Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Jonathan Sposato - The Maverick Symphony Of A Collector & Serial Entrepreneur
1k Plays1 year ago
Today’s guest is serial entrepreneur and collector Jonathan Sposato. After starting companies like Geekwire, PicMonkey, Joysauce, and selling a few others as well, Jonathan is at a stage in his career where collecting has truly never been more important. Of course this ties into his multifaceted collections like old fighter pilot jackets, Saville Row Suits, cars, watches, back to apparel from brands like Ralph Lauren and even rare hand painted leather punk rock jackets. But when it comes to his companies like Joysauce, Jonathan is curating and collecting some of the very best content in the AAPI space and he approaches it the same way he does when it comes to his personal collections. The name of the game here is a common theme on the show, which is “buy what you love”. The collectors gene couldn’t be more present than in this episode and Jonathan has the passion and knowledge to back it. Alright, let’s dive in. This is Jonathan Sposato, for Collectors Gene Radio.
GeekWire - https://www.geekwire.com/
JoySauce - https://joysauce.com/
Jonathan’s Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jonathansposato/
Time To Wear Book by John Goldberger & Alessandro Squarzi - https://watchprint.com/en/books-on-watches/546-time-to-wear-john-goldberger-alessandro-squarzi.html
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Collecting and Business
00:00:00
Speaker
I think that that's what these things collecting has in common with business. You're testing yourself. Is the market going to agree with me or is it going to disagree with me? What's going on, everybody? Welcome to Collector's Gene Radio. This is all about diving into the nuances of collecting and ultimately finding out whether or not our guests have what we like to call the collector's gene.
00:00:25
Speaker
If you have the time, please subscribe and leave a review. It truly helps. Thanks a bunch for listening, and please enjoy today's guest on Collectors Gene Radio.
Meet Jonathan Spisato, the Collector
00:00:36
Speaker
Today's guest is serial entrepreneur and collector, Jonathan Spisato. After starting companies like GeekWire, PickMonkey, Joysauce, and selling a few others as well, Jonathan's at a stage in his career where collecting has truly never been more important. Of course this ties into his multifaceted collections like old fighter pilot jackets, salvo row suits, cars, watches, back to apparel from brands like Ralph Lauren and even rare hand painted leather punk rock jackets.
00:01:05
Speaker
But when it comes to his companies like Joysauce, Jonathan is curating and collecting some of the very best content in the AAPI space, and he approaches it the same way he does when it comes to his personal collections. The name of the game here is a common theme on the show, which is buy what you love. And the collector's gene couldn't be more present than in this very episode, and Jonathan has the passion and knowledge to back it. All right, let's dive in. This is Jonathan Spisato for Collector's Gene Radio.
Jonathan's Personal Journey
00:01:34
Speaker
Jonathan, so great to welcome you on collector's gym radio. Hey, thank you so much, Cameron. It's really my honor to be here to speak with you today. I appreciate that. Your story is quite remarkable from coming to the US at an early age from London to being the first person to sell to profitable companies to Google. You founded companies like GeekWire and PicMonkey and Joysauce along with many more. You're an author and for all intents and purposes, a collector.
00:02:02
Speaker
Can you give the listeners a little more insight into your background and your career? Yeah, I appreciate that, Cameron. It is really a very unconventional story. So I am, despite my Italian-American last name, and we'll get to how I got that name, I'm actually 100% Asian. I'm half Chinese, half Korean. And I actually discovered later in life, like when I was,
00:02:27
Speaker
You know, maybe like 11 or 12 that my birth father was Korean American and I had never met him until a few years ago. So I'm 56 and I met him shortly after I turned 50. So for pretty much most of my adult life, I didn't know who my father was. And I would say that what's interesting about that is that it
00:02:49
Speaker
kind of forces you to prove to the world that you're just fine. And you sort of have this, it's not a chip or anything, but you have an attitude or a very strong drive to want to not have to rely on a lot of other people and just to be able to make it on your own. And you almost want to show the world like, hey, you don't have to stop asking me if I'm okay, or you don't have to feel sorry for me. I'm doing good.
00:03:19
Speaker
And so I think that that has instilled in me at an early age, right or wrong, a certain kind of ambition. And I think that we're all, a lot of us, if we're, you know, like yourself, you're a very successful guy and you're doing amazing things and you have an amazing collection. A lot of us are driven by a form of ambition that's very, very similar. In my case, it is driven by my background. And so right or wrong, it causes me to not ever stop working.
00:03:47
Speaker
I have been asked many times, why aren't you retired? And the truth is, I probably could have retired a couple of decades ago, if not more. A couple acquisitions ago. A couple acquisitions ago and things like that. But I feel
00:04:04
Speaker
that there's more to do and perhaps more selfishly, I'm still trying to figure out what I'm really good at and maybe what I'm not good at and maybe to continue to grow and learn. And I think that that's what's important in life. So that's kind of my high level summary. And Cameron, if you have specific questions about my background, I'm happy to dig into that.
00:04:26
Speaker
No, I think that's perfect. There's, there's so much about you online. And I think anyone who wants to dig deep into your background and your history, they will definitely do so. And I just wanted to make sure that we talked about all the, the amazing companies that you've started and sold and that you still have and that you're working on. Cause I think it's, it's very impressive and worth everybody checking out. And I think there's a lot of what you're doing now that really ties into collecting, which we'll talk about later, especially with joy sauce.
Collecting and Entrepreneurship: A Parallel Journey
00:04:53
Speaker
Yeah, that's exactly why I love talking with really smart people like you, Cameron, is that really for the first time I am realizing like right now that there is a connection or there is a similarity between all of these companies that I've started, how I decide which company to start, how I think about where is the gap? Like I have these three over here and then what should be a fourth company to add to the portfolio? Where's the gap? And that's the same mentality.
00:05:23
Speaker
That that most of us apply to collecting and for the first time I'm realizing it just the value of talking with you is that you have these new connections or new insights that you develop about about this stuff so thank you.
00:05:35
Speaker
No, no, and thank you because it's not often I get to talk with somebody who understands that aspect of collecting because most people hear collecting and they think dollar signs and expensive things. And obviously that's the fun stuff that comes with it, but there's so much more to living a curated lifestyle, if you will, especially when you own businesses that can benefit from that. And I think that's exactly kind of what you have going on with Joy Sauce right now and definitely what you've done with your other businesses in the past.
00:06:04
Speaker
Mm hmm. That's right. That's right. I kind of look at something like joy sauce dot com, which is a an all new 100 percent Asian American centered media platform. We've got reality TV shows. We've got written articles and incisive editorial. We've got podcasts and we've got scripted TV. We've got a joy sauce late night show, which I'm the host of because I was admittedly cheap and I didn't want to pay for somebody else. I just jumped in there.
00:06:33
Speaker
Well, you're good at it. So it makes sense. Thank you. Thank you. And so all of these things are, in a way, the platform itself is a collection of, you know, really interesting sort of famous AAPI celebrities and TV stars and writers, even the music under the music section. It's a totally curated collection of all of these up and coming young,
00:06:58
Speaker
API musicians, all kind of in one place. And so again, there's that kind of collector's mentality that is consistent with the businesses. So I think I find that really interesting.
00:07:11
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And as mentioned, you're a collector of a lot of things. And I want to make sure that we talk about each one. And I think a great place to start is with suits and apparel, because I feel like a lot of your collecting stems from this category, even if it's not where your collecting journey necessarily started. You have a fantastic collection of salvo row suits. And I'm curious to know if you were always into this specific style of tailoring growing up.
00:07:39
Speaker
I have to admit, it doesn't flatter me to say this because it makes me boring, but the answer is yes. So what started to bug was I was in high school and I went into a vintage shop and maybe it wasn't even a vintage shop as much as it was like a Salvation Army or something, you know, one of those where there were old clothes. And for like about $8 or $10, I bought
00:08:04
Speaker
a suit that I dated to the 40s. It happened to fit me perfectly, and that was like a suit that I wore when I was in high school, and it was so well-constructed. It was the most handsomely and high-quality constructed clothing item I owned, and I think I got it for, like I said, 10 to 12 bucks.
