of the light should be the same and it should look like this and obviously it would read pretty high in a Geiger counter as well I guess one one final aspect of of the collecting hobby is radium loom prior to 1963 the most common isotope has a half-life of 1600 years and I hear more and more collectors saying they don't want watches with radium loom because they're concerned for their health I personally am NOT going to take a position on that I know some collectors say tell people not to wear radium watches so I can buy them cheaper and I know other people that are you know legitimately concerned there are different scientific journal articles on this topic and for me nothing is conclusive but I do think that it's good to have them in a well-ventilated place if you do have radiant because it can these watches do emit a little bit of radon gas so it's important to put them in a good place that's that's well ventilated it's it's very useful to try to make your watches water-resistant if possible I've seen some watches I'm aware of people wearing you know gilt submariners and unfortunately moisture got in water got on the dial they were just wearing them including one person on an airplane and the watch was basically the dial was destroyed so in that case I think the loss was over 40,000 dollars in value from that watch so vintage Rolex watches are pretty convenient because they're relatively easy to make water-resistant if you've got watches with round sort of olive pushers or things like that from the 1930s and 40s they're very hard to you can't make them water-resistant basically so you just need to be aware of your surroundings and humidity is really the enemy so where you often see moisture get into watches if you're going from say it's 90 degrees out in a very humid day you're leaving an air-conditioned environment and you walk outside you often see the crystal get fogged up I would say in that case you kind of want to flip the watch over pull the crown out and let it let the moisture get out so it doesn't fall back on the dial and hopefully then everything's okay this is something I think people also don't really realize is that the best watches don't often don't make it to Instagram for sale or websites etc in the auction world private sales and private treaty are really big sources of income and many million dollar-plus watches are moved that way without the public knowing viewers like myself often have a list of good clients looking for things if you don't have to public post it publicly they generally won't I mean I just see if I post a watch that's totally correct from orginal owner I see still people say oh that dial is incorrect for that case or whatever and it gets very annoying the trolls as I'll call them so this is why it's important to have a relationship and have a relationship with auction houses if that you're trying to find something specific a relationship with dealers etc another question just for the general market is whether the vintage sort of masterpieces as we called them watches worth over 1 million are drawing up a lot of the big pieces we've seen at auction the last few years came from a single collection and that collection is pretty much which you know used and that was built over the course of 20 plus years at auction so that may sort of affect the high end of the market because it was very good to see a lot of big pieces come out of the out of the collection and get people excited but and sort of generate interest in this as a passion investment but if there aren't so many big pieces maybe it creates more stability and in the market particularly at that level and we maybe we won't see a 40 million dollar wristwatch I don't know the the this one is believing everything you see in a watch auction catalog is original I can compare auction catalogues sometimes do other types of magazines there's cosmetic enhancement airbrushing etc so it's important some people particularly when they're entering the Hobby are thinking that everything they see in a catalog is perfectly original but you really have to know what you're doing and realize that a lot of things might be changed or modified restored etc I would say small auction as estate auction houses where people generally have felt very comfortable with buying things because who would consign something to this small auction house where ever may no longer be safe because I'm seeing more sort of dodgy watches put in small auction houses around the world which is similar in the art world where people have tried to sort of hide things or make fake seem good because they're in the small action house so we'll talk more about that minute and I would like to talk about watch auctions a little bit I would say one of the big trends in the last decade has been what I call uniting God and man it's this idea that watch auctions are more than just Patek Phillipe and Rolex and over the last few years we've seen a bunch of brands sort of come in we seen Omega Speedmaster z-- and Hoyer's and all these things universal genève that's been one of the biggest trends which has been I think very positive for the market but when I first started writing for hoe Dinkie in 2010 watch auctions were a totally separate thing from basically collecting and forums online people that were very hardcore and/or would never think of looking at a christie's catalog or any this other B's catalog etc but now it's become much more embedded in collecting community sort of at all levels so I think that's that's interesting there's the good the bad and ugly but with auctions I think that a good analogy for watch auctions is that sort of the odd Couture runway show it's a very small port the sort of overestimate how much of the vintage watch market goes through auction but it's under five hundred million per year for all auction houses with all watches and that's a very small portion of the overall vintage market which I would say is north of five billion so even though that gets the most attention it's a it's a very small percentage of the market and if you take the sort of global pre-owned market because watch auctions aren't of course just vintage there's a lot of modern flowing through you could be looking at Bain & Company recently did a study and they said it was seventeen billion dollar market so you're looking at maybe three four hundred million out of a seventeen billion dollar market which isn't very much also original owners and families obviously it's a great way to for them to be able to sell watches in a very clear and transparent way you know sometimes you deal with an original owner on the dealer side and they're just back and forth and sort of twisting themselves and knots about what how they should sell this watch and what's the best way and how can they make sure they know what they're they're getting they're getting the right amount and you can just say at that point you really should go to auction because this is it's just better that you don't torture yourself five years from now and say oh maybe I left a dollar on the table