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Jeff Stein - On The Dash - Heuer's Legacy Through The Compendium
1.1k Plays1 year ago
Jeff Stein is my guest today and I think we all owe this guy a big thank you for his scholarship and efforts he’s put forth for the watch community. An attorney by day and collector at heart, Jeff is attributed with starting and running the vintage Heuer compendium known as Onthedash. After discovering a Heuer dash clock back in the day, Jeff went down the same rabbit hole a lot of us do and started collecting. But after getting a sense that the community needed a place to go and have resources for all things vintage Heuer, Jeff sought out to start the website as we know it today and has grown it ever since. We’ve gotten to know each other a little bit over the last few years and his knowledge and willingness to share never seizes to amaze me. We chat about the life cycles of collecting, how he middle manned a watch I sold to the Heuer archive, and the history of partnerships such as Abercrombie and Heuer. He’s a friend, a fantastic collector, and as knowledgeable about the things he loves as one could be. So without further adieu, this is Jeff Stein, for Collectors Gene Radio.
On The Dash - http://www.onthedash.com/
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Transcript
Preference for History in Watches
00:00:00
Speaker
Right now, if you said to me, here is a mint version of a Norwegian Bund that is untouched the way it left the factory. And here behind door number two is the one coming from the 60 year old pilot. I'm going to take that one every time.
Introduction to Collector's Gene Radio
00:00:24
Speaker
What's going on everybody and 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. 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 collector's gene radio.
Meet Jeff Stein, Attorney and Watch Collector
00:00:49
Speaker
Jeff Stein is my guest today and I think we all owe this guy a big thank you for his scholarship and efforts he's put forth for the watch community.
00:00:56
Speaker
and attorney by day and collector at heart, Jeff is attributed with starting and running the vintage heuer compendium known as On the Dash. After discovering the heuer dash clock back in the day, Jeff went down the same rabbit hole a lot of us do and started collecting. But after getting a sense that the community needed a place to go and have resources for all things vintage heuer, Jeff sought out to start the website as we know it today and has grown it ever since.
00:01:21
Speaker
We've gotten to know each other a little bit over the last few years and his knowledge and willingness to share never ceases to amaze me. We chat about the life cycles of collecting and how he made old man to watch I sold to the Heuer archive and the history of partnerships such as Abercrombie and Heuer. He's a friend, a fantastic collector, and as knowledgeable about the things he loves as one could be. So without further ado, this is Jeff Stein for collector's gene radio.
00:01:50
Speaker
Jeff Stein, what an honor and a pleasure to have you on Collector's Zoom Radio today. It's great to be here. I've been looking forward to this. All right, Jeff. So it's 1998.
Discovery of Heuer Timers and Community Building
00:01:59
Speaker
You're deep in an eBay search. What do you find? I registered for eBay exactly 25 years ago. So it was November, 1998. And a couple of years before that, call it 1996 out at Monterey, the historic weekend.
00:02:19
Speaker
I had seen, first time I'd seen in the metal, Hoyer dashboard timers, Master Time, Monte Carlo, Sebring, et cetera. The first time I saw those Hoyer dashboard timers, I was just blown away. The design, the construction, the history of them being used in race and rally cars. So a couple of years later, this thing called eBay started.
00:02:48
Speaker
And I registered November 1998, and I was searching. I didn't care about chronographs, didn't care about Hoyer or other brands, but I was all about the dashboard timers. Probably the most interesting aspect of that was back in 1998, you could see the names of the winners and all the bidders. Not necessarily the real name, but the email address.
00:03:18
Speaker
So the beginning of the Hoyer community, and I imagine other watch collecting communities as well, was formed through eBay auctions. There were a handful of us that were bidding on the dashboard timers. You learned who would bid high. You learned who would bid low. We had kind of a DIB system.
00:03:43
Speaker
If I bought this one, then my friend in England would get the next one and a friend in Germany might get the next one. But the key to this was that you could see and get the email of everyone who had bid. So the beginning of the community was, you know, a network, an email network, because, you know, no discussion forums, no Instagram, no Facebook.