00:08:26
Speaker
And that gave me this bug to dress in a way that was a little bit more old school. Now, I wasn't trying to be like, you know, I don't go driving around in an old Ford Thunderbird or it's not a cosplay kind of thing for me. It's that I just enjoy how well made these things are. And so that that's kind of how it started for me. And I decided that there was a certain way that I wanted to look and feel when I was in my clothes. And that's where it began.
00:08:56
Speaker
Savile Row is known for bespoke suits and even until this day, it's graduation day for anyone who collects and buys suits and cares about this stuff. What do you think it is about Savile Row other than them being so friendly that makes it one of the very few meccas when it comes to suit collecting?
00:09:15
Speaker
So I think that any person who considers themselves well-dressed, any gentleman that considers himself well-dressed kind of has to make a decision at some point, whether you're really about Italian tailoring, you know, bigger shoulders, more waist suppression, beautiful fabrics, more colorful fabrics, a little bit more leeway in terms of lapels and pockets.
00:09:42
Speaker
maybe more trendy, sometimes they're shorter, sometimes they're longer, the jackets,
The Art of Savile Row and Quality Collecting
00:09:46
Speaker
or you're more about American tailoring, you know, that classic, you know, Chip Davidson, Chip was the tailor to JFK, amongst others, where it's more that sack suit fit that is kind of that's consistent with like Brooks Brothers and Jay Press.
00:10:05
Speaker
or if you're more into British tailoring. And for me, British tailoring is the most flattering for my body type.
00:10:13
Speaker
where there is just enough waist suppression. The shoulders are a little bit more natural. They're not quite as exaggerated as Italian, but it's a more flattering, masculine look, in my opinion, than the American silhouette. So I think at a high level, most guys have to sort of decide who they are. And in my early days, I kind of decided that, you know, I'm probably more favorable to British tailoring. And of course I own clothing from those other styles too. Then once you go down that path, boy, you go to Savile Row,
00:10:43
Speaker
and honestly for anyone who has any doubt in your mind that it's somehow potentially like a snobbish thing or people are gonna turn their noses up at you or you have to be a certain kind of person to be a customer. Let me disabuse, I have never been treated. Here I am just off the street some unknown guy, I walk in and they are really, really
00:11:11
Speaker
just accommodating. They love seeing new customers, younger customers. I get the feeling sometimes these cutters and tailors in the back room, they would love to go a little crazy and they're looking for that person who can kind of work with them on something interesting. And there are just so many different house
00:11:31
Speaker
styles, depending on whether you go to, you know, Henry Poole, or Huntsman, or, you know, or Nutters, or Davison Sons, or back in the day Fallon and Harvey and Kilgore, which was always one of my favorites, but sadly, I understand it closed a few years ago. But each
00:11:50
Speaker
one, each house has a slightly different house style. And so over time, I think it's really fun to figure out which one suits you best. And they're all just lovely. Everyone I've met has just been amazing.
00:12:04
Speaker
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And even if, you know, for folks that can't necessarily afford to get a custom suit made on Savile Row, it's worth going and seeing if you're ever in the area. And it's just something special. It's just something that really doesn't exist anywhere else. And you can't help but, you know, feel like you're taken back to a different time when you walk down Savile Row. It's really impressive.
00:12:29
Speaker
Yeah, it sure is. One thing that I will say is that, you know, gosh, it doesn't take that many lower quality off the rack suits to add up to the cost of one amazing bespoke suit.
00:12:45
Speaker
Yeah. And something that people also need to realize is that, you know, you go and buy three, four suits off the rack from somewhere because you just got a new job and you know, you didn't have any clothes before you needed new suits, but it's much easier almost to get one incredibly made suit, maybe two and switch out your shirts, your ties, your shoes. And it's, it's kind of the same way I view watches in a lot of aspects is that you could have one watch and a hundred watch straps and it's a different watch every day.
00:13:14
Speaker
That's exactly right. That's exactly right. I love that you brought that up because it's so true. I would say my favorite Savile Row suits are indestructible, and there would be no problems if I only owned two of them, that that's all I wore, that you could wear all year round, day in, day out,
00:13:40
Speaker
Nothing's going to come apart on you. It's not going to wear down the thread unless you're picking some really soft or more delicate cashmere. These things are indestructible because they are so well-made, precisely because they're handmade and to a very high standard and very high quality. You can do so much. Your watch analogy is right on, which is whether it's ties, shirts, pocket squares,
00:14:05
Speaker
Choice of cufflinks choice of shoes whether you're layering underneath with a with a sweater or not there's so much you can do which is even two or three suits in your wardrobe if that's all you had to mix it up and make that make that always interesting so i love that concept.
Exploring the World of Polo Bear Sweaters
00:14:21
Speaker
I want to move on to another i guess apparel collection of yours and that's vintage ralph lauren polo bear sweaters yes.
00:14:29
Speaker
I know you adore these and you have a bunch of them. I love them too. It's one of those things that it can't help but put a smile on your face when you see them, whether you own one or not. And other than collecting them and enjoying them and wearing them, they actually served a much larger purpose than just being sweaters, especially in the 80s. And I know that you know a lot about that history and I would love for you to tell the listeners kind of about that.
00:14:52
Speaker
Yeah, I'd be delighted to. So, number one, you're absolutely right. It does start with, I mean, why do we collect anything? It's because they delight you. And if something delights you, and it really, or Marie Kondo would say, does it spark joy? And absolutely, a really, really intricate, detailed, hand-stitched,
00:15:15
Speaker
teddy bear that's anthropomorphized and wearing an old 1940s pilot outfit or playing the part of a
00:15:25
Speaker
bank chairman in a pinstripe suit or is a skier with goggles and a ski jacket, that image on your sweater is under a really well-made sport coat or a suit jacket. It's absolutely delightful. And I would be the first to admit that it's not for everyone.
00:15:45
Speaker
I've had a lot of guys tell me in the sort of group that i belong to online that. You know what i can't pull this off there's no way i can pull i mean you can barely pull it off but so i think things should delight you and if you can own it in a certain way and make it yours that that's even better.
00:16:04
Speaker
But the history that you're referring to is that there was a time when something began very earnestly, which was Ralph Lauren getting a gift from one of his designers for his birthday of one of those old school German-made steve bears dressed
00:16:22
Speaker
completely wardrobe in a Ralph Lauren outfit, a little miniature Ralph Lauren polo, you know, like I think maybe a flag sweater and a polo shirt with a collar popped and some pants from purple label or something like that. And Ralph was so delighted by that he started making a line of sweaters with the bears on them. And so it began in an earnest way.
00:16:44
Speaker
But as his own brand and his stature rose in industry, a lot of disadvantage and marginalized youths, most of these are gang members in the bad part of Brooklyn back in the day when there were bad parts of Brooklyn. When it wasn't expensive to live in Brooklyn.