just put it at auction and let the market decide important discoveries and scholarship are very important parts of auctions obviously the auctions are very exciting particularly when you're bidding or when you're a consignor that can also be very disheartening and auctions are very important to bring attention to the vintage watch community sort of expand awareness of these things I would say also previews offer an unparalleled opportunity to see and hold so many watches so one of the best things a new collector can do is go to an auction preview and try to see as many watches they can hold them try them on their wrist see what actually works on your wrist or not and what you like the bad and ugly of auction consignment process is very long it might be six months from when you give the watch at auction till you're paid there it's important to know that the auction house is only a middlemen so if someone is late or never pays for their lot the auction house even if it's sold for a big amount at auction the auction house is not on the hook to pay you it's only if they're paid that you're paid I would say when people ask me the worst part of working for Christie's it's having to say I'm sorry a lot for things that are beyond your control and we'll talk more about that but one of those things is late payments or unpaid lots and this is increasingly an issue but I've had people ever watch silent auction and then you know the payments supposed to come it's sort of thirty five days after the auction they're asking for their money didn't come and it seems that the buyer has ghosted it as we say ghosted that disappeared they're not responding to calls emails etc I've had people say I spent that money already I need the money I need the money and say you know there's nothing we can do it's not it's not good auction previews are also although they're a very positive thing they're also sort of a perilous and treacherous thing at least one watch was stolen at a high-profile auction recently during a preview reportedly slipped off its NATO strap and the fake to put in its place I've seen watch watches damaged dropped at auction I've seen at auction previews I've seen people do crazy things like they start take disassembling watches and you're about ready to go crazy if you see that wait what are you doing they're holding dials and stuff you know that to have a heart attack I would say the other aspect of of auctions is of course that incorrect or poor condition watches can really hurt the market because if they don't sell well and people are sort of unaware of the issues with a watch then everyone starts saying oh that market is really really hurting right now so that's been a big issue with certain brands when great watches haven't been coming to auction and people in the community of collectors know that some of these watches are assembled from parts or Frankenstein watches etc and then it doesn't sell well everyone's asking what happened why didn't it do well there's obviously incredible advancements in restoration and aftermarket parts because of the values of these things you can have a small piece of aluminum that's point zero two ounces worth $40,000 so of course there's more sophisticated fakes and there really is a lack in the coverage of auctions beyond look how expensive this is I think there's really a need for more serious auction coverage in blogs publications etc when you're at say the auctions in Geneva there's a lot of chatter and sort of a network of dealers and collectors talking to each other about watches and obviously the majority of clients are sort of outside of that circle so they're bidding on things and they have no idea what's being said about it and yeah so we'll talk more about that in a second and just a business idea I'm throwing in business ideas because I have had a number of young people sort of over the last couple years I'd really like to do something in watches and beyond the sort of basics of going to work for an auction house or things like that I I think it's important that some people come up with some businesses that hopefully help our hobby bidding at auction it's important to note that auction houses represent the seller not the buyer and if you had to sum up with the job of an auction house its source and then sell it's important to engage with the auction house and they're specialists but it's really also important to get reputable outside opinions from trusted sources since auction house obviously wants its property to sell as high as possible I will only add that one of the opportunities I saw when I left Christi's is it was pretty remarkable to me that in the art world there are thousands of people that are art advisors in the car world there may be hundreds of people that are sort of advisers for for purchasing vintage cars but there's really not any one in the watch world where you can sort of pay them for their advice and that means that a lot of people just rely on the auction house opinion for what they're bidding on but there's not really your interests are not necessarily aligned because they want to watch to sell as high as possible and you're trying to get a great watch and you might or may not get a great watch and I think it's important not to disclose how high you plan to bid to the auction house because they can obviously share that with others and that's very valuable information so it's better to keep that private I will say on the positive side that watch auctions are very positive and I want to see them succeed and do very well for the community and it's important that we give them a break there's a lot of hatred and vitriol on Instagram and forums I even had experienced a bit at Christie's when we did an Omega Speedmaster auction in 2015 we went really bent over backwards to sort of go meet the community traveled across the country to Omega boutiques to meet collectors etc and then you see sort of often comments online after the auction or live during the auction of oh those guys know nothing about speed masters and they're just doing it for money etc and the the reality was that it was basically a break-even auction it was just a passion project putting together the catalog all the expensive travel these were not extremely expensive watches which is where you make your money the sort of half-million dollar plus watches they were small you know we were selling $3,000 watches in the auction so and we spent I think a couple hundred thousand just on photo rights to put photos in the auction you know astronauts wearing watches in the catalogue so you know there's not not enough slack given and you know I think I just thought it was pretty pretty terrible to see people just making comments like they know nothing about speed masters etc they don't care about this they're doing it just for the money so as an auction house specialist you have many many things to juggle you got to research the watch when it comes across and an email or text or Instagram come up with the appropriate estimate based on values you see or your feeling