00:04:10
Speaker
The beginnings of all this was the guys who were bidding on vintage Hoyer dashboard timers on eBay. Wow. I mean, it's not very common to have a dashboard clock be your real first foray into watch collecting. I mean, were you going to put this in a car or was this going to be on your desk at your law firm?
Dashboard Timers to Chronographs
00:04:31
Speaker
I was really collecting them just as, you know, beautiful mechanical objects.
00:04:37
Speaker
They were more attainable back then. The prices were more reasonable. But yes, I always had a couple on my desk. The Master Time was showing the time of day, the Monte Carlo, which is the 12-hour stopwatch. On a given day, it might be recording my billable hours. That was the origin. I was not really interested in the chronographs. They seemed too big. I don't know what I was thinking.
00:05:07
Speaker
It really took me from about 1998 into about 2002 to make the transition from the dashboard timers to the chronographs. And so where do things go from there? Because if anyone's seen you're talking and watches episode, it seems like the buying spree went from the dashboard clock to pretty much getting your hands on anything and everything that you could. I guess, you know,
00:05:32
Speaker
A footnote to this was that when I launched the On The Dash website, which was February of 2003, so that's 20 years ago, a full 20 years and counting, there were about 80 guys that I sent the email to announcing the website. So if you said how big was the community 20 years ago, the answer was probably about 80 people.
00:06:01
Speaker
Where's that list today? I still have that list of the original 80 and there are a handful that are still involved, but obviously the vintage warrior community has become much larger and global. When I started the website on the dash, the idea was I was going to cover the dashboard timers. Uh, somebody else was going to cover the chronographs.
00:06:29
Speaker
I owned very few chronographs by then, probably a handful. And to make a long story short, he never really followed through. And the dashboard timers were pretty easy. You could draw on the back of an envelope the different models, the different versions, the executions. That was easy.
00:06:50
Speaker
When you start trying to do the family tree or taxonomy of the chronographs, it's a lot more complicated. Right now, OnTheDash has data and photographs for almost 600 different chronographs. So it's been gradual, and I mean, my transition
00:07:16
Speaker
From dashboard timers into chronographs, you know, again, 20 years ago was that I already had a few dashboard timers that became doubles or, you know, we're no longer.
00:07:30
Speaker
items that I wanted to keep, so I would sell a couple of those, buy a couple of chronographs, but literally my first Hoyer chronographs were pretty much funded by a briefcase full of dashboard timers that I had a great opportunity to buy, and that really funded the move into the chronographs.
00:07:55
Speaker
So was the impetus for On the Dash a ways for other collectors to have a source or was it more so for you to have a place to store all of your knowledge and catalog all of your findings in an organized fashion? It just seemed so obvious and so useful. And at the time I started it, it also seemed fairly easy. I couldn't understand, you know, watches are pretty easy to identify.
00:08:25
Speaker
They have reference numbers. They have model names. They have catalogs and of course the same for the dashboard timers. I was really doing it for the community for the purpose of sharing this knowledge and it just seems strange to me that this didn't exist.
00:08:43
Speaker
for every major brand in the world. Like, you know, why wasn't there a similar taxonomy, a family tree for Omega, for Breitling, for Rolex? So it struck me as something that would be very useful and also something that was attainable. In other words, if there are 575
00:09:11
Speaker
models that on the dash, um, sure, maybe there are another 50 that I could cover or you could subdivide executions, but it just seemed doable. It seemed useful and it was a fun way, you know, to learn about the history of this brand.
Phases of Collecting: Evolution and Selectivity
00:09:30
Speaker
I would have to assume the collecting journey never really ends for you. I mean, do you still get as excited by where and collecting today? Oh, absolutely. I mean,
00:09:40
Speaker
I think there are different phases and cycles that a collector goes through. And certainly, when the watches were more affordable, when you could buy just about any Autavia, in the early days, we're paying $300 for a black one, $400 for a white one, $500 if it had a fourth hand for GMT. So they were more attainable
00:10:09
Speaker
And of course, that was kind of the expansive phase, if you will, of my collecting. You had Mark 1. Let me have a look at Mark 2, and then I get Mark 2, and I want Mark 3. So all of a sudden, you've collected the entire set. I'll give you an example. A couple of weeks ago,
00:10:29
Speaker
on my desk, on my wrist now, there's a Hoyer triple calendar chronograph from the 1940s in the waterproof case. So I've had a lot of the ones over the years with the square pushers and the snap backs.
