Where The Pre-Owned And Vintage Market Is Going | House Of Craft

I'm Andy Hoffman. I'm uh the senior business editor at Hardinki. And this is James Lamden. Probably everybody here knows who James Lamden is, but um you are the founder of Analog Shift and the senior vice president of um vintage and pre-owned at Watches Switzerland. >> I am uh definitely going to ask my boss for that last senior. I added the senior >> immediately. >> Nice. >> Thanks for having me. >> Congratulations on the promotion. >> You're all here for that moment >> indeed. And so we are here to talk about uh vintage and pre-owned watches. But let's to start, let's take a step back maybe back to 2020 2021. What happened to the uh pre-owned watch market? What drove it and how did we get there? And how significant was that era and event for pre-owned watches? >> Well, they they started with some very dark times, Andy, I think we've all been there. Extremely significant. uh to answer your last part of the question first. Um what we were experiencing in the runup to the COVID era was already a very dramatic increase in interest in mechanical watches at all levels for for new, for pre-owned, for vintage. uh publications like Hodinki had reached uh untold new audiences and the appreciation for these mechanical things uh was becoming far and widespread by social media and the internet in new ways. And then the pandemic happened and people weren't traveling, they weren't eating out. They were spending a lot of time mandatorily at home. And uh my favorite headline from that era was from Bloomberg and it was the return of stuff and people spent their money on stuff, some really cool stuff. Um but it wasn't immediate. And in those first few months of COVID, we saw the secondary watch market and the vintage market, which are slightly different, uh, pretty much stop. Everything stopped. And there were a couple months where nothing happened at all. What then happened was this new generation of watch enthusiasts had a lot of time on their hands to go and study and go and learn and get on social media and get on the internet and engage with something where they actually had time to focus. And it came roaring in uh with un untold and perhaps not completely me yet measured impact uh for sales, but primarily for new and contemporary pre-owned. Whereas vintage kind of took a slight left and it became slightly more rarified air. that was a little bit less understandable to a whole new wave of enthusiasts. >> And as someone who had been in the business for uh over a decade at the time, more more than that, um what was your reaction? How did you deal with all the new people? >> I mean, it was exciting. Um, I remember the very earliest days of COVID being at home and getting calls or emails or Instagram messages from a lot of my colleagues in the industry and suddenly there was this demand for new content. So we were creating Instagram Q&As's and uh live uh discussions and and chat room kind of uh experiences through social media or on um one of the variety of new tech spaces that came and left during the COVID era for sort of live hangs with your friends. and the that demand uh was significant and the attendance was significant and I realized very quickly that uh we weren't talking to the same group of indoctrinated individuals. We were talking to a much larger audience. Um for myself, we decided at that time to actually um accept an offer from Watches of Switzerland and Analog Shift was acquired uh in totality by Watches of Switzerland and became the vintage and pre-owned department for the group, which has been uh an incredible experience to take something that was uh a passion project and then expand it with incredible resources to reach yet another audience through their retail store network. And it came with a lot of challenges, but it's also resulted in uh exponential growth. >> And was it a surprise to you that um this niche element, this side part of the watch industry all of a sudden became part of or in demand uh with a mainstream retailer like Watches of Switzerland Group? No, it's really cool stuff. You know, um part of the effect and and in in the last panel, we heard a little bit about sort of the um tag along effect, you know, what's popular, what's hot, and that was probably never more prevalent in the watch industry than during and since the co era. This is where we really began to see new manufacturers have weight lists. we started to see the hype cycle uh get out of hand in some levels in many levels with uh contemporary product. So the secondary market was uh very robust during this time and it also allowed uh secondhand dealers um analog included to maybe tap into uh to some degree that second uh secondhand but ultimately secondary market uh for new watches as well as traditional pre-owned as well as uh spreading the gospel of vintage. In retrospect, what mistakes did the vintage and pre-owned world make in dealing with that new popularity, with that new prominence, with that new profile? Um, or was it ready uh to become so much more mainstream than it had been? >> That's an interesting question. Um I think certain players in the space were better prepared than others. Um I I