on the market often it's competitive so they might contact you know other auction houses and dealers and you have to try to figure out how to win that consignment you have to research the law including ordering the extracts from the various manufacturers sometimes the companies actually want to see the watch then you have to ship it to Switzerland you have to create an account for the person if they don't have an account you have to do the shipping and logistics to get the watch to wherever it is in the world then you have to ship the watch to global previews which are expensive sometimes obviously what watches in New York some of the highlights will go to Geneva then to Hongkong and then come back you have to do the photography of the watch which is these are very difficult things to photograph because of the amount of edges and reflection from crystals etc it's not easy to photograph watches in the studio environment and then you have to actually produce the catalog in an artistic way make sure the right photo is with the right watch sometimes the photo isn't sent to the back and part of the photo is covering the text in the catalog and then people are mad obviously that just happened recently so there's a lot to juggle that's all before the auction then the auction comes up and you get bombarded with condition report and photo requests etc people wanting your thoughts on the launch and more than just Rolex and Patek Phillipe auction house experts really auction house specialists need to be expert to everything if they're selling everything they really need to know what they're selling I will say compensation is generally not great in the auction world and it's expensive to run a watch auction department these catalogs cost millions of dollars to print and ship their travel costs around the world and also the upside is actually is limited so you might find something as a dealer and buy it for half of what you're able to sell it for but oxygen houses are limited to that premium that they charge on top they can't buy a watch for five thousand and sell it for twenty thousand they're just getting that 25 percent on top and yeah life in the auction world is a little bit like drinking from a firehose there's always a lot of things going on let alone internal bureaucracy etc so does it make sense to consign I think this is an important sort of experiment or thought so you have a mint Rolex Daytona reference 66 3 doesn't necessarily matter if you're the original owner or not the market is the market so you walk into an auction house say that your inherited this watch they might give you 12 percent commission that's the sellers commission that would include sort of insurance shipping maybe they'll waive some additional fees photography marketing I've seen thematic auction fees of $1000 etc the watch hammers for a hundred thousand that means in the room the auctioneer hits it at a hundred thousand it runs up you're going to be paid to the hundred thousand less the twelve percent which is twelve thousand the buyers paying a hundred thousand plus 25 percent buyer's premium on top which is one hundred twenty five thousand that 88 225,000 is seventy point four percent of the total sale value of the watch if you're a very important client or dealer and you get zero percent sellers commission you're still getting a hundred thousand that's eighty percent of the total sale of price so that if you can sell the watch for a hundred five thousand and not have to wait you know months for payment I think that's worth considering but there are times when there really are special and unique pieces and you should definitely consign here's two examples that I have personal experience with the watch on the left was a watch that a gentleman puerto rico had inherited from his father and as an interesting poison a enamel coat of arms he contacted us at Christie's and said I have this watch I'm trying to find out value of course we're very excited because any watch with the cloisonne enamel dial prettily from Rolex or patek philippe or Vacheron is very special and important and very valuable so he'd get on the phone with him he said he had offered it to a few different dealers his best offer had been $25,000 and of course we put it at auction and that goes for over three hundred thousand dollars so he was very happy gentleman and as a friend for life the watch on the right is another good example of something that you don't know quite what you're seeing it walked into Christie's the gentleman was in New York his father had been a goldsmith on 47th Street its rolex reference six zero three six which is nicknamed the jean-claude Killy what made this watch and after the the skier but what made this watch very interesting is that rather than large chronograph registers it has these tiny registers which is also on a similar watch the reference six zero three four but had never been seen on one of these models and the dial also had these interesting sunken gold hour markers so never have seen a watch like this he walked around 47th Street and offered it to some watch dealers his best offer was $5,000 and about three or four dealers told them it was fake for sure so he should just throw it away basically so he comes to Christie's we're very excited about it obviously we take the watch off it has a stern dial which means it's got a star on the back and the numbers it was made by Stern frere dial company take a look at the whole watch it all seems coherent original so we decide to put it's very hard to value condition it's pretty polished but very interesting watch we put an estimate of fifty to a hundred thousand I sort of am thinking it'll sell around a hundred thousand hammer he actually tells us I would like a reserve of fifteen thousand because I really wanted to sell it which is nice from an auction house perspective if someone's telling you to put a lower reserve to make sure it sells to which we kind of laughed and said sure is that if it sold for any less he would just keep it and wear it himself so once we had validated that it was an authentic Rolex watch so he was very happy when we called them after the auction and had reported that it sold for four hundred ninety nine thousand five hundred dollars the funny thing was you see a little bit of elements of of greed sometimes because two weeks a month later when his payment comes he's complaining that there was a half a percent insurance charge and he said I don't remember this charge which was like two thousand dollars we weren't like you said if we got fifteen thousand you'd be happy the other aspect is it's important to know that not every story at an auction is is positive there's a lot of stories of greed unfortunately I've seen people get offers from dealers over a hundred thousand for a watch that then goes at auction in sells for fifty thousand and I could count off many many stories like that so every case is different every watch is different how everyone approaches the selling it is different but of course it's easy to focus on the real highlights