00:10:47
Speaker
But this is one I've been looking to buy for a long time and then you know what happened. One came along on eBay and then a couple of weeks later the next one came along through a private channel. So I've literally been looking for this watch probably for 10 or 12 years and now you know one is on the desk and one is going to be in the mail soon.
00:11:12
Speaker
Amazing. Yeah, I was gonna ask you about 1940s Hoyer because it's an area that you and I both love Mainly chronographs around this time lots of radium but also some of the best glossy black dials even gilt dials to Radium is fairly controversial. Is that something that that doesn't really bother you and you're not worried about it And you don't have to stay away from it. I
00:11:34
Speaker
Well, the radium dials are in the bank safe deposit box. So I do limit my exposure that way.
Heuer's Pivotal Years: 1935-1945
00:11:45
Speaker
They're not in the house or most of them are in the bank. I viewed the period really 1935 to 1945 as really for Hoyer, for Breitling, for so many of the brands.
00:12:02
Speaker
It really laid the groundwork for the catalogs. They basically were still in those catalogs. If you look at the expansion of movements for Hoyer in 1935, they were using the lander on 13, then you saw the Valjo 22 and then the 71. But if you look 10 years later, I mean, it was crazy.
00:12:30
Speaker
Valjoux 69, 22, 23, 71, 72, 72C. This was the decade when the catalogs really exploded. I really like this era. I like the look of the watches. I like the history of the watches, all else being equal. I'd rather have the gold leaf hands or the sword hands rather than the radium.
00:12:58
Speaker
But I just think it's a great decade. It's a great period. I've got the posting that's been on my drive for a couple of years now about sort of the field guide to the land run 13, how to identify those, how to collect them. But right now it's still kind of a no man's land this decade, 1935 to 1945.
00:13:24
Speaker
So I enjoy it. I think they're great watches. The fact that not much has been written makes them, you know, you can get them under the radar because people don't know the reference numbers. They don't always know the movement. So yeah, that's definitely a sweet spot for me. Call it 1935 to 1945.
00:13:50
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, although I sold my 1940s Hoyer, I am honored to say that I sold it to the Hoyer archive and our friend Nicholas over there. But for me, the best part was that he and I were trying to figure out the payment. And it was getting a little complicated with their invoice system. So he messaged me one morning and said, hey, Cam, I just spoke to Jeff. He's going to pay you for the watch and get it to me somehow. And I'm going to scrap with him as him and I have a few other items to take care of anyhow. And I just thought to myself,
00:14:19
Speaker
how cool that was and how there are truly not many brands, if any at all, with the history and lineage that Hoyer has that would do something like that. To have just a historically significant collector like yourself be a middleman for payments and collecting watches for the brand and their archive, I just thought that that was so fun and interesting.
00:14:44
Speaker
Well, it is kind of interesting. There are, you know, a lot of collectors, not really collectors, but, you know, owners of watches. If they were to deal with any of the major watch brands, and I've, I've had this experience with Hoyer and a couple of other brands, you know, the Swiss way is to say it's week 17 and we will pay you on Tuesday of week 33. The money will be there at 9 AM.
00:15:12
Speaker
All of which is true and reliable, but there have definitely been some situations for Tag Heuer, even for other brands, even for some other collectors. When you talk to the owner of the watch and they're ready to sell and you say, I can meet you at the bank tomorrow and pay you cash,
00:15:33
Speaker
that has a lot more appeal than pulling out the calendar and trying to figure out what week 33 might mean. So it's been fun. I've met friends, people that have become collecting buddies through these scenarios of literally meeting at the bank,
00:15:55
Speaker
giving them the cash, picking up the watch, shipping it to a friend. It's kind of a fun aspect of the hobby, if you will. What's your relationship with the brand Hoyer today and the team over there? I see you in Monaco at the Grand Prix and having some fun, but what's your relationship as a whole with the brand? My relationship with the brand has been through many different phases over the years.