recall very specifically early days uh of our acquisition, you know, we did a nice brand refresh. We built a new website and uh one of our long-term CL actually several of our long-term clients reached out and said, "You know, you've got a lot less vintage watches on your website now." I said, 'Ay, we have about six times as many vintage watches as we have ever had, but we have 30 times more pre-owned, newer watches. So perhaps uh looking at our own business, what happened visually was that we were emphasizing the newer pre-owned stuff uh and less the vintage. But to our I guess to our defense, that's what people were asking for. So, what's cool about uh being a secondhand dealer, being a vintage dealer, is that we have uh we're very nimble and we can respond to changes in market demand, whether it's color or style or brand or country of origin or price point, much more effectively than a mono brand or a a multibrand uh dealer even that's working with product that is supplied by a manufacturer. you have really no say in what you get and often you're not getting what you want because there's waiting lists. But as a pre-owned dealer, as a vintage dealer, we're very nimble and in many ways that puts the secondary market in a better position, particularly uh for changing consumer demand and changing global economic situations. >> Indeed. And how we talked about where we were, where are we now? and and and what have we gained and and what have we lost uh in this space? >> Well, uh the market remains as ever highly dynamic and that's a word I've been using for a long time and uh it still holds. It's just the the reasons for that um dynamic movement have changed and evolved into exciting and terrifying new ways. Um, we're working now in a in a space where some of the newer enthusiasm that has come from watches is beginning to mature. Uh, perhaps the appetite to pay very very strong secondary market prices for everything are beginning to tone down, but people are still more engaged with mechanical watches than at any point in human history. And that's super cool. >> That's quite a statement. >> Yeah. I mean, I think it's true. I mean, I think it's true. If not, I just made it up, but sounds good. Um, I think what we're dealing with today, uh, with the tariff situation in this country, with, um, other elements of international challenges in terms of distribution, um, responding to demand and so on and so forth, uh, remains, you know, a challenge for a lot of players in this space. Now we're fortunate in that we have uh a certain level of resource and we have a certain level of uh distribution and and tremendous ability to reach far and wide not just to sell our product but to acquire product. So we remain in a place where we can engage with the community and with the marketplace in um perhaps more effective ways than someone who's geographically limited uh or financially bound to you know what they have in stock as a as a working capital. Indeed. Well, okay. Let's jump to right now tariffs. What does this mean for vintage and pre-owned? I mean, is this is it all of a sudden a completely regional uh uh equation here? Um uh >> tell me. I think it would be easy to sort of categorize it that way if you think all right well like I if if we're having challenges getting product into the United States then we are geographically limited to whatever's here right that and that's to a certain degree true um but the reality is the nature of our business is international and we're we're bringing in product that originated overseas all the time. Tariffs do not work for the margins on secondary product. Hard stop. So I remain optimistic, hopeful that there's going to be a resolution to the situation that we are currently in at this moment with a 39% tariff against Swiss goods. But again, even if it did stay in place, while there would be certain brand or style limitations, there are a lot of watches in the United States. So, if we can evolve and our our marketplace can evolve to have interest in maybe some of the stuff that's already here. Uh, shout out again back to the last panel where Tom was making fun of weirdos who like early American watches. I'm one of those weirdos and there's a lot of early American watches in America. And now it's going to be a minute before uh people stop demanding a u you know John Mayor green dial Daytona and start looking at a pre-war Waltham. I recognize that's a jump but that's a journey. >> Yeah, it's a very it's more than a jump. It's a freef fall, but there are watches in America and a lot of them. Um, it just so happens though most of the stuff that people are really engaged with, uh, are primarily located overseas at this time, predominantly in Asia. Is vintage and pre-owned. H has it made the journey to being perceived as legitimate and on the up and up and on the same level as uh the primary market? or does it still you know have a ways to go uh in terms of you know being being uh thought of in the same space. >> Yeah, another great question. I mean I think categorically it has a long way to go. There are certainly players in the space who do a better job at uh providing a level of authenticity and a level of consumer security and