00:17:04
Speaker
That's exactly right. And so a lot of these gang members were sort of, number one, they were fighting each other and there was violence, very unfortunate. And that's what happens in disadvantaged communities when people don't have opportunity, right? But they were unified by a common
00:17:22
Speaker
affinity for polo ralph lorin clothing and so they would notice in each other that hey you know that that guy's head to toe polo uh and that other and you know and maybe that's somebody in a rival gang and so they started to kind of bond together due to their mutual love for
00:17:40
Speaker
a line of clothing that was, you know, clearly aspirational. It represented a lifestyle and a segment and a kind of access that they felt like that they didn't have. And so at the very least, they could dress the part. So they called themselves lowlifes, low, meaning polo. And so oftentimes, I mean, they took it to such an extreme head to toe Ralph Lauren, everything from the hat,
00:18:07
Speaker
on down to the undergarments, to the polo shirts that they would layer, multiple shirts, multiple collars popped in a layered way. You've seen that. Those guys started that. Then it be the teddy bear sweater over those shirts. And then it would be the shoes and the jackets and the scarves, the whole works. And yes, some of those items were lifted. They were stolen from stores. And
00:18:33
Speaker
that was sort of part of a rite of passage for some of them. But ironically, they started to get the attention of the designers, Ralph Lauren, who then started to look to them for inspiration for design. And so it became a circular thing, which is wonderful and beautiful. But again, if you take a more meta view of kind of
00:18:58
Speaker
this country that Polo Ralph Lauren itself was started by a young Jewish guy named Ralph Lipschitz. And he changed his name to Lauren. And he sort of created this fantasy world, this lifestyle of a very waspy way of being and an aesthetic that he actually himself wasn't a part of, but it was all like this giant mirage. And at some point he became that.
00:19:27
Speaker
He is that now. When we think of that waspy lifestyle, you know, beautiful houses in Connecticut or upstate New York and beautiful vintage cars and beautiful clothes and watches, and you think of Ralph Lauren. And so how incredibly American this is that then in a way that rhymes the life cycle of Ralph Lauren himself, that these low lives
00:19:54
Speaker
Aspire to a certain lifestyle that they felt like they didn't have access to these black urban youths and then they became actually harbingers to the designers of what what's cool and what would be really hot for them to continue making and designing so i just love that circularity. Yes it's a very interesting story that i think a lot of people don't know you can definitely read about it a little bit online and i just love that this she can elegant yet.
00:20:22
Speaker
Really casual, bare sweater is at the center of all of it.
00:20:28
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, that's right. I probably didn't do a very good job of centering that but but I mean, yeah, these these lowlifes just collected they loved they look they have all kinds of names for the different bears. There's the grandpa bear, there's chairman bear and these are names that are kind of the unofficial names that they've given them. And they've now entered into the lexicon is that that's what the collectors call them that we have collectors of these sweaters of which there's kind of an interesting
00:20:55
Speaker
rabid subculture that I'm a part of, we have standardized our terminology to the very same terms that the lowlifes gave these bears. And so and in terms of like, kind of understanding which one is the most valuable, which one came first ahead in the series, you know, which ones are hand stitched versus machine or a partially machine stitched, what one is sort of the most meta in a sense that like the bear is wearing a sweater with a bear
00:21:25
Speaker
that is wearing a sweater with a bear. So all of that stuff, I think that the lowlifes who are all middle-aged guys like me are still very much setting those standards. So it's super interesting.
00:21:39
Speaker
Yeah. And you know, you said something about a group that you're in and people commenting go only you could pull that off and I can't pull that off.
Expanding Style Horizons
00:21:47
Speaker
And I think that that's such a common misconception when it comes to collecting anything, you hear it very often in the watch world, you hear it very often in the clothing world. And I always try to impress upon people that if you've never tried it and not just try it being putting it on, but trying to make it work,
00:22:07
Speaker
then you really shouldn't say that because there's so much that people are missing out on much to our benefit in the collecting space across multiple categories because they have that mindset of I can't, I can't do that. This is too outrageous for me and my lifestyle and all these things, but there's so many ways to go about it to make it work for yourself that I think people shoot themselves in the foot and pass up on really great things, whether it's a sweater, a watch, a car, a jacket, you know,
00:22:33
Speaker
Yeah, totally. I would love to hear from you, Cameron, if there's something that you've, you sort of thought for a long time that, oh, I could never pull that off, but then you gave it a try. You took a risk and then you're like, I love it. I love it. And I am pulling it off. I mean, do you have something like that?
00:22:48
Speaker
100%, one of them is actually, I love the flag sweaters from Ralph Lauren. I never wear anything, usually with logos or print on it. It's pretty cut and dry that way for me. And when I got one of those sweaters a long time ago, I was nervous to wear it. And then I started wearing it. And then I bought another one that was all white with a white flag, so it was all monochromed out. And then you start getting into this whole world, especially in Ralph Lauren,
00:23:14
Speaker
They just would make these products almost to push people like me to want to wear and buy these things that I've never tried them on. You know, I got like this bright yellow rain jacket from them and it doesn't really rain here in Arizona, but I had to have it. And, you know, I just, I fell in love with it. And when I get the chance to wear it, I do.
00:23:33
Speaker
Same thing with watches. I've always loved small watches, but today I'm wearing my wife's really, really small Cartier Tank vintage under 30 millimeter, like ultra small. And this watch is so cool with a sweater on, this watch is so cool with a hoodie on, and most people would probably shy away from something this size. And the same thing for larger watches. I always felt like an Omega Speedmaster was way too big for me.
00:23:59
Speaker
but you put that watch on and at forty two millimeters it's actually perfect i can't imagine it actually being any smaller yeah yeah yeah i love that just kind of one of those things until you put something on or really give it a chance. Then i always trying to press on people to stay away from saying that it doesn't work for you because i think people miss out.
00:24:18
Speaker
Exactly. I mean, I've heard if I had a nickel for every time I heard a friend of mine say, you know what, I can't I can't wear a gold watch. I can't pull that off. And then, you know, I'm very grateful that that I was able to acquire a gold day date, you know, some years back. And you'll see me with that on like, they're like, dang,
00:24:42
Speaker
Can i try that i'm sure go for it and then they love it right right so that i will. Yeah yeah you know there's something inherently very very good about it you know maybe it's just that the gold looks great with their skin tone it brings you know it's very warm or just kind of offsets maybe the gold buttons on their on their navy blazer.
00:25:02
Speaker
Another one that I admit that I spent years poo-pooing and go, okay, I don't think I can ever pull this off and it's maybe kind of gauche, but I was won over when I saw it in the metal, so to speak, and that's a carbon ceramic Hublot, a Hublot Big Bang. I have an all-white carbon ceramic Big Bang.
00:25:26
Speaker
and it's just fantastic on the wrist. And you have to sort of get over, you know, oh, but it seems like big bang, you know, that Hublot is just copying AP what's it? Well, no, we actually if you look at the history of, you know, Bobby there and kind of like the design of the, you know, what who's, who's really copying who? And, you know, we're at what point do you start counting, you know, who came up with the idea?
00:25:50
Speaker
it may not even really matter. And so that's another example where I just love the watch, I enjoy it. And you start to become, not that I'm your typical Hublot Big Bang, you know, I don't have a Lamborghini and
00:26:07
Speaker
I don't play professional football in Europe, but you do start to own it and understand it. And maybe it changes the way you think about your outfit or your shoes. So I love that the range that sometimes stretching ourselves can get us.
00:26:25
Speaker
Yeah. And, and I think the thing about that is that is also something that you obviously love to explain these things to people and show people why it's cool to collect things. It's less about what you have more about why you have it. And I always preach that to people. And that is such a watch that is one of those instances where I'm sure anybody that sees is like, what is that? And tell me all about it. That's right.
00:26:48
Speaker
I think another great watch that you have in your collection, it's extremely
Iconic Watches and Personal Stories
00:26:52
Speaker
special. It's an Omega Flight Master owned by John B. McKay and this watch just has such an incredible story and I would love for you to kind of dive into that.
00:27:02
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So John B. McKay was, you know, at around the same time that they were coming up with the Mercury astronauts for NASA, you know, they were pulling from all different branches of the military. A lot of them were Navy pilots, things like that. The Air Force had their own
00:27:21
Speaker
sort of space program. I can't remember what the name of it was. And so there was a group of, I think, just a handful of mostly Air Force test pilots that flew all of those experimental planes like the X-1B and there's all different ones. And John B. McKay was one of them. So he was
00:27:41
Speaker
For all intents and purposes part of the early astronaut program and i think that at one point he was a part of nasa and which was part of that group that could have been selected to go to to be part of apollo and so he was a very very successful test pilot. Holds the record for a number of things on the most notable is that he.