of putting it at auction or whatever but there's also stories where people had a firm offer of much much higher than they actually ended up with final word on auctions just because a watch sold high at auction doesn't mean that the sale was actually completed or that all of that model are worth more this is a common misunderstanding among dealers and collectors I think a good case of this is there was two watches in Geneva a couple years ago one was that one auction house and one was at another auction house and one sold for about 5x what the other watch sold for in comparable condition two days later so everyone's befuddled about why this watch sold five times more that's not that rare I've learned later that the person who won the watch that was 5x the other watch had thought they were bidding on a different lot and you know fortunately the other auction house let him out of it he was bidding on a similar looking watch but not the same watch so it's a but just because that watch sold that this crazy high figure that watch sale wasn't concluded and wasn't completed so I think you know depth of market is everything I've brought this up in my heading key 10th anniversary panel talk but some models actually have a much deeper market than you would suspect I've had since I became a dealer over 30 people come to me looking for an explorer 1016 so I think that watch has a an insane amount of people that want it also a lot of people looking for Patek Phillipe 39 40s but some some watches of a very very thin market and if two people want a specific model of a watch and both get it what does the third one sell for maybe one fifth of what the other two sold for because no one else really wants it it's just important so the watch checklist that I sort of think about when I'm evaluating a watch the provenance whereas a watch coming from is there any sort of indication maybe it's I use this whether I'm thinking about a watch at auction or a watch being offered to me from original owner or something else where is the watch coming from where was it purchased all those sorts of elements the dial is it correct is it all original as it restored the hands if they're luminous is the the Loom correct is a tritium is it radium etc the case and the case back they are they correct what's the condition obviously of all of these things the serial number looking at that to make sure it's there making sure it's correct then trying to contact the manufacturer so ordering an extract from the archives to get the information see if it all makes sense looking at the movement to make sure that's correct good condition etc then you look at the other aspects of the watch the pushers the crystal is it original the crown etc and then you have to look throughout this process at comparables both by price so what are these selling for but also by serial range are there others just like this how many sort of exist is this relatively common and the general trend are these becoming more popular more valuable or less so you know not every vintage watches getting more valuable there's huge trends back and forth I think back in the 1980s and 1990s the Rolex Prince was the launch to have and now if you had a prince it's very hard to sell very few people one of prince which is this rectangular sort of doctor's watch railroad watches used to be sort of king in the pocket watch community now they're worth maybe a tenth what some of them were worth in their height and obviously other watches have really skyrocketed particularly steel sports models so when I'm looking at a watch I have to ask if it makes sense and does it smell right I've seen watches where the movement looks like it was run over by a Panzer and then sat in the ocean for decades but the case and dial look brand-new does that really make sense if I saw this rusty Omega Speedmaster movement in the perfect dial and hands would I think that was all born together probably not if the dial looks heavily worn but the movement in case are like new does that make sense if the loom looks perfect but the dial and case are heavily worn you know obviously it's very common now to restore loom is back in the day a lot of loom was scraped off and replaced to keep it fresh so you could actually see it at night because these are tools even today many watches are real ooh by manufacturers if you see a beat-up crystal but a freshly polished case does that make sense I saw that at auction recently at a small auction house and it was to hide the fact that the dial was relieved on a very significant watch and you have to look at case back corrosion and matching case corrosion it's like 1950s Omegas they kind of fit together like a puzzle so if you see rust on one side it should sort of match the other side and fit together if you've got sort of a lot of rust and corrosion on the mid case and the case back looks brand-new does that make sense probably not it's probably been swapped and you see a case back with maybe a dozen service marks of watchmakers scratching in when they serviced it but everything else looks brand-new does that make sense when you know that person was it might but it might not because it might mean that watch was worn daily for decades and should sort of reflect that or it might mean the guy was just obsessive and kept it in a safe and had it serviced every three years and put this calendar I don't know but you have to ask these questions when you're looking at a watch and you know no one will do this for you really I think there are obviously a lot of issues with condition I did actually want to go back to this the last thing I wanted to say with the watch checklist is that many watches are being destroyed each day by manufacturers by watchmakers I say that my personal hell would be sitting in a Rolex polishing room and one of their service centers with tape over my mouth and my hands tied behind my back and watching them just polish away on these beautiful watches with beautiful bevels and unfortunately that happens every day i I think it's it's a really big issue it's very important that watchmakers get educated that vintage watches need to be treated different than new watches you can't just replace the hand and you can't just scrape the loom off and really MIT it's it's a very significant issue I had a Rolex big crown that I was talking to someone who had worked with Rolex about sending hair for service and he said I don't recommend it because the the Swiss radium rules mean that they will have to scrape the radium loom off and even during the inspection period when they're first coming up with a service quote they may decide to scrape it off without your permission so it's it's it's really terrible I've seen watches go through Rolex service that like a Rolex eight one seven one which is nicknamed the pad alone a one of the more complicated Rolex watches ever made with a moon phase and the complete calendar and someone brought it to us at Christie's and said I just had this sent to Rolex I paid 15,000 to service it and they refresh the dial that completely