once they've sort of established themselves and they reach their audience, yeah, they become their their clientele becomes comfortable with buying a secondhand or vintage item. But categorically there's a tremendous difference uh that exists in a consumer's mind between buying a new product with a warranty from an authorized retailer than from buying some old watch from somebody they don't know or you know perhaps saw on the internet once and talk about how that relationship I mean so I mean this is a digital world um uh the pandemic interest in watches was a digital phenomenon, but where are we going in terms of that experience of buying vintage and pre-owned? Is the trend of inevitably becoming more and more digital, is that are we still on that journey or are we starting to push back? >> I'm going to ramble through this one a little bit, I think, Andy. So you can like nudge me back into place if I get too far into the weeds. But you know firstly analog shift uh my company was built with an idea of a passion for analog experience. So the the product itself that we carry is predominantly mechanical and analog in nature. The way we talk about it, the way we built our brand is in tribute to a non or pre-digital era. Yet, we operate primarily in the digital space. So, there's an irony there that's not lost on me. I'll also go back even further to my first sort of engagement with the watch community. Um, and it was also digital. Uh for some of us in the room might remember the era of forums and there was a whole bunch of like HTML coding you had to learn or copy paste if you wanted to upload a photograph. I was never very good at that. Um and of course watch collecting is a highly visual thing. So if you can't put up a photo of what it is you're talking about, you're like you're not winning. Before COVID, one of the coolest things that happened for the watch enthusiast was that it was beginning to come offline. Uh groups like Redbar and some of the other watch collecting communities that sprung up around the the world were engaging with watches in a physical sense. And then almost at the height of its popularity, we all had to stay inside. Certain elements of that have carried forward in the collector community, but a lot of the retail side is now still uh predominantly being pushed digitally, whether that's on an e-commerce platform on the web, through social media, WhatsApp groups, what have you. It is my belief that what we're dealing with here is a tremendously vibrant new collector community, new enthusiast community. Maybe just to make up some numbers, outnumber my generation, not by age, but by experience, like a thousand to one. That's how many new watch enthusiasts there are. That's that quite a ratio. >> Yeah. And I don't think, by the way, aside from all of you fine people in this room at the moment, I don't think all those thousand to one are going to stick around for ever, right? Part of these people came in because it they were bored during COVID. Part of them came in for an investment angle. part of them came in, got what they wanted, and we'll move on. And that's fine, too. But let's say that 90%, again, another madeup number. Let's say 90% of those new people who came into watch collecting, watch enthusiasm, and over the last 5, six years, let's say 90% dropped out. My generation would still be outnumbered 100 to one. So what's going to happen in that time frame is that those 100 or probably a lot more than 100 but let's say 10%. Are going to become very experienced and knowledgeable. As you move forward in your collecting journey and in your enthusiast journey for watches, you're going to demand more and more uh expertise and more and more authentic interaction. I do not believe that that can happen exclusively online. So I think there is a demand for a analog experience. >> So I mean because at times it has seemed lately like everybody's becoming a watch dealer. Uh >> yeah I noticed that too. Um so yeah indeed are we are we seeing the you know consolidation the professionalization um uh of this side of the industry I mean that's the journey we're on. How far how far along are we? I think we're still very early days, you know, uh if we zoom out and look at watches as a collectible category, as an investment category, you know, if we use art, whatever that means, as sort of this overarching that's the big one, you know, somewhere down that list you've got spirits and wine, and then you've got classic cars, and then somewhere down here is watches. So, it's still got a very very long way to go before we reach the quote unquote collectibles market cap. Um, I think we're very very early in the journey. But to answer the first part of that, yeah, we are already seeing a consolidation. And I think during the sort of um core pandemic era, a lot of people became dealers and a lot of that had to do with access and relationships and be able to get a watch that was in demand and make a few bucks or maybe a lot of bucks flipping it on the secondary. A lot of those folks have moved on and that's fine, too. >> What is the the traditional Swiss watch industry? um how uniform or aligned has their reaction um to the shift in in uh um interest in