00:28:02
Speaker
flew the highest of any human being. He actually reached the upper atmosphere. I think he still holds that record that's flying the highest in an aircraft, right, that you weren't on an actual rocket. And he actually famously had a terrible
00:28:21
Speaker
Crashed and he walked away from he crashed his experimental craft and I can't remember which one of the X Jets it was but you would recognize that you know, there's a lot of vintage photos of him and and he set on landing somehow I don't know if it was like a torque issue or whatever, but he rolled the aircraft upside down and then the cockpit just dug into the ground and he suffered some pretty bad head injuries and
00:28:49
Speaker
He survived that crash and died maybe six or eight years later in the early 70s from complications resulting from those head injuries. But I look at someone like that as truly heroic. Here was someone that by virtue of being a test pilot was very, very brave who pushed the envelope.
00:29:13
Speaker
to advance aviation, to advance really mankind and the species, and to put us on a one-yard line, all of these men did, put us on a one-yard line with regards to space exploration. So he had a watch, which was actually given to him by Omega, which was the flight master. Now, the flight master itself, without any connection to any historic figure, is itself just a fantastic watch.
00:29:42
Speaker
It's very avant-garde. It's very avant-garde. The colorway is fantastic. It's very, very useful and functional with GMT function. It wears beautifully on the wrist. It just feels really comfortable. I think it's a beautiful watch. I had always been in love with the Flightmaster.
00:30:00
Speaker
I was on some sort of watch forum and I think it was his daughter, his grown daughter was just kind of getting rid of some things in his estate and so sold the watch to me and it came with all kinds of documentation. It also came with documentation from Omega verifying the provenance that this belonged to John B. McKay and that they had originally gifted it to him.
00:30:27
Speaker
And so it was tastefully refurbished. He wasn't wearing the Flightmaster that I own during that crash, but he did wear it for most of his life or most of his career after. So it's very special to me. And the connection to him and the connection to that kind of bravery is incredibly interesting to me.
00:30:51
Speaker
And I love that the flight master was the watch that was given to him, obviously the tie between the flight master and him being a pilot. But I love the idea of how, as we said, avant-garde that design is of that watch, but also how almost avant-garde he was as a person to kind of go that extra mile to really put everybody on the map and
00:31:12
Speaker
and make a stamp in history like there's no other watch that omega makes or made rather that could have been a more perfect even if it didn't have the name flight master. That design alone there is no other watch that could be given to and i love that yeah that's right and i have other things that you and i haven't talked about that are similar in fact i'm gonna literally go over to where my boxes of watches are the cases and you just give me a moment i'm gonna pull out other pieces that we can talk about that are
00:31:42
Speaker
Yeah, because I know you collect a lot of military style watches too, and lots of other great stuff. So I think it'd be fun to chat about it. Yeah, that's right. And so, for example, I have an old Tudor with the Small Rose logo that was given to the skipper of a Navy destroyer. And on the back of the watch, it was kind of like his retirement gift.
00:32:03
Speaker
And it says to Commander C.S. Watson from U.S.S. Ajax Chiefs. And so that was a watch given to him by his team, and it's just a beautiful watch. And again, I think about the history of this one. I have a 1950s-era Bolivar that belonged to a C.S. report.
00:32:30
Speaker
the engraving and this guy was a scientist that had previously worked on the Manhattan Project. So that that's incredibly interesting. And so so yeah, there's just there for a while there really got into, in some ways, not so much collecting to watch as much as that's only 50%, but also collecting provenance.
00:32:50
Speaker
Amazing. Yeah, the Accutron getting given to a scientist is kind of also the ultimate, you know, gift. There's really no other watch you could give a scientist, in my opinion, that makes sense.
00:33:01
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. And then you mentioned the military watches. I have, gosh, you know, I hate to, sometimes it's difficult to talk about them, but because of geopolitics, I have this Eterna Contiki divers watch that the engraving on the back, it was issued to the famous Israeli sort of crack special forces team called the Shia Tet 13.
00:33:30
Speaker
And this was a very exclusive Special Forces group. Famously, they freed the hostages when the, I think it was 1970, I can't remember the year 72 maybe, when those Olympic athletes were held hostage on a TWA flight. And so that watch just kind of
00:33:50
Speaker
You know, I remember John Mayer famously said in one of the very first Houdenke talking watches videos, and he's like, I think, referencing like a 5513 Submariner, no date, military issue, and so with the fixed spring bars. But he said, you know, don't worry about it if you smack a door jamb, but somebody else did a lot of other way tough things while wearing it. And so that's the way I feel about these watches.
00:34:19
Speaker
Yeah, really special watches. I mean, those are Grail level Submariners for a lot of Submariner collectors. I would say probably most Submariner collectors, a middle sub is kind of the Grail. And yeah, I mean, the price tag on them makes you feel like you need to be precious, but it's also one of those things, like he said, it's like, don't worry, people did a lot crazier shit with these watches and you don't have to worry about it.
00:34:43
Speaker
That's exactly right. I have a wonderful 6263 Daytona. Is it the tropical dial one? Yeah. The dial has tropicalized into a very even brown. It's stunning. Thank you. It is stunning. To me, it's the perfect 6263.
00:35:02
Speaker
It is just so aesthetically pleasing. It just looks great on the wrist. So I got it before values went crazy. And again, this is a testament to just buy what you like, not what's popular. And you don't have to be right, but maybe you get lucky and you're right and the whole world catches on afterwards. And then it becomes something much more valuable. And that's kind of nice to know. But in my case, I just
00:35:27
Speaker
bought it because I loved it. And I think this was even before tropicalized watches were particularly like a thing. But I really shouldn't, I went through a period where I thought I really shouldn't wear it because it's so, the value of it is so high now, but I do wear it. And I do encourage people to just wear your watches, man.
00:35:49
Speaker
100%. I love that watch specifically because most people would be hard pressed to probably know this, but my favorite color is brown. I love when these dials turned that milk chocolatey mocha colored brown. They're incredible. In your examples, a testament to all that.
00:36:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's hard not to look at it when you're on the airplane and you got a few moments to just sort of drift off into your own thoughts. I stare at that dial. In terms of the flight jackets, and I would say that it may seem like I'm some sort of
00:36:26
Speaker
strangely kind of a militant, you know, I'm not a militant, you know, a pro-war kind of person. Why I collect these artifacts of conflict and war probably has more in my deep down in my psyche, has to do with just a desire to be connected to a
00:36:49
Speaker
a maybe nostalgia for times past or my own family's connection to war and wartime conflict and things like that.
00:36:59
Speaker
Absolutely. And I think the other part is like to go along with that. These, these items were surprisingly very stylish back then. And a lot of the items that are given to personnel in that space now are not necessarily that. And I would say the flight jackets still exist, but I understand it because a lot of these things had style and they all kind of fit into the
Vintage Flight Jackets: A Personal Connection
00:37:23
Speaker
things that you love. So yeah, I'm with you. People can get the wrong idea, but it's not about that.
00:37:28
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I literally know no one tall, short, fat, skinny, full head of hair or bald or whatever. I know no one who doesn't look awesome in a Navy issue G1.
00:37:45
Speaker
or a beat-up distressed A2. You know, no one looks bad in that stuff. And they go with everything. To date, my go-to jacket, you know, when I went to Africa on safari, and I knew that the temperature wasn't gonna be like super hot all the time, and the night drives were gonna be cold and chilly, I brought with me a vintage Irwin & Foster A2.
00:38:13
Speaker
And I just kind of felt like I should I'd never been to Africa and I was going with my family and some really good friends and our children. And I thought I'm going to be I'm going to be making memories and I would like to make memories with this jacket on.
00:38:28
Speaker
And it was the perfect jacket. It was already beat up from decades of use, the last couple of decades that the abuse was applied by me. And I never had to worry about it laying around in the back of a Jeep or getting dust on it.