reprinted the dial and you know we said we'd he'd be lucky to get that money out of it basically given what had just happened so it's a very important issue it means that really good condition watches are even being made rare by the day and it's it's really sad I've seen it happen a number of times where someone brings a watch in for service somewhere and they tell them not to polish it and it comes back freshly polished and there's no fixing that so part of my talk is I wanted to bring up a few issues for the collector community to discuss because these aren't really conversations that are being had I don't pretend to have the answers to them but I think it's important to raise the question you know what makes you watch honest we talk about this a lot and honest watch but everyone seems to have different definitions and what forms of restoration for watch are acceptable so honest watch as I said people have different definitions one collector told me there's no such thing as an honest or dishonest watch only an honest or dishonest seller which i think is maybe true is it okay to restore a crown personally I think so because these crowns get worn out obviously and it was standard for many of these watches going back for service to have a crown replaced but I think it's important to disclose what you've done to a watch pushers many times these are replaced many times they fall off dial that's you know a very important question if the watch has a different dial now than it did when it was born with people have to sort of discuss whether it's okay to real oome hands if the Loom is broken off or if it's been previously redone people I have different answers on this on these topics is that people actually will restore serial and reference numbers between the lugs and spend a lot of money doing that of course they don't disclose it same with real ooming dials a thought experiment for the collector community what's the difference in price if a watch is totally original versus totally restored but period-correct and these are exactly the same so you've got two watches maybe is NFL primero and one is totally original from original owner one is restored is there a difference in price or not this is called sort of op optimization is also an aspect of this where say you have a Rolex Submariner with a really great case and the dial is very worn you have another Rolex Submariner with a very worn case and a great dial then you swap the dial over and a lot of people in the community say that's okay you've optimized the watch you've made it better and a lot of people say no no no way I don't pretend to have the answer I have my own thoughts which is I prefer things original if possible but a lot of people have different thoughts so I think it's I'm just trying to start the conversation here because these aren't really topics that are people are discussing other privately what if aftermarket parts get so good that you can't tell the difference between real and aftermarket maybe that makes the real parts worth less this happens in other hobbies I think like in guitars restorations gotten very sophisticated so you can't tell in many cases of what if a guitar had a cracked head stock or not things like that and it does affect pricing because people lose confidence in faith if you can't tell what's restored and what's not so if a tree falls in the forest and no one is around does it make a sound that's a little bit of this question of restoration and optimization I think it's very important for the hobby that people coming in are not burned by bad watches bad sellers things that aren't represented correctly I spoke about this on blammo podcast recently but I see a lot of sort of very successful people that want to come into the watch field and buy a watch and their get passionate about it and then they learn that something's totally incorrect they were deceived etc they're gone from watch collecting forever they're not coming back and that sort of potential growth in the field and all the positive things that could happen are are gone so it's very it's these are big issues and I had another client tell me that there's two ways that people that I hesitate to say it but he said Eric remember that there's a lot of people in this business that are getting very rich by ripping people off and it's very important that you you really tried your own path on that and this is a field as well that's not necessarily rewarding the best of the best or the cream of the crop so be aware these are a few more business ideas when we think about what will it take for watch collecting to continue to grow in advance a lot of people have talked about sort of blockchain so tracking where watches have been that sort of connected with the idea of serial number registries which could also include stolen watches but this could be very useful because if 50 years from now you could say this watch has been in these different hands over the last 50 years and we have photos of it from 50 years ago looking like this and by the way it looks exactly like this today so you might not know if that watch was ever optimized or changed but at least you know the last 50 years it's looked like this the other aspect of this is that auctions allow us to do this but only with a portion of the watches as I said it's only a small percentage of the total market so you can look up serials but you're looking at a very small pool of watches that have ever come to auction versus all the watches that are changing hands I think that this sort of registry could also really help with scholarship and to say like these actually this tight little range of watches has some unique features which sort of experts in any given field do but you know I remember when I was first getting into vintage watch collecting 8 years ago seeing a couple of these vintage speed masters with 3 2 1 movements and orange Hantz and orange seconds hands and saying that someone must have put that orange hand on from a mark to you'll have to buy that and swap the hand back and of course now the Ultraman has sold over 70,000 dollars at auction and there's a whole class that this is actually a very very correct and very valuable watch I saw with earlier out obvious when a few showed up with a red second sand and everyone said oh that must be changed for sure and lo and behold five sort of come out and you look at the serial range they're all very tight and all correct and you know that's only really through tracking serial numbers that you can get an idea of these things the other sort of biggest idea out there I've heard people discussing that could be the best or worst thing to happen to watch collecting would be a third-party grading it could be really good in terms of values where this sort of grading has happened with with coins and cards and comic books it's cause values to absolutely skyrocket but it could also be a negative in some ways it could you know obviously whatever entity is formed to do this obviously there's the potential for corruption there are questions obviously when