vintage and pre-owned watches. What is the industry itself doing? I mean there is an extraordinary sort of um difference in some brands not even acknowledging um uh this part of the market and yet others have moved in great ways. >> Yeah. Um I would answer it this way. Any serious luxury brand that is not paying attention to its own heritage is blowing it. you know, and those that are doing it well, uh, some of them almost overdo it. There are certain companies whose products are represented on these very walls that will never let us forget what great human achievements they were a part of. >> But whoever could you be talking, >> I don't know. We eat that up. You know, watches are a totally obsolete thing, a mechanical watch. You know, there's got to be some romance and some like history behind this. So, heritage marketing is great and we we love it. And whether it's Steve McQueen or, you know, it's a a camera brand or a watch brand or it's a car company that's still making the same damn car they made 50 years ago, we love it. That becomes an iconic thing. Some brands have museums. Some brands buy their own watches to put in those museums. Some brands are supporting the secondary market by offering valuations or extract services. Other brands are still offering um restorative repair instead of the typical Swiss repair, which the word patina uh in Swiss means broken. And uh they just take a replace everything kind of approach. But some some companies have figured out that preserving the integrity of a vintage watch is more desirable uh to collectors who value originality and authenticity. And more still have begun to move into u some degree of secondary market support for selling vintage or certifying pre-owned watches. And there's a big one that I'm sure you're about to ask me about. >> Indeed. What what did it mean in I guess it was late 20 2022 um when Rolex entered the CPO market? I mean um was it was it should it be as surprising to some I think as it was that they were even acknowledging uh this part of the market. >> I think it should not be surprising. Um Rolex is a wildly impressive operation and they pay attention to everything rightfully so. Rolex has a brand uh integrity that is of utmost importance to them and I respect that. Some people who understand the way Rolex operates know that this was not an overnight decision. This is something they had been exploring clearly for some period of time and they they launched it and it has been I would say the start of the next chapter for the pre-owned world, the pre-owned marketplace. So goes Rolex. You can be very sure others will follow and I think there's some value to that. God help us. We are as an industry we are so far behind used car business. It's absurd. and the secondary um certified pre-owned car business. By the way, I used to work at a car dealership. Make this simple. You don't make a lot of money selling new cars. A dealership makes its money selling service, parts, financing, and pre-owned. The reasons Rolex are doing this are not about the money. It is about the customer experience and being able to stand behind their product at the uh you know primary market and secondary market but from a dealer standpoint from a marketplace standpoint it's also adding a level of consumer confidence and that's what it's all about. Why then uh have we seen some brands completely uh ignore um this side of the market? Why are they why will they not get involved? >> I mean, it's a it's a big lift, you know, and I think that any brand that has uh decades or centuries of uh history, there's a huge knowledge gap between somebody who is uh familiar with the current product line and somebody who's familiar with the entire history of that brand's products. So the authentication part can be overwhelming. Let's also not forget that watch makers are in pretty short supply. A lot of these companies are, you know, they want to get more watch makers just so they can make more watches to sell, never mind repair, restore, authenticate their old stuff. So I think part of it's bandwidth, part of it the knowledge that these companies have about their own history and part of it is where can they develop strategic partnerships to properly represent the other side of it >> and talk more about that um variance in the idea of certification and how certification works. Um because yeah, I mean, you know, certified certified uh uh vintage watches or pre-owned watches have been around forever. >> Well, that's one of those areas that we in the industry would really like to clean up the terminology around like what does original mean and what does boxes and papers mean and what does certified mean? certified pre-owned suggests that somebody is of knowledge is backing this up, is doing the work to understand what it is. And I think the assumption is to a lot of consumers that that is a factorybacked certification. 