00:38:44
Speaker
I knew that the photos from that trip were going to look back at those photos in the decades to come and of course I wanted to look good. I thought it was better than some fleece thing from Patagonia. Nothing wrong with a fleece thing from Patagonia, but I'd rather look great in a vintage A2. They have their time and place, but a vintage A2 on a Safari is maybe as cool as it gets.
00:39:10
Speaker
I happen to think so. My collection of old flight jackets, a lot of these things started in parallel. I have to say that I did not set out at some young age to be like, I'm going to start collecting old handmade suits and I'm going to collect watches and I'm going to collect flight jackets. These things happen very small and they end up growing into passions over time.
00:39:37
Speaker
I bought my first flight jacket probably in college. Again, I wandered into a thrift store or like a Salvation Army.
00:39:45
Speaker
The very first one I bought was this old, old G1 that had a hand-painted patch on the breast. It was a very simple single patch that was hand-painted. I've since found out that it was probably painted in theater in Italy. And that at the time, and because based on the age of it, it predated, it was a 1940s, it was certainly issued in the 1940s.
00:40:11
Speaker
And so looking at the history of that, it just became this incredible, incredibly cool thread to pull on that there were some members over in a European theater, not the Pacific, that were issued that had the option of choosing a G1 instead of an A2, and to have a hand-painted patch that was in theater, painted by maybe some old grandma in Italy, that was super interesting to me. And so I, you know,
00:40:40
Speaker
I was bitten by the bug and overtime i would say probably the military jackets are the most infrequently collected. Infrequently added items in my collection because they're really really hard to find out but there was a time when i think they were a lot easier to find and no one was really collecting them.
00:41:01
Speaker
And so i felt like a weirdo like why am i sort of hitting up you know like in a state sale and if i saw somebody selling your dad's old military um footlocker and all of the things are like some pieces of uniform i would always ask like wait a minute i think i noticed here that your father or your grandfather was a pilot you have this old jacket and they're like oh yeah you know that's in the up in the attic you know and so so that there was a time when when
00:41:30
Speaker
No one felt that these were of particular value. And I think that that time it's still a little bit like that. Like I would say on an individual item basis, a really top, top old flight jacket in great condition that's got amazing patches, amazing history and provenance. I have one, I have a G1 that belonged to a squadron mate of Pappy Boyington.
00:42:00
Speaker
This is the famous Black Sheep Squadron, you know, made famous by the TV show with Robert Conrad, you know, blah, blah, black sheep, right? I have his squadron mate, Major Winnick. That jacket is probably like the equivalent of a milsub or the equivalent of a tropicalized 6263 Daytona. Perhaps I might even argue the equivalent of like a Paul Newman Daytona. It's like this Grail thing. But, you know, the value of that is nowhere near what the watches are.
00:42:30
Speaker
And to me that's an odd thing because the rarity is completely on probably two orders of magnitude more rare than any of those other watches. And so I still think that that's an undervalued asset class, as it were. I don't even think people consider it an asset class like they do watches and artwork and cars. And so I think that there's still a lot of headroom there. But if you can imagine,
00:42:59
Speaker
Back 15, 20 years ago, I knew no one else that was collecting old leather flight jackets that had been issued and flown. And I think it's a really, really fun category. I mean, you have World War II era jackets, and then just within that era, you can have A2s versus G1s.
00:43:21
Speaker
You could get into just G1s themselves. You can get into Navy pilots versus Marine pilot jackets. The Navy ones, the regulations allowed, they were more free. Those pilots were more free to put all kinds of patches on the back, on the front, on the sleeves. Whereas the Marine Corps, you couldn't put anything on the back and you had to be more modest in terms of your patching. So that's really interesting. The A2s tended to have more hand-painted
00:43:50
Speaker
artwork on them because these guys were over in Europe and they were you know in between Stories they they had a lot of downtime to paint stuff on them one of my jackets that I love was a World War two bomber pilot that had served in in Italy and you know did bombing runs over over German cities and I think that it's common knowledge that that during the peak
00:44:18
Speaker
times of the European campaign, some fairly significant percentage that was around 30% of the planes would not come back during each mission. In other words, you had a 30% chance of dying every time you went up into the air. And my point is, I must have the luckiest flight jacket in the world because I have one where the guy flew 31 missions.
00:44:45
Speaker
Unbelievable. You do the math on those odds, right? And you went up in the air.
00:44:52
Speaker
you had a 30% chance of not coming back, times 31, right? And so that guy, that guy is unbelievable, luckiest. And so, so, you know, each mission is denoted by like a separate painted bomb that was on the right breast of the jacket. And so, so each one is completely unique. Each one has incredible history. If I can get the log books of the pilot with the jacket, oftentimes, you know, the seller would throw it in there.
00:45:21
Speaker
I would do that, get the logbook so you have the gentleman's history. And I try to honor these folks. I kind of feel like that I'm just kind of the custodian of these jackets, not the owner, but the custodian of them for future generations, for people who might want to understand that history in the future.
00:45:39
Speaker
Absolutely. And I think the best part about them is that you can bring them outside of the house and you're not gonna lose sleep over it. And you can enjoy them and you can be the custodian and take care of them, but also put them to work. And they stood the test of time then, then they definitely stand the test time now.
00:45:56
Speaker
Right. That's right. That's right. Yeah. And so, yeah, so I started to talk about like how in World War Two, you can kind of get into G1s and A2s. And then as you move to the Korean conflict era, a lot of G1s that are very, they're less hand painted, but they have sort of
00:46:16
Speaker
embroidered patches where a squadron does patches and other things got a little bit more colorful. Some of it maybe not particularly appropriate for the workplace. And then as you move to the Vietnam era, that was definitely true. Some of the things that they got
00:46:36
Speaker
sewn onto their jackets, some of the patches that they got designed while they were overseas by maybe some cottage shop that was able to create a custom patch for the pilots or that squadron. Some of those patches are definitely not appropriate for work.
00:46:51
Speaker
And so some of them are delightful because of that. And so they get interesting. And then as you moved into the modern era, you do start to get into, I would say that the A-2s got a little bit more sedate. I think the Air Force became a little bit more restrictive about how patches can be applied.
00:47:14
Speaker
And then the Navy seemed like it was pretty mercurial on a case-by-case basis where, given the advent of Top Gun, I think a lot of the younger pilots wanted to be prideful of their accomplishments or number of squadrons they had been in or maybe a number of landings that they had had. And so some of the jackets became very colorfully adorned. And my understanding was that that was
00:47:41
Speaker
sometimes frowned upon by the older pilots in the community who thought that, hey, it's not about bragging about everything that you've done. And so oftentimes you'll find that the more accomplished pilots had the more modest looking jackets with the least number of patches. So that I find interesting. Tell me about the other type of jacket that you collect, which are these punk jackets, if you will. Yeah.
00:48:08
Speaker
You've been able to really source some very special ones and they couldn't be more polar opposite than the pilot jackets. And I think that that's just such an interesting juxtaposition between owning the two types. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for going there with that. Yeah. If the pilot jacket sort of represent being called to service.
00:48:28
Speaker
responding to what your country was asking you to do, exhibiting a certain kind of bravery, then the punk rocker jackets, you're right, they're in many ways the opposite. They're sort of, you know, they were worn by folks that felt like they didn't fit in. They would never be in the military, right? That were in fact trying to rebel against sort of conventional thinking and certainly
00:48:52
Speaker
I think the punk movement came out of a skepticism of government. It was the rebellious youth of 1970s, kind of the Margaret Thatcher era. Kids couldn't get jobs. They were poor. So they were angry. So there was a mistrust of government. And so, yeah, you're right. In many ways, they were polar opposites. But what they have in common is a certain swagger.
00:49:18
Speaker
is a certain, hey, this represents who I am. And there's a certain swagger and bravery associated with taking a certain point of view. And so I would argue that maybe that's the one area that the jackets have in common, other than the fact that they're also made out of leather. But the punk rocker jackets, again, are just incredibly fascinating. Each one is unique and have hand painted things on them.