00:16:23
Speaker
I remember the thrill when I launched On The Dash 20 years ago and I didn't have, I don't think I had a single contact at Tag Heuer. And then I got an email message from Jack Heuer, unsolicited email saying he had seen the website and he thought it was great. So that initiated my relationship with Jack Heuer, which has been fantastic, a great
00:16:50
Speaker
source of friendship and information over the years. Currently, a couple of years ago, I retired from my law firm. I still practice on a freelance basis for a couple of clients. But with the retirement from my law firm, I began consulting with Tag Heuer on a more regular basis and undertaking different projects for them.
00:17:20
Speaker
My main contact is our good friend Nick Beback. We're in touch all the time and a very interesting range of projects over the last couple of years. What are your thoughts on the direction of Hoyer as a brand today and the things like their Glassbox models?
00:17:42
Speaker
I think they're going the right direction. You know, there were some tough years when you grimaced, you know, seeing some of the models that were coming out, call it the grand career of years around 2008, where you just kind of looked at some of the models and you, you just were waiting for the next creative director, the great, you know, the next design or whatever. I like, you know, what Tag Heuer is doing now.
00:18:10
Speaker
I think there's some great Carreras. I love the 42 millimeter, which is not the glass box. There's a 42 millimeter Carrera. There's a 44 millimeter Carrera with a bezel. And then there's the 39 millimeter glass box. The 42 really works best for me.
00:18:34
Speaker
I like the glass box. I think the second generation is a real improvement over the first generation. So I do like the 39 millimeter glass box, but all else being equal, I'm a big fan of the 42 millimeter Carrera.
00:18:52
Speaker
Let's talk about one of the greatest partnerships of all time in the watch world and specifically with Hoyer, which is Abercrombie and Fitch.
Abercrombie Partnership and Adventurer Watches
00:19:00
Speaker
What do you know about the partnership, how it came to fruition, and how it got us here today with these watches being extremely rare and collectible? Well, it's funny. One of the great topics in the Hoyer world or the Tag Hoyer world is kind of
00:19:17
Speaker
what to do and how to think and how to approach Abercrombie and Fitch. You say Abercrombie and Fitch now
00:19:26
Speaker
to anyone under the age, and I don't know whether to peg it at 40 or even 50. But people think of Abercrombie and Fitch as a low-quality mall brand. You know, walk in any major mall in America, there's an Abercrombie and Fitch, there are the catalogs, there are the posters, there are the whole positioning of the brand. Roll back the clock,
00:19:54
Speaker
call it 1930s, 40s, 50s, an Abercrombie and Fitch was something entirely different. There was one store on Madison Avenue in New York. There was another store in Chicago. I forget the exact details, but these, you know, I want to say seven or eight floors in New York and
00:20:20
Speaker
What these two stores were, the one in New York and the one in Chicago, is these were the destinations for adventurers. These were the highest quality goods for the hunter, the driver, the climber, the fisherman, somebody that was going on a safari or somebody that was going mountain climbing or even somebody that was going on a road trip vacation
00:20:50
Speaker
The best of the best was at Abercrombie and Fitch. Absolute top quality fishing gear, guns, watches, clothes. So the real disconnect right now is looking at these incredible watches from the 30s, 40s, 50s into the 60s and 70s. They say Abercrombie and Fitch on the dial. You know those were the very best
00:21:19
Speaker
watches that Hoyer made, but right now people just look at it and wonder what does this have to do with Abercrombie and Fitch that's down at the mall. And the way it worked was that the head of Abercrombie and Fitch would visit the Hoyer family in Switzerland once a year, and they would brainstorm and whiteboard ideas for watches. So
00:21:48
Speaker
the Seafarer, the Solenar, you know, different types of stopwatches. A whole variety of timepieces were created by Hoyer for the Abercrombie and Fitch partnership, if you will. And they always used the best of the best. There were certain models like the Solenar
00:22:12
Speaker
that Hoyer made in either stainless steel or chrome-plated case. Abercrombie and Fitch, they're all steel. Abercrombie wanted the best, the highest quality, the most rugged. Again, because they were outfitting people to go on expeditions or all types of adventures. Within the Abercrombie and Fitch store on Madison Avenue,
00:22:43
Speaker
They had fly fishing pools, they had a gun shop, they had a gun range, they had watchmakers. It was amazing what these stores represented in the 40s, 50s, 60s, etc.