99% of the of the watches that you see out there with certified pre-owned badging are certified by whoever's selling them. I once had a a client bring me a watch that was highly suspect. And after voicing my concerns, not to slag the dealer who sold it to him, but to just caution the client about its authenticity, he came back to me and said, "Oh, everything's fine. I got a certificate of authenticity." I said, "Well, from who?" He said, "The guy who sold it to me." That's, you know, there's a problem there. So there's a cognitive dissonance I think between the realities of the marketplace. What does the word certified indicate to the consumer versus what should it mean? And what it should mean is it's been factory certified and whether that actually means it goes to the factory or a representative that has been approved by the manufacturer is doing that work and that's not the case. So, there is a huge difference between Rolex certified pre-owned and um you know, Bill's watch shop. Uh I don't think I work with anybody named Bill. I think that's safe. Certified pre-owned. >> Um sure. Uh absolutely. But how how much do we you know does the industry do you need to explain that more? so much. We we spend a lot of our time and this and this is again a little bit of a difference between the way Analog Ships has chosen to do business and what I would refer to as a path of less resistance. uh which is we spend an awful lot of time educating our customers and our collector friends about where these danger spots are in collecting in general because we value I value uh full authenticity and full transparency and sometimes that means buring our clients with information they didn't know they needed to know and that can paralyze them by the way in the moment they may not buy the watch that they're getting geared up to if you explain something to about what original suggests versus what it should mean uh as a word, as a descriptor. But I've always valued I've always believed that a well educated client is going to be a better client and I would rather give them the cold hard facts about what other people might say to them and you know they'll come back later. We're not saving lives. I'd rather educate people. >> It's an important point to make. Uh indeed. So you you started Analog Shift in 2011 2012 >> 2012 we went live >> 2012. >> How is it changed in terms of buying and sourcing watches? I mean what was it like then and what is it like now and and what kind of scale are we talking about um for your business now? Yeah, it's um it you know looking back uh I was doing of course a little bit of uh exploration of the dealer marketplace before I sort of formalized and launched my website. Um in the early days I launched with a shoe box of watches under the desk of um an apartment on the fifth floor walk up of a crack house in Harlem. It's a true story. It's not the official bio, but it's true. And those watches were procured through hustling. I was all over this town. I was on the internet. I was on eBay auctions, estate sales. These were watches that I was beating the streets to go and get. Gradually through the brand that we built, uh the partnerships that we made, the reputation that we earned, more and more watches started coming to me and I was doing less and less of the procurement. Um today it's like Christmas every day. We're bringing in tremendous volumes. Um we're buying in sometimes in a week more than we sold uh before we were acquired by Watches of Switzerland in a whole year. So the growth of of the analog ship brand has been over well over 95% per year for the last five years. Wow. Um, how much more difficult is it to find I mean is it is it not more competitive more difficult to find watches and and what are you doing these days to continue to um you know feed that supply? >> Yeah. Um there's certainly more competition uh for certain product I think is the answer. But as I was sort of saying earlier, there are areas uh that we're constantly trying to explore and promote that are not in the core uh in demand category. So there's always something to go out and find. But yes, uh particularly in a world where there are tariffs, it is competitive and there's um they can be fierce. Do you think you or um with the help of others, do you think this industry is is capable though of creating, you know, um tastes and trends in vintage and pre-owned and and pushing the consumer uh to a place. Many have tried. >> Oo, we're getting juicy. Um I think it's been done. I I've been accused of some things. There was a great tinfoil hat conspiracy years ago that myself and and some other folks were sitting around a table strumming our fingers and stroking our hairless cats and bahaing our way into market manipulation. And I'd love to tell you that was true. It's a great image. But the truth of the matter is a lot of what we're doing, a lot of what Hadinki's done, a lot of what the other, you know, taste makers in this space have done is talk about things they're truly passionate about and they've caught on and that's great. But more often than not, it's reactionary. I would love to tell you I stockpiled these things before blowing them up, but that's not it's not the case. There have been cases where brands have tried to get a lock on a large percentage of the available supply of something they believe uh is going up, but again, that's speculation and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Do I think that we as players in this space have the ability to influence taste and design? I do. But I don't think it's through taste making and styling on Instagram or Tik Tok. I think it's about interacting with the brands themselves. Again, any luxury brand that's paying any attention is paying attention to their own heritage. So, there's actually now more of a straight line between the vintage market and the manufacturers themselves. than there has ever been. And that is kind of exciting to me because there are opportunities that can come from that to influence new product design and then it becomes a cyclical thing. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. And why do we um why do we see um though trends and es and flows um and you know all of a sudden we're talking about smaller watches, we're talking about dress watches these days. It's no longer uh about um professional Rolex or or um sport watches. Why do is it is it simply um people going on, you know, the collectors going on that journey that they go on and their tastes evolve and change? And does the market do it together? That's a great philosophical question that I'm not sure I can do justice in answering um short of maybe sharing my own experience, which is this. There are watches that I get really excited about, that I seek out, that I even lust after today that if you had told me 20 years ago I would even consider uh being caught dead wearing one, I couldn't possibly imagine that. I do think um to some degree that there's a little bit of a zeitgeist here and I don't know that myself uh you know speaking for myself that I have that kind of influence but I do think that there as a sort of organism as a community I think perhaps it does and there are folks who really do speak softly and carry a big stick with a style standpoint and if their journey evolves and that catches on with a larger community. Yeah, I think so. But probably not me. >> Um, you know, we think about often about numbers about the size of the market. Um, often a $50 billion uh number is thrown around for in terms of the size of the primary market uh for Swiss watches. How then we hear numbers like 10 billion, 20 billion, 25 billion for um vintage and pre-owned. What kind of numbers are you thinking about and operating under when when you're considering the size of this part of the market? >> I've seen a lot of numbers thrown around as well. I mean, I've seen reports suggesting that the growth in in the pre-owned market could be, you know, $200 billion by 2035 or something. And and you know, to a certain degree, maybe, you know, it's totally possible. I know there's a lot more um there's a lot more pre-owned watches available on the market in a general today than there are the the new watches uh that people want. So, sure, it's also a harder thing to track. You know, where are we talking about watches that are being sold by authorized dealers or by independent um vintage experts or at auction or on eBay or you know on Canal Street? Um not sure. I think what's exciting about it is that uh well, it's two things. one, it definitely speaks to the growth opportunity and I know that there is uh tremendous opportunity to keep growing our business in America and globally. Again, that 10% of people that stick around in my silly little uh example earlier, they're going to become very knowledgeable and they're going to want what's really special and exclusive and that more often than not is vintage. So that and everything along that journey is moving in that direction. So I think that it's very likely to see a tremendous increase. We're also looking at one of the largest transfers of wealth, generational wealth uh in history that we're coming upon and that's going to affect a whole lot of things. And to take it a step further, the vintage market has predominantly been I mean let's sort of call it what it is. was basically created by the Japanese uh perfected by the Italians and eventually got here to America. Most of Asia has been left out on the vintage uh journey and that's because traditionally, culturally pre-owned things are not super desirable. That's beginning to change. Art, cars, watches are now being considered valuable investments. And you know, the sort of traditional way of looking at a used object is changing. I think it goes without saying that if certain parts of mainland Asia embrace vintage watches, you know, there's going to be a pretty substantial market increase on what that is valued at and then what the transactions are going to look like. Um, what was the question? >> But no, I'd like to continue you to continue with that. does the professionalization the um uh legitimize the true legitimization of uh of vintage and beer. I mean that's how you get that's one of the ways you get there. >> It is. It is. And then there's the other I think okay so the other second part of this is that every day that goes by something is getting a little bit older you know and and I was always asked early days what how I define vintage. Again, we're we're working in an in a world where there are no, you know, terms that are universally accepted. For me, I picked a date as a cuto off and that date was one year before the year I was born cuz I did not consider myself vintage. That was almost 