00:49:47
Speaker
band slogans or sometimes lyrics that are very moving and powerful and represents what the wearer, the original wearer was about. I kind of had my own
00:50:02
Speaker
You know, I was a bit of a rebellious youth and tried to be subversive and I had my own, you know, lame-o jacket. I couldn't really afford to get a good leather jacket. And so I had a cheapo one and, you know, patched it up and painted some of it with my favorite bands. But some of these other ones that I've collected are just works of art. In fact, my friend Ricky, who is a dyed in a wool punk rocker going way back, he's a middle-aged guy now,
00:50:30
Speaker
But he's very, very, just one of the most talented painters that I happen to know, and he still paints them, and he's still making jackets for, you know, various folks in the music community. Some of his jackets are worn by very famous folks, you know, like Travis Barker or Billy Ellish, or, you know, it runs the gamut. You know, sometimes he'll tell me like, oh, so-and-so just bought one of my jackets, you know, and I'm like,
00:50:57
Speaker
Whoa, that's amazing. He's an artist. He's an artist and I've commissioned him to make me two or three, I think three jackets. One, I grew up with a lot of these guys that were in punk rock bands here in the Seattle area. Before the grunge era, there was like a really vibrant and robust punk scene here in Seattle. I wanted to honor some of my friends. I'm still friends with them. Jim Tillman of The U-Men, Matt Wright of Gas Huffer.
00:51:26
Speaker
You know, the people that were, you know, they were the folks in Bikini Kill and Slater Kinney. And, you know, just so I put all of my favorite Seattle punk bands on this one jacket that Ricky, that I commissioned Ricky to do. And sometimes I will, you know, even after Ricky hands it off to me, I'll pick up a brush and paint some things on there to just kind of add a little bit more of my own touch to them.
00:51:51
Speaker
So I think they're just a lot of fun. And those jackets I will wear. And I'll leave it up to you, Cameron, and my friends to decide whether I'm holding them off or I just look like a middle-aged fool. But there are times when it's appropriate to put on an old crusty leather jacket. And it can be a lot of fun.
00:52:12
Speaker
I love it. I think again, the juxtaposition between collecting the two types of jackets is not only two categories that are of interest to you, but they both tell completely different stories. And I think that's kind of what it's all about.
00:52:27
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And for those who are maybe scratching their heads a little bit and wondering, how do you reconcile all of those things? Well, I kind of turned that question to the listeners of your podcast. If anyone wants to go to my Instagram is
00:52:43
Speaker
Not private you can just search for my name jonathan spose auto at jonathan spose auto is my instagram handle if you want to just kinda proves my feet and you can tell me whether i'm you know weather weather what you think of my collection.
00:52:58
Speaker
No, no, it's fantastic and I'll definitely be sure to link you up here. But the last thing that I want to talk about here is kind of the last piece of the puzzle of building this nostalgic curated lifestyle and that's cars.
Jonathan's Car Collection: Engineering Excellence
00:53:14
Speaker
I feel like your collection really spans across so many different design elements very similar to your watch collection and we're talking super sob nine hundred seventy nine Mercedes wagon in an incredible red paint vintage nine eleven vintage defender and i'm sure a few more. Is car collecting another one of those what meets the eyes sort of philosophies for you.
00:53:38
Speaker
I think it is. I think it is. And again, I can't underscore enough. Really just collect what you like and don't worry about whether
00:53:47
Speaker
it's going to go up in value or down. I mean, you don't want to lose your shirt, but you should collect for you and collect what you enjoy. And there was a time, like the Saab is a great example of where I've always, always from a young age, loved the Saab 900 Turbo. I had a chance to own like a really beat up one when I was in college and I have never, never gotten over how wonderful Turbo, that 80s Turbo lag feels. So Saab was one of those first,
00:54:17
Speaker
Car companies are commercialize the use of turbo in a very successful way on at scale you know across all their most of their nine hundred. And that's what i grew up with so i'm used to like you know you put the accelerator down you're in the right gear.
00:54:33
Speaker
and the turbo starts to spool up and then you get that push on your back where your head tilts back as the turbo kicks in. That lag is so much fun. There was a time
00:54:49
Speaker
Again, that people had kind of forgotten about those old Saab 900 turbos, especially the SPGs, and I bought one and it was great. It was one of the first SPGs sold in North America.
00:55:05
Speaker
I think they sold 11 of them that year because they were just kind of prototyping this concept of an SPG. SPG I think stands for Special Products Group. So maybe it's the sub equivalent of M or Mercedes AMG or something like that.
00:55:20
Speaker
So they didn't sell very many of them, and it was over the course of three or four years that they got a little bit more popular. That has now become the grail sob for sob collectors. And I would say that that community has grown tremendously as people have started to understand and fall in love with
00:55:37
Speaker
with how those cars drive and how oddly quirky and idiosyncratic, it's front wheel drive, the engine is actually mounted backwards. The ignition is not on the steering column, but on the center console.
00:55:52
Speaker
A lot of these really, I would argue, smart engineering things that makes the car just a joy to drive. That's just one example. I think that what my entire car collection has in common is something that was superlative in a way that from an engineering standpoint, it might have represented what was best at that time and clever at the time. They may not have been
00:56:19
Speaker
In fact, oftentimes, we're not the most commercially successful. Another car that I guess I would talk about is, I really should only have one of these, but I ended it with two 90s era BMW
00:56:33
Speaker
eight series coups. So I have the 850 CI and I also have an 850 CSI. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. And the reason why, they both look nearly identical except for some kind of bodywork things or both silver. And by the way, all of my cars are silver or kind of like a graphite gray. And that's the unifying element across all of them.
00:57:00
Speaker
The exception would be the red station wagon, and there's a fun story there too, but it started out silver. But the BMW 850s, they represent sort of the apex at that time of what BMW was doing, but in some ways they shot themselves in the foot. They made the car a little bit too imbued with technology, and a lot of times a lot of people would argue that it did not drive
00:57:25
Speaker
like a BMW. It did not have that really analog-y feel that they associated with its predecessor, which was a 635 CSI. Sure. But of course, ironically, now, if you take into consideration how modern BMWs drive,
00:57:44
Speaker
The 8 Series from the 90s is plenty analog enough. It's plenty. It's more than fine. More than fine. It's incredibly visceral, especially the 850 CSI. I mean, that V12 roars and you feel that. You practically feel the heat coming off of the front engine compartment. Right.
00:58:05
Speaker
Exhaust has a wonderful note and so so so that's the other thing about collecting whether it's watches or jackets or cars that the conventional thinking at a certain time of what the collectors are valuing.
The Evolution of Collector Perceptions
00:58:19
Speaker
That can actually change.
00:58:22
Speaker
Pretty quickly you know over the course of say four or five years and all of a sudden as that brand changes as as as that category changes and continues to evolve with new products we look back and we say,
00:58:37
Speaker
Hey, you know what? That was actually really great. That's actually one of the best BMWs ever made. And so I think that you've started to see that with the Z8 as well. The Z8 had some problems, some newfangled alloy sort of body mountings where somehow there was some deformation and people had to take them in to get them fixed. And so the values really dropped.
00:59:05
Speaker
But then now people realize, well, that's actually in the grand scheme of things. It's not that costly to do those modifications. And in fact, it really was the last of the truly beautiful, normally aspirated stick shift
00:59:23
Speaker
non-turbo roadsters that BMW has ever made, and it's a true successor to the 507 Roadster of the 50s, which are practically untouchable. I think the last one traded hands for over $2 million. So people have now realized that the Z8 is a true successor to that, and so now values have really- That's next to come. Yeah, that's right.