00:22:58
Speaker
I have a pretty good collection of the catalogs and just interesting to visualize who their customers were then, particularly compared to who their customers are today. I want to go back to something that you had mentioned earlier, which is this philosophy or the stages of the collecting life cycle.
00:23:23
Speaker
I would love to know if there's any stages within there that you love the most. Do you enjoy being the completionist or the consolidation phase? I know selling things sometimes is always hard from the collection. I mean, I think this is a huge topic. I think each individual who is collecting anything, whether it's transistor radios or watches or barware,
00:23:52
Speaker
I think it's natural to go through a cycle. The early years, you're trying to call it a checklist. Again, six executions of the GMT Autavia, I would want to see what all six were. I never owned all six at the same time, but I would say
00:24:16
Speaker
I think it's common that in the sort of discovery or expansion phase, I think collectors are looking to identify what are the differences. When did the bezel change? When did the registers change? When did the bracelet change? So for me,
00:24:35
Speaker
I don't know how it would all be different if I didn't have this website that I'm trying to keep current and add information to not every day, but certainly on an ongoing basis.
00:24:52
Speaker
You know, I should be able to explore this without collecting it. You know, certainly there are Ferrari experts that don't have a garage full of Ferraris. Can't I be a vintage Hoyer expert and not have a house full of watches? So I, you know, I ask myself that question, but I think it's natural
00:25:18
Speaker
that in the early years of collecting, there is this expansion, discovery, trying to see everything, form opinions, gather the information. And then I think, you know, putting aside the financial aspects, I think just the management aspects of owning too many watches kind of takes you to the next phase when you should say to yourself, okay, I've seen
00:25:46
Speaker
All six versions of this watch, which one is my keeper? I'm no longer going to own six of them for the sake of doing the side by side photos, et cetera, et cetera. Easier said than done. No, exactly. But I think it just comes, you know, not just
00:26:07
Speaker
a financial perspective, but just a management perspective. How many watches can you keep track of, keep them running, keep them insured, you know, know where they are, which one is in the safe and which is at the bank and which is in the desk drawer. So I think it's very natural that most collectors, I think, enter a phase of being more selective
00:26:35
Speaker
call it a consolidation phase. But like I say, right now, I was thrilled to see that triple calendar in the waterproof case. I've been looking for that for a long time. I don't know if it's part of the permanent collection yet through the first couple of weeks. It's the honeymoon. I like it a lot. But I think there is definitely a cycle to this within one category.
00:27:03
Speaker
and even between different categories like modern watches, you've got pre-owned, you've got neo-vintage, you've got independent. I think at a certain point a lot of collectors are saying, okay, I've been in vintage dive watches, I've been in vintage pilot watches, I've been in Cartier, but let me have a look around and see what else is out there.
00:27:32
Speaker
You know, I would say over the last few years of my career, collecting career, as I've gotten probably more selective in which vintage hoyers or vintage chronographs generally I'm looking for, I've also begun to explore some different categories in the watch world. As someone who's an expert, and truly someone that people come to for advice,
00:27:59
Speaker
What is your advice on when you're looking for vintage Heuer in particular, you know, condition versus provenance?
The Value of a Watch's Story Over Condition
00:28:07
Speaker
And do you care about things like relumed hands and refinished dials? I mean, that is, you know, one of the classic debates, you know, condition versus provenance, provenance.
00:28:22
Speaker
versus the story. My own preference is, you know, there are collectors and dealers who say condition, condition, condition. It's all about condition, location, location, location, as in the real estate world. Currently for me, I have over the last couple of years, I've gotten more interested in, in the watches, you know, that come with the story.
00:28:49
Speaker
Over the last couple of years, I bought a dive watch, a Ben Ross Type 1 from a Navy diver who wore the watch every day throughout his career. I bought a Norwegian Hoyer. It's called a Norwegian Bund. And I bought it from the pilot. Again, it was issued to him in 1977, and he wore it for his 20-year career. And I bought it, you know, with his
00:29:19
Speaker
patches with his helmet, with his flight suit, with his leather jacket. But of course, the great thing that came with it was the one page letter from him describing his career. I recently found a Belgian Air Force Carrera, same situation
00:29:41
Speaker
indirectly it came from the pilot with his log, with the metal, kind of with the whole package. So right now, if you said to me, here is a mint version of a Norwegian Bund that is untouched the way it left the factory.