20 years ago. I feel slightly differently today. But things uh the second question was what are you going to run out of vintage watches? And the answer is no. You know, we might run out of the watches that are, you know, desirable in a time period, one style, one thing. Sure, they could potentially all go to end users who never give them up. But every year that goes by, something else is aging a little bit more. Tastes are changing, tastes are evolving. Neo vintage is a category we helped popularize, and we might have been a little too early. People weren't quite ready for it when I first started talking about it. And now it is a thing. It is a living, breathing part of this marketplace. And it's very exciting. And stylistically, we're seeing new changes as well. And that's also really cool cuz watches that nobody cared about are now the hottest things on the planet being worn by celebrities on the red carpet at the Met Gala. >> Yep. Absolutely. Um, I think we should turn it over to the audience. I'm sure there's uh plenty of folks who have lots to ask you. So, does anybody have any questions? >> So, uh my question is about vintage American watches. So, what's happening with that market? So, I know you are collecting them, I'm collecting them, but we are probably only two people in this room. Like, nobody gives a damn about the vintage American watches. There is no American watches in that room where there are iconic. It's like so the the price of gold a little bit increased. So I see uh people in Hamilton group starting to melt uh vintage Hamiltons. What's what's going on? What's uh what's your opinion? >> Listen, I love vintage American watches. You and I have spoken about that in the past and thank you for bringing it up. Um here's my soap box. Before World War II, American watches were some of the highest quality mass-produced watches in the world at a scale that the Swiss couldn't even dream of. In fact, the Swiss were sending representatives to come visit factories here in America to figure out how to do mass production. World War II created an economic opportunity for skilled labor in America. and the the watch makers for Hamilton and Walam and Elgen and Illinois and Gruin began making equipment and uh weapons of war and instrumentation for aircraft and tanks and cameras and all of these things. And then that little thing that Eisenhower warned us about came true, which was the military-industrial complex. And a lot of those watch makers found a lot more money working in defense contract than in making watches in Lancaster, Pennsylvania or wherever it was. So, we never recovered from that. And in the post-war years, Switzerland became the de facto home for highquality watches. And they they figured out how to scale and and produce at at volume. And I mean, honestly, by the time the courts crisis rolled around, nobody really cared anymore about Americans uh as a watchmaking center. And then vintage watches caught on and they've been largely left out of the conversation. So why? A lot of it has to do with size. When vintage watches started catching on, we were in the height of the Panerai era. 457 47 mm giant watches were all the rage. And a pre-war Hamilton was positively microscopic. Also, a lot of those watches because they're pushing a hundred years old or more have been refinished with varying degrees of quality and people just aren't sure about it. And the people who really know these watches are aging out. I just did an event with them this past summer and I spoke to them and and pleaded with them to stick around and share their knowledge because the knowledge they have about these products may die with that generation of collectors which is tragedy because some of these watches are truly magnificent. Now, I'm excited by the fact that brands like Pia or Cardier are becoming popular on the secondary market because these are smaller, thinner, precious metal things. And to me, that's a hop, skip, and a jump away from a pre-war American dress watch. So, I'm hopeful. But I'm going to ask all of you to go home tonight and just post something nice about a pre-war Hamilton. You know, find something cool on eBay for a couple hundred bucks and buy it. Save them. Don't let them get melted down. Hello. Sorry. Uh thanks uh thanks for that. Um my question has to do around you talked a lot about education even right there we got some great education but how it goes really handinhand with vintage watch buying for your clients and and friends and people you see um do you see what are the biggest gaps in terms of making a good collector and a great collector as far as education goes? I mean, I I think it's the I think quantifying a collector's uh greatness is a is an interesting way to put it. I think that the the core part of any collector's journey is getting hands-on uh with a product as many as many watches as you possibly can. Um it's a like I said earlier, it's a very visual, but it's also an incredibly tactile hobby. So, actually handling the watches may change the way you think about watches. Um, seeking out as much information as possible and keeping a curiosity about a thing. I said earlier there were watches that I never would have dreamed