you see a watch they can really only grade it as they see it whether it's period-correct versus original they can only really tell if it's period correct this might make watches more liquid they're already very liquid in some respects particularly modern watches it's a way that people you know bring wealth across borders secretly like diamonds etc and and are able to move wealth that way but I think an organization like GI a which grades diamonds and stone could be helpful with watches the other sort of aspect of this that people have brought up is whether you would actually encapsulate the watch like a coin or like a comic book obviously that would mean you can't wear it or whether you could have a grade that's you know unsealed you know I think it would probably be negative if all these watches were suddenly sealed and couldn't be worn and enjoyed but it's a it's an idea out there and I hear a lot of people sort of privately talking about it I think it'll probably happen at some point but it needs to happen in the right way because if they're you know if there is suddenly grades and there's a scandal about corruption or something like that it would really negatively hurt the it would really hurt the Hobby sort of bring you my MBA training into the the talk the SWOT analysis for the for the field of vintage watch strengths as watches they're very easy to maintain very easy to store it's not like cars they're relatively good information although it could be better there it's easy to have 30 watches and and not have 30 cars basically there are real opportunities for growth that I brought up including third-party creating obviously more awareness of the market things like that the weaknesses and threats all sort of grouped together but obviously one of the biggest threats is people being burned massive scandals like in the wine world with with fake wine destroyed the wine market things like that are a real threat and I would like to take questions [Applause] [Music] so can I get a show of hands who is a first-timer this evening okay now of the first-timers who is never purchased a vintage watch okay do any of you have questions because I really want to involve you right off the bat when you talk about replacing parts of the watch you didn't talking about replacing the crystal and I wondered because often you come across watches which is like very bad like cognition Chris to whoever that matters there's different schools of thought on this I would say a lot of Rolex collectors are beginning to move toward keeping crystals original even if they're heavily crazed and cracked my general feeling is this is one area where I think it's okay to sort of replace and keep the original crystal on the side because one that crystal could additionally crack with time so you're sort of preserving the crystal particular if you plan to wear it and to if you have a crystal with crazing and things that can affect water resistance so these watches obviously a lot of the value is in the dial in many cases 90 plus percent of the values and the dial and if you can't have it water resistant in water gets in you looking at really destroying a lot of value for the watch but I do think it's valuable to keep it on the side and there are ways to sort of restore crystals as well which I try to do if possible obviously with acrylic crystals you can kind of lightly polish them there's Polly watch which can go on and sort of fill the cracks so if that's sort of a first test if you can if you can make the crystal better and keep it original just by cleaning it up lately I think that's positive and also I do think that having the right shape of crystal does affect the overall look so having the right dome you know replacing a crystal with a sort of a top-hat crystal where it sits up like this but it was never that crystal originally can look pretty terrible so you have to try to find the right crystal that's as close to original as possible and of course most of these watches if they've ever been serviced in the past already have replacement crystals so you're just replacing a replacement in many cases but it's still good to keep the original parts if you can Eric so I recently went through this process and like to get your view I was looking for a Rolex 55-13 and I ended up with the one four zero six zero lower price point you know so on and so forth and now with the Explorer you mentioned that 10 16 versus whatever they replace it on one four two seven zero correct what's your view in terms of just getting into the Hobby about the the more modern version versus the vintage and the value proposition that they offer of course everything that's older it just gets older with time so vintage itself is referencing twenty years old that's where the term comes from I expected these sort of late 80s Early 90s Rolex watches to go up in value they really have a lot the last two years particularly because it's so difficult to get steel sports watches today from Rolex and people that just want a Submariner GMT master things like that have to sort of go back in time to get something that's more excessively priced you know I think it's good to buy the best watch you can with whatever budget you want and and not be too focused on it's better to buy a really great one four to seven Oh Explorer than a terrible 1016 for instance I think it's really good bet by best condition you can and then whatever you can afford and are comfortable with wearing I'm wondering if there are bubbles in the watch market I mean say steal Rolex is now or Patek 57:11 which have gone up enormous ly with socks like that you sort of wonder maybe there's unreasonable expectations do you think those sort of things are likely to hold the value I know you don't know for sure or it's hard to imagine that watches that are trading for double retail will remain that way forever it's it's very hard for me to imagine five years from now these things being double retail still a lot of what's happened I would say there's with the rise of sort of a lot of it is Instagram for sure because suddenly everyone felt that they needed to Nautilus if you're to look at like haha we had a Nautilus thematic auction that was spread across four auctions in 2016 Christie's and they were getting pretty hard to sell by the time New York rolled around which was the fourth of the four auctions and then suddenly a year later everyone needed to Nautilus but I think part of it is part of it in the US is definitely the Patek Phillipe exhibition which was done so well at chip Brioni in summer 2017 that really made a lot of whole new class of watch bars that weren't comfortable with Patek Phillipe or didn't know what to buy suddenly they said I need one so that's one thing the second thing is that Patek Phillipe has sort of suffered in this more casual athleisure society from having a lot of watches on alligator straps when people aren't dressing that way like they were in the 70s 60s 50s so the Nautilus is very accessible because you can wear it with a hoody some people wear them to the gym