00:30:05
Speaker
And here behind door number two is the one coming from the 60-year-old pilot. I'm going to take that one every time. I love this story. I love thinking about the life that the watch lived, where it got the nicks, where it got the scratches. You know, sometimes it's a romantic figure like a Navy diver or a pilot.
00:30:34
Speaker
Sometimes it's just a fisherman that had a seafarer that he wore for 20 years from 1970 to 1990. That doesn't have the helmet and the patches and the metal and the jacket, but I really like that watch as opposed to the mint one that you know really nothing about the life it lived.
00:31:04
Speaker
Jeff, I'm curious to know what your thoughts are on the Hoyer Verona because it's a watch that I found recently and discovered recently and kind of fell in love with it. The Verona is a real interesting watch in the Hoyer lineup and definitely one that's under the radar.
The Heuer Verona: A Connoisseur's Choice
00:31:22
Speaker
I'll call it a connoisseur's watch of the Hoyer chronographs from the 1970s. Let me give you my sort of perspective on this.
00:31:33
Speaker
I think of the automatic watches, chronographs of the 70s, Hoyer's versions as really falling into three generations. The first generation of automatic chronographs for Hoyer were the launch models, if you will.
00:31:51
Speaker
There was the Carrera, the Autavia, the Monaco. Of course, the Autavia and Carrera were existing models that had to have larger cases to accommodate the new automatic movements. The Monaco, of course, was entirely new. So those three were the first generation of Hoyer's automatic chronographs. The second generation followed pretty quickly
00:32:21
Speaker
And these were the real 1970s huge lumps of steel. There was the calculator, there was the Montreal, there was the Silverstone, which was actually kind of a toned down version of the Monaco. But this second generation, and then there were also sort of the manual counterparts at the same time, the Temporada and the Easy Rider.
00:32:49
Speaker
All these models really represent the excesses of the 1970s. Huge lumps of steel, bright colors. This was going beyond the first generation launch models and saying, by God, it's the 70s and we're blowing the top off of these models. The third generation came in about 1977.
00:33:18
Speaker
And these models were the Verona, the Cortina, the Yarama, the Daytona. These models, this third generation, really dialed back, you know, the whole style of the first and second generations. They were definitely past, you know, the excesses of the calculator and the Montreal. And a watch like the Verona,
00:33:48
Speaker
really looks like a 1960s classic style chronograph that was enlarged just enough to house the new movement. Same for the Arama, a very classic looking watch, same for the Cortina and the Daytona that had the integrated bracelets. But I think this third generation of Hoyer's automatic chronographs, I think they're
00:34:17
Speaker
often overlooked. I don't think a lot were produced because of the economic and courts crisis, but they're great looking watches. And again, I think they're really connoisseurs watches of the Heuer 1970s automatic chronographs. Well, I got my eyes on a Verona. So if anyone is listening out there that has a few that they're looking to get rid of, definitely shoot me a message.
00:34:46
Speaker
All right. Good luck with that. And I'll take your while we're at it. Yeah. Yeah. Why don't you just, you know, put Jeff and I in a group chat and just make something happen. All right.
00:34:56
Speaker
When people reach out to you, I'm sure they're always asking, hey, does this watch
Authenticity in Vintage Hoyers
00:35:02
Speaker
look correct? I'm interested in buying it. Does this case match up with this dial? And a previous guest and a mutual friend of ours, Ben Clymer, said obviously that the industry of vintage watches is savage at best. And there are so many hazards when it comes to this stuff and yellow flashing lights. And in vintage Hoyer particularly,
00:35:25
Speaker
How can you verify, besides on the dash, just you personally, verify correct case dials to correct dials versus a dial swap in a different case? I mean, there's so many little nuances. Well, you can go a certain distance just from physically looking at the watch. A friend of mine who's a very serious collector, probably about a year, maybe 18 months ago,
00:35:53
Speaker
He sent me a lot of good photographs of a hoyer from the early 40s that I had never seen before. It was an Abercrombie & Fitch hoyer, co-branded in a black gilt dial. It was a model I'd never seen before, but looking at the movement, looking at the marking, looking at the serial number, looking at 10 different things,
00:36:22
Speaker
highly confident that it was authentic. I've never seen another one. I had never seen one like it, but I'm highly confident that it was legit. By the same token, I could see a very familiar model come in this afternoon or somebody would ask me about that dead stock meant perfect. And it might have been the 20th one I've seen.