of wearing, like maybe something with diamonds on it that was rectangular. Like, I couldn't possibly have conceived of that when I started collecting diving watches. totally own a diamond uh studded tank American and it is so cool. I don't wear it out a lot, mostly just around the house, but that's a that's a side note. >> You'll get there, >> right? Yeah. Yeah. So, like I think the idea that don't uh don't write off something because currently you don't like it is uh a trigger to remain curious and open to all of the cool avenues that being a a watch enthusiast can take you down. And that's how I think you become an effective collector is not pigeon holing yourself into one thing. >> So I mean first off thank you for you know being very early on my journey of collecting and many conversation that follows that had shaped my collecting and many things I do horologically speaking. Well, we have talked about many categorically speaking you know watches and you know like whatnot uh market and things like that like and I have imagine you have seen most of the watches under the sun not each of them but each model of them what is the last time you have seen something new that is exciting it's like oh that's that is something that is genuinely you I mean new for you at least right of course that watch vintage that had exist before, but you know, something new and exciting. >> That's like the perfect followup to your to your question. I also stay curious, you know, and I think the day that I stop learning about watches is probably the day that I move on. Um, I love this. And if I don't learn something about watches every day, like I just don't feel as fulfilled. in LA in um February. I walked into want to buy a watch on Mel Rouge. Uh, and the the my my horological dad, Ken Jacobs, who taught me so much in the early days, was wearing this wildly cool 1970s Hamilton, but Swissade Hamilton diving watch, big cushion case with a red and black acrylic bezel, and a red, white, and cream exotic dial. I'd never seen this watch before, which is odd because that's exactly the kind of stuff I live for when I started collecting watches. I'd never seen this, you know, few thousand Swissade Hamilton diver exotic. And I tried to buy it off his wrist and he wouldn't sell it to me. He's not a very nice father. And it took 6 months, but I finally tracked one down and and Ken also found that one. And this one I was able to buy from him. So, I got that watch yesterday, but I had never seen it before February. >> I think we have time for maybe one more question. >> I've got one back here. >> Yeah. So, discuss um you discussed pre-owned watches a lot and I have a couple of questions. I wanted to ask firstly, how do you um or your company verify that the watches you resell are authentic? Like which steps do you take? You do do you It came with a certificate of authenticity from the person I bought it from. That's a joke. >> Okay. And and the second question then um is would you trust let's say eBay's verification process that they I think offer for watches over $2,000. >> Oo. Okay. Um we don't we don't have the time um for me to give you a complete diagnosis of how we authenticate watches. What I can say is it is a process. It is a comprehensive process and it differs dramatically watch to watch. I have knowledge in the specialty in certain categories and there are other things that I either need to go and research the living hell out of or call in somebody else who has more knowledge than I do who I've developed an appreciation and respect and a trust for to help me. And I'm never afraid to do that. How do I trust other watches that are out there being sold by other platforms? Listen, I respect eBay very much for taking the steps to try and authenticate watches. What I will say is this. I think it is the right direction. I think at any scale, but perhaps amplified at a large scale, you run into the same challenges that uh we were talking about factory certification. You have limitations on how many watch makers are available on the market and what their knowledge level is amplified by every watch, every brand, every style, every movement, every color. They are going to statistically it's an impossibility to get it right every time. I have bought watches from eBay for I think I got my 25 year pin. Um, they should have like they should lock me out after a certain period of like in the evening. Uh, I've spent a lot of money on eBay. Uh, I kind of liked it better before because it was the wild west and it was like let's see what happens. But I understand why they're moving in that direction. I respect that they have. I can tell you with certainty sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And by the way, the same thing could be said for any other dealer, including myself. We do make mistakes. The difference between uh somebody you can trust and somebody you can't or an organization you can trust and an organization you can't is whether or not they do the right thing. You know, when you figure out that something's wrong and obviously we always try to do the right thing. >> Excellent. Well, thank you, James Landon. >> Thank you, Andy Hoffman. Yeah. >> Thank you everybody.