and you could also wear it with a suit so I think everyone sort of was like the Nautilus the Nautilus is the watched I have now and I think it's a really wonderful watch I have one and I love but I think on the new side I think obviously production could be increased and I don't know that double retail is sustainable they don't Eric if I could take the opportunity because we were founded as a watchmaking institutions Society and you've brought it up a little bit but what advice could you offer the audience when looking for a watchmaker and what changes have you seen in the kind of quality of watchmaking today versus when you started watch making is one of the most difficult aspects for me as a dealer to try to get things fixed properly particularly difficult things fixed the man alkis got topless here is is a God in my eyes because he it's really helped me with a lot of things but it is in general very hard to to get watchmakers that really know how to work on these things and and do it properly and spend the right time on it and the risk you get when you send watches back to Switzerland is it's very expensive one many times what it would cost in the US and then too sometimes the leg time from when you send it into when you get it back could be years I had a friend who wanted to send a Patek Phillipe back in his estimate was three years to get it back and this was a time only watch a reference 96 so that's a real negative and that's one of the weaknesses and threats actually I forgot to mention that there are less and less watchmakers I my feeling that are being trained and to work on these watches and we're losing a lot of knowledge as watchmakers get older and retire so I really think that what you're doing at HSN why is critically important for for watch making and I do think the very good profession to pursue for young people looking for a trade because there's a huge amount demand and I would I pay like a lot to get things fixed right and to make sure they're fixed right and you don't have to keep returning it we've got time for probably one or two more from the audience after we close the meeting if you want to come up and speak with Eric we normally you know of course encourage that but we'll do one or two more from the audience Eric can you comment on the service aspect of owning vintage watches because once you own one now you have to make a decision am I going to get it serviced when do I get it serviced what are the considerations you know even if that decision is I'm not going to do anything with this watch except store it or wear it something has to be decided and I think that is a subject that is very little discussed it's true I mean there are obviously technical things you can look at with a watch including amplitude to see how it's running just with the time Grapher check its accuracy etc so if it's way off in terms of accuracy that's sort of the first thing which might indicate you want to get the watch serviced there was a New York Times article maybe a year ago about a whole class of people that are supposedly just wearing the watch and not winding it anything they don't care what the time is that's generally not my clientele unfortunately they want a watch that keeps generally good time within a minute per day hopefully so that is a really important consideration and I would say one thing that I tell people that are buying vintage watches is you it's very helpful to have a few in your collection not just one because these things will need service and if that's your only watch then and when it needs service you're really feeling the loss of that so that's why it's good to sort of rotate also if you're wearing a rotation of watches that means that they'll need service less frequently because you're not wearing it as much and using it as much so I think for at least in my perspective that helps extend the life between services for a watch but it's a critical issue hopefully you get a watch and it's running well generally I find that I can't sell a watch if it's not running because clients want something ready to wear and that's would be another negative of auction because you're sometimes buying watches that may be clearly described in the condition report but don't work and I think we had one pocket watch was at Christie's and you know we had gotten and an estimate of maybe $40,000 for the service but we put that in the condition report you're buying this watch would realize that the estimate is this high for the watch to be fixed so it's it really is an important issue though Jerry thank you would you say there's a concern let's say for the I saw you add a slide about the million dollar plus watches you know the collectibles being dried up so we just say there's a concern and let's say a 10 20 or 30 year window of you know the half a million dollar or a million dollar piece is being dried up and you know can the market be sustained or can will the sourcing never be limited because I would hear examples of you know collectors you know exchanging rarer Daytona references and there's like three or four or five collectors I really want that but beyond that you know it's just between themselves privately yeah yeah so what do you think about that the positive when you get the headlines for all these watches selling for millions of dollars is it sort of creates a positive halo effect it's like the rich guy who only starts paying attention to wine when everyone else says it's good to buy wine or five vintage cars because suddenly they're going for tens of millions of dollars and I guess I should get one I think that has happened a little bit with watches where suddenly you know that Paul Newman is the watch to have I guess I would say that for many Wall Street guys they want to Paul Newman I would say that would be a weakness or a threat would be if ever watches are seen as uncool vintage watches Howard Schultz I know is run thinking about running for president is where where's a Paul Newman but maybe people think that it's uncool if they don't like him because he's a rich guy wearing it Paul Newman sort of like Adam Levine at the Super Bowl I read an article that Adam Levine single-handedly made tattoos uncool when he took his shirt off so now everyone has to lazy their tattoos so that that is a threat to the vintage market if people think that the only people that should be wearing these are our Wall Street or hedge fund guys or you know or hipsters in Williamsburg but it's much hopefully that's never the case yeah two more questions yeah yeah can I get I don't want to neglect the other side of the room here I got gentlemen in the in the very back was the first to raise his hand um I had an old Mustang I didn't want to restore it you know you can't upgrade an old car you could just restore it but the thing is is if it's interesting enough but not quite as expensive and the movement is very interesting and it does need the restoration you know vintage of course means old but and other people call it a state but is it worth even the exercise of restoring it excluding