00:59:45
Speaker
You've had so much success in your life and no doubt to your passion and hard work. And you've really created a curated lifestyle success or not. I think you would have done that. You're too kind. I would be the first to say I've been more lucky than good. Well, I, and I would say, you know, again, joy sauce is such a wonderful culmination of your professional career and your love for collecting. And I would love to know what collecting has done for you both professionally and personally.
01:00:12
Speaker
Wonderful question. My answer is that collecting has caused me to look at the world differently. Look at the world in terms of what's valuable to you and that it's okay if it's not necessarily valuable to others yet.
01:00:30
Speaker
Because maybe the world will come around. And I think that as an entrepreneur, you are always on that knife's edge. Every single time you start a new company and you've got what you think is a very valuable core, new insight. Every time you're there, it's just you're on this knife's edge, sort of like, is this really going to fly or am I going to fail miserably? And if you go ahead and go through with it and do it and you launch that
01:00:59
Speaker
startup, you launch that company and you create that technology or that platform or that web service, that brand, you hire people, you start acquiring customers, partnerships, you grow the company, but you're not yet profitable. And maybe it takes you three years to get to profitability. You're really betting on your ability to see the future and to try to predict
01:01:27
Speaker
what people will want to love, love enough that they will pay you for it. And so collecting is similar, you know, I don't collect to
01:01:38
Speaker
to flip these things or to sell them in five years to make money. Much to my wife's chagrin, she jokes that he doesn't sell anything. And to an extent, I love having these objects around me. They do delight me. When I have my old flight jackets displayed on these mannequins in a row, it delights me to walk past them down this hallway of my house to kind of
01:02:05
Speaker
Visceral the experience and smell and touch and feel the history of these jackets so i don't. Collect these things to flip them they're not investments per se it's just nearly nice to know when the market has.
01:02:22
Speaker
when the market agrees with you. And so I think that that's what these things collecting has in common with business. You're testing yourself. Is the market going to agree with me, or is it going to disagree with me? And I think that's interesting.
Chasing the Unobtainable
01:02:38
Speaker
Amazing. Jonathan, let's wrap it up here with the collector's team rundown. You can answer these questions based on any of the items that you collect. And let's just get started. OK, go for it. What's the one that got away?
01:02:52
Speaker
a number of watches. I would say a 16 series Rolex GMT with just perfectly sort of pumpkin aged loom plots Jubilee band. You have a number of those that you're traveling, you're on business in Japan and you duck down just like a little narrow alley in
01:03:22
Speaker
around Harajuku and there's like this hole in the wall, a little vintage watch shop and you all of a sudden realize every single vintage watch here is perfect. It's absolutely perfect and amazing. And you're like, you know what? I got 20 more minutes before I have to
01:03:42
Speaker
get on the subway and make it to the next meeting across town, and you try to come back later tonight, and then you don't, right? So there's definitely a few of those. I would say that there have been some really, really gorgeous, lovely Omega Speedmaster Pros early series, maybe arrow hands.
01:04:04
Speaker
before they went up in value. I look back and I'm like, God, those are beautiful watches. Why didn't I say yes there? So I would say that there's that. I'm not sure that, again, because it's still sort of like a nascent, lesser defined collector category. I would say that with the flight jackets or the punk rocker jackets, I'm not sure that they're
01:04:30
Speaker
is as much of a concept of one that got away. They're all really, I'm truly incredibly grateful and consider myself hella lucky that I even have the honor of being a custodian of the ones that I own. And so I can't think of some ones that got away. And again, the frequency with which we add these is very low. And with cars,
01:04:56
Speaker
Oh my gosh, you know, I could remember everything. It's not everything. I could remember when Aston Martin DB five, the James Bond car, I can remember I had a line on a birch silver DB five. I happen to have a DB six, but a, but a DB five. Um, I remember a long time ago, probably when I was in my thirties and was starting to get into cars, I could remember when they were like,
01:05:24
Speaker
$140,000. And still, at least some. But now, I mean, you could look up how much they are there 10 times that. Yeah, forget it. Yeah, forget it. Exactly. And in birch silver, I mean, oh my god, I mean, I think that's perfect. That I was referring to was even a left hand drive car that was like maybe in upstate New York or something that I can't beat that. Yeah. And so and so I think that with cars, there's one of those I think older
01:05:52
Speaker
Porsche 556s. They've always been valuable, but there was a time when they were not quite the unobtanium that they are now. Yeah, exactly. I think it would have been fun. More modestly, I have an old 60s 911T. It would have been fun, which I've
01:06:15
Speaker
stealth upgraded to basically a 911 S spec. But I think it would have been fun to have picked up a 912, which is actually in some ways more fun to drive. And now prices of those have really gone up to where, you know, maybe it's a little less fun to collect, but still very good, very excellent car to buy. No doubt.
01:06:38
Speaker
How about the on deck circle? So what's maybe something that you're actively hunting for? We could try and manifest and put into the ether here. Yeah. So one of my favorite watches in my collection is a 70s era wood dial gold day date. And it's got those, yeah, they're, they're beautiful. And again, you know, just buy what you love because there was a time certainly when they first came out, people hated them.
01:07:08
Speaker
That's why there are two of them. A lot of the dealers, as you know, Cameron, they took the dials out and swapped them for just the regular champagne, standard champagne dials because they couldn't sell them. People didn't want a wood dial watch. And each one varies too, which is very cool.
01:07:25
Speaker
Exactly. And that's exactly my point. I would say on deck might be, I have a birch dial one, which is kind of nice birch. It kind of comes off a little bit more orange looking with these fine lines, but they had a mahogany dial and they had an oak dial. And there was even a fourth one
01:07:45
Speaker
is a cherry, but anyway, it'd be really fun to collect all four. Have a set. Yeah, have a set. That may be on deck. And then I'm not sure about flight jackets and things like that, but I would say that with older bespoke clothing,
01:08:04
Speaker
The aforementioned Taylor to JFK, where he went exclusively. JFK bought, a lot of times people thought that he wore Brooks Brothers. I think that when he was a junior senator, he did wear Brooks Brothers and Jay Press. But when he was president, he had all of his suits made at Chip Davidson. And so Chip was the name of the store. The company name is Chip Davidson. And Davidson, this elder Davidson senior, was
01:08:33
Speaker
JFK's Taylor and I think There's from the 60s early 70s anything from Chip Davison I think is very collectible blazers suits You know if you're lucky to find something that's near your size and you can take it to your favorite good Taylor to get it tweaked to fit you I think that that's I think that's also stuff that should be on deck for anybody who's into Into you know really great clothing
01:09:03
Speaker
I think now that Kilgore is no longer around and they were the exclusive, not exclusive, but they were one of the most popular tailors to people like Fred Astaire, Cary Grant, who's one of my favorite actors of all time, Cary Grant had almost all of his suits made of Kilgore.
01:09:24
Speaker
Now that they're no longer in existence, I think that they closed and then I think Davis and Sons hired all of their cutters and took over their orders. I think vintage Kilgore suits should be very, very collectible and that would be fun to collect. Yeah, that would be special. Yeah.
01:09:48
Speaker
How about the unobtainable? So this is one that's maybe it's too expensive or in a museum, private collection is just complete unobtainable. Yeah, I'm going to give you a couple of those. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about TV and movie memorabilia.
01:10:09
Speaker
I actually wish that I had some artifacts or things from three shows. The original Star Trek, the original series, whether it's like a tricorder or a phaser, there's somebody that has, I think it's Paul Allen that has Captain Kirk's chair.
01:10:32
Speaker
Right. That is in the museum, in the MOPOP Museum of Popular Culture here in Seattle, behind glass. So there's stuff like that that I find terribly interesting. Another show that I loved was the recent, well, maybe it's now been about 15 years, but there was a reboot of Battlestar Galactica.
01:10:54
Speaker
where the costumes and the props were just amazing. And I think Commander Odama's desk was available at auction at one point. It sold for hardly anything because nobody was really kind of looking for that stuff. I have no idea what that would sell for now. So yeah, so there are things like that that I think for me these days would be kind of unobtainable because of their cost and extreme rarity and that they're not even
01:11:23
Speaker
available for sale. The ultimate thing would be one of the spinners, one of the cars, the flying cars, which was a rolling chassis and was a real car that they drove on the set from the original Blade Runner. Yeah, that'd be pretty cool.
01:11:40
Speaker
And again, the aforementioned late Paul Allen has one that's hanging off of the ceiling like it's flying at MOPOP. And then the second one is owned, it's in private hands, a Japanese collector and he's restored it. And then there's a third car and no one knows where that is.
01:12:02
Speaker
Super interesting. Yeah. It'll pop up one day. Yeah, right. So yeah, who knows? You know, it's strange affectations and the collector gene, you know, it takes us to, to, to crazy places.
Admiration for Fellow Collectors
01:12:15
Speaker
The page one rewrite. So if you could collect anything besides your current collections, money, no object, what would it be? Oh gosh, it's an interesting question. I might say a certain kind of house.
01:12:30
Speaker
You know, wouldn't it be neat to own a Frank Lloyd Wright in the Chicago area? Right. And then a Wexler or a Lautner, a John Lautner in Palm Springs. Yeah, a Neutra, like all these old mid-century guys.
01:12:47
Speaker
Exactly. I think that that could be, I think, and maybe that was just sort of an interesting off the top of my head response, because I think I read about, there are some people that do do that, celebrities, people like Brad Pitt. He's very, I remember, we do own a mid-century modern house in Palm Springs that we like to go down to. Again, we're just so fortunate. I remember
01:13:11
Speaker
And no one was buying, Palm Springs was not popular at the time. This was almost 30 years ago in my...
01:13:20
Speaker
my wife, my girlfriend at the time, took me down to Palm Springs for a weekend, a birthday weekend, and I fell in love with the desert. And I started looking at houses, and I couldn't believe how inexpensive they were. They couldn't even give them away. And so we bought a mid-century modern house, and we'd really been into that. And I know, Cameron, that's an interest area of yours as well. But then maybe like,
01:13:46
Speaker
15 or 20 years later, we heard that Brad Pitt was shopping for houses in Palm Springs and that he kind of has a philosophy that he applies to buying houses that's almost like
01:13:59
Speaker
how we collect watches or cars or anything, that he likes to curate a certain type of house so that when he's there, there's some, you know, he enjoys being at one house just as much as the other house and that they have some common themes. And so I think that could be an interesting category, but probably not financially practical for me to do that.
01:14:25
Speaker
How about the goat? Who do you look up to in the collecting world or admire that's a great collector out there? Yeah. I guess because we were just talking about watches, I think John Goldberger, of course, everyone admires John. I'm very honored when he likes the occasional posts that I make. I'm like, oh my gosh, I got blessed by the top guy or something. But the reason I admire him is not because he has a
01:14:51
Speaker
an extensive collection which he does but it's that he very much practices that sense of. Just buy what you like and there are times if you follow him which i'm sure you do camera if you follow him on social media. Most of the time he's posting about something that isn't necessarily super valuable.
01:15:13
Speaker
It is always though, beautiful. It is always quality. It is always tasteful and interesting and there's something unique about it.
01:15:23
Speaker
But it isn't always like the most expensive thing. And I wonder sometimes if there's like a reverse Heisenberg principle that gets applied where he's almost sort of affecting market values. And you see John Berger post a certain watch and all of a sudden everybody's like, oh, what's that? And they're looking for it now. It's no doubt that he has a significant amount of influence and he does have
01:15:47
Speaker
some of the best taste in watches, whether you care about vintage Cartier or not. I mean, his collection is incredible. But what I love is Hill Post.
01:15:54
Speaker
This tiny small little vintage Cartier platinum on a bracelet ultra rare watch And then he'll he'll post the new bronze Tudor black bay and that's his summer watch and I love that and yeah, he is also one of those guys that buys what he likes and and Anybody i've seen that You know videos of him talking about all this stuff and people ask him should I buy this should I buy that? And he says just buy buy what you like? Yeah, that's right, and you can't go wrong
01:16:21
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I would say also in terms of clothing, kind of his equivalent is Alessandro Squarsi, an Italian. Absolutely. Yeah. That guy, I mean, first of all, that gentleman looks great in everything. It doesn't matter if he's wearing a Savio world suit on him, likely the suit that he wears more is more Italian made. Or he could be wearing some sort of American heritage wear
01:16:50
Speaker
old wool plaid mackinaw and looks great and so and I like that he mixes old and new and I like that he has a point of view and I think that's that's what makes collecting fun is consistent with just collect what you like don't worry about what's kind of
01:17:08
Speaker
You know what other people are doing what's what's high value versus low value just collect what i think as long as you have a differentiated point of view overtime your collection will take on.
01:17:22
Speaker
almost its own persona and its own direction and its own sort of set of values. So I admire both, I think both John Goldberger and Alessandro Squarzi for having very strong points of view about what works for them, what's high quality, and they even break some rules in the process of collecting. So he's another one that I admire.
01:17:49
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know if you, you own a copy, but they did a book together and it's one of my favorite coffee table books that I own. I did not know that the truth. I'll send you the link to that. Yes. Cause they're like best friends. Oh my gosh. I actually didn't even know that. I will send you a link to that book after this cause it's, it's a must have.
01:18:09
Speaker
Yeah, that's cool. And then other people I admire for the way that they collect are not necessarily people who are well known or famous. It's more that they're friends of mine and you just have a sense that, wow, what they're doing is very consistent.
01:18:28
Speaker
It's always to a high quality bar. There's a strong point of view. And in short order, you understand who they are and what they stand for. And I think that that's what's neat about collecting is that it's a way to kind of exude what you're about. Absolutely. Do you enjoy the hunt or the ownership more?
The Joy of Ownership Over the Hunt
01:18:48
Speaker
I think if I'm really honest, I think I enjoy the ownership more. I don't know what that says about me.
01:18:54
Speaker
I think it's inherently a little materialistic to collect for sure. And maybe this makes me a little bit even more materialistic is that I like holding it in my hand. I like smelling it. I like connecting with it that, oh my God, this watch was worn by that person or this jacket was worn by that person. That's super interesting. So I think owning it is,
01:19:20
Speaker
if I had to choose, both are really enjoyable, the hunt and ownership. It's a tough question. Most importantly, do you feel that you were born with the collector's gene? I must have been because
01:19:35
Speaker
I think it's always kind of been there. And I don't know what, what is it about our neural, uh, if this is a neural atypical thing that there was some day, you know, defined, but, uh, I do think it is kind of almost like a gene or like a bug that, that, that's intrinsic to who you are. Uh, because I know people who don't collect who are kind of the opposite, you know, they really pride themselves. And I, in some ways envy them, like they have a,
01:20:02
Speaker
you know, like a capsule wardrobe and they have, they own six or seven outfits and everything's black and everything mixed in matches. And that's all they're doing. That's all they do. And they own maybe one watch or no watch and they own one car. Uh, and they're not affected the way that we are. And, and I do think it's sort of fundamental to the person. I think that you are born with it.
01:20:27
Speaker
Amazing. Jonathan, your knowledge and your passion is immense. I truly can't thank you enough for coming on and joining me today. I feel like we could have done this for another three hours. We have a lot more to talk about. We will definitely have to do this again. And again, truly, thank you for taking the time to join me on Collector's Dream Radio.
01:20:45
Speaker
You're very welcome, Cameron. Keep doing amazing work that you're doing with your podcast and with your other guests. I'm truly honored that you considered including me. You've catalyzed me to think a little bit differently about why I do all of this, and maybe some interesting new directions. Amazing. I appreciate it, and I can't wait to chat again soon. Yeah, likewise. Take care. Have a great weekend. All right, that does it for this episode. Thank you all for listening to Collector's Gene Radio.