rarity I know it's very like convoluted sounding but I guess it sort of depends on values a little bit like I try to be pretty accessible so a lot of people who write me and are saying I'm thinking about becoming a dealer of watches will say you know I had a guy who came to me and said I think there's a real market for these vintage watches that are sort of one to two hundred dollars that on eBay these sort of smaller named watches etc I said that's really cool how are you gonna service these things you buy them on eBay probably half will need a service and the service might be $200 so suddenly that $200 watch is $400 uh-huh and he said I hadn't really thought of that and I said well you could become a watchmaker yourself maybe try to jerry-rig them I've seen crazy things and watches particularly low-end watches like staples that are sort of bent to hold things together and glue and all kinds of stuff so it sort of depends on value like I will buy really cool one or two hundred dollar watches knowing I might have to spend $400 on service which for many would defeat the purpose but it just depends on the watch and whether I like it and whether I think it's worth doing Eric thank you for doing this was very informative earlier you mentioned that you know there's life outside of Rolex and paddock and everything else but you know people have limited resources and they have to chase some know they have to preserve some capital all right so you mentioned hoyer which i've always been a horror fan but we've also seen the fall from grace of Hoyer so where do you think Hoyer is headed and what was behind the demise I sort of discussed this briefly in an Instagram post a few weeks ago but I thought there were a few factors one prices went too high too quickly for sure I think the market was really not ready for a thematic auction in Switzerland of lawyers the idea behind I think was that all these Rolex and paddock collectors would say that I need a Hoyer as well in the collection and the problem was the watches weren't that exciting to the Hoyer community and collectors just weren't enthused about the collection of watches so then you there were other issues with some of the watches having incorrect parts and things too but the that really was the start of the fall I thought because they were unrealistic expectations which happens a lot with thematic auctions because there's so much hype around them which is why I would really encourage auction houses to focus more on categories for auctions I thought one of the best auctions that was done the last few years was start/stop reset by Philips because it was about Steel chronographs but really encapsulated a lot yet Daytona's he had 1930s chronographs and a whole array versus auctions that are a specific brand or specific model like the daytona auctions caused a spike in prices and then a little bit of a decrease after because there's too much mania people feel that these things will be worth two to three times what what they're worth now I need to buy need to buy and when prices people were talking about the first execution coiour out Tavia and that auction which sold for still a very strong price a hundred thirty seven thousand but people were talking about that watch and saying it could exceed three hundred thousand before the auction when it didn't hit that suddenly it seems like oh no it's flat and I know no prices are decreasing so there's there's a lot of a lot of following trends and I I really don't like the this is the next hot thing which is why I didn't put a slide in about what you should buy you know people I hear like Breitling's the next big thing Breitling's the next big thing or Movado Movado by Nevada the problem is when you have a spike in prices I was talking to a few collectors about this and then prices decline it actually creates a lot of ill-will toward the brand and it's actually makes it less cool in some respects it would have been better if it never happened I think that definitely has happened with Panerai on the modern side the huge drop in prices for some of these models has made them not cool I feel like and creates a lot of negativity toward the brand so I generally try to stay away from from too much of that I will give a plug though which I meant to do earlier that a friend of mine is doing a book on Kickstarter about any car watches which people don't realize and a car is actually Racine spelled backward because there was a member of the Racine family and he tried to get rights to the name and they said no so he just reversed the name but usually with Kickstarter IndieGoGo things like that people are trying to create a watch brand who it's kind of cool about this and I hope it sets the precedent for others is it's actually to support a book and research project so I think it's the first crowdfunded watch research book I've seen which is really good and hopefully the start of more books that could be crowd funded around watch scholarship because if I could just go back one of the biggest problems in the community today is there's a lot less thought and it's a lot more just look at this bling and look at how cool this is rather than these are really the details about why this is important in the history and the minor nuances of these vintage watches which i think is why it's a whole world to get immersed in and enjoy so Eric is maybe a final question for the evening because there were so many people in the audience this is their first meeting here they haven't purchased a vintage watch before what advice would you offer someone who is just wading into this pool who has a budget of $500 and who has a budget of $5,000 I think it's really important to do research figure out what you like I'm not going to say go here go there to buy it I think you should really look at the checklist I sort of laid out and see comparable examples see what speaks to you I really think it's important to try a watch on your wrist and see if it actually works and actually feels good looks right I see a lot of people with watches that are way too big for them walking around because I think it looks cool in the photos but then on the wrist it doesn't work at all and you have the the lugs hanging off the wrist no kinds of crazy things so I think go to a trusted seller there by the seller it's very important try on and see as many watches as you can it is an arc for collecting and what you like now probably won't be what you like in five years exactly tastes evolve and change so you do need to think about those early purchases and that you probably will sell them as you develop your tastes [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so genuinely I really want to thank all of you for coming out this was an enormous turnout for this evening please keep in mind our next meeting is going to be April 17th that's our annual gala it's at Manhattan penthouse at 85th Avenue this is downtown if you want please come up feel free to ask some more questions otherwise I wish you all a safe travel home and a good night thank you very much