00:36:49
Speaker
So you always want to ask the question, where's this coming from? Who's the seller? What can they tell you about their history with the watch? I think Ben referred to it as vintage watches in general being sort of a savage world. I can honestly say that in a little over 20 years of collecting the chronographs,
00:37:17
Speaker
I got one guy that sent me a refinished dial that I didn't detect. One guy sent me an empty envelope. Other than that, maybe I've been pretty cautious and you hear the stories and you see the put together watches across a lot of different brands. I think if you're careful
00:37:44
Speaker
and either become an expert or connect with experts. I don't think I don't think there'll be too many disappointments. Just as long as people don't bug you too much, but utilize the website and there's amazing resources there for sure. And I know you're always happy to help people too. Well, it's exciting. I mean, this morning I had messages on Instagram from somebody that had a fantastic looking
00:38:14
Speaker
Landron 13, a single pusher. He was worried because the movement wasn't signed Hoyer. It wasn't signed anything. It was just a blank movement. It looked fantastic. I asked him to send me the serial number. He did. It was perfect. I was happy to write back to him and say, the watch looks great. The movement should be unmarked. Go for it. So that's a fun aspect of the hobby.
00:38:44
Speaker
Before we wrap it up with the collector's gene rundown, I'd love to know from you what collecting has meant to you both professionally and personally, and why you feel it's been such an important place for you to spend excess energy.
The Collector Community's Rewards
00:38:59
Speaker
The most incredible thing about this collecting hobby has been the community. Again, it started in
00:39:09
Speaker
2003 with an email to 80 friends, 80 people who I knew. Since then, there have been incredible get-togethers, events, dinners, Geneva, New York, Monaco, whatever. Running along the lake in Geneva, I was thinking, early one morning, I'm thinking, this has been a pretty good hobby. This has taken me to some interesting places.
00:39:37
Speaker
But more than the places, it's just the incredible community of people, knowing that you can reach out to a certain expert in a certain brand. Sometimes you want to become an expert yourself. Sometimes you just want to call a friend. When I got that Ben Russ Type 1, the last thing in the world I wanted to do was become a Ben Russ expert.
00:40:06
Speaker
But I found a good guy who became a good watch collecting friend who was very knowledgeable in this area. So no doubt about it, the most rewarding, gratifying aspect of this has been being a part of a wonderful, you know, sharing, giving community of collectors.
00:40:31
Speaker
All right, Jeff, let's wrap it up with the collector's gene rundown. You can answer these based on any of the watch collections that you have. It doesn't necessarily have to be Heuer, but I think you've listened before, so you know the drill.
Learning in Collecting: Beyond Ownership
00:40:43
Speaker
Ready. All right. What's the one that got away? The one that got away was a chronomatic Siffert Autavia. The chronomatic on the dial
00:40:56
Speaker
for Hoyer meant that it was one of the very first automatic chronographs made. So I would say in the community of collectors, there are chronomatic autavias, caretas, and monocos, but the total number that we've seen is probably fewer than 50. So the one that I missed was a chronomatic Sifford that popped up
00:41:24
Speaker
I bet it was 2003, maybe 2005 on Time Zone or one of the very early forums. I think it was $399 on the bracelet. I missed it by a couple of minutes. I was in the office. I remember being on a client call and missed that watch by a couple of minutes.
00:41:51
Speaker
That is the actual watch and also the model that seems to have eluded me all these years. The On Deck Circle. What's next for you in collecting? In the world of vintage chronographs, it's a pretty short list. The ones I'm looking for, the ones that would be interesting. Vintage Hoyer, it's a pretty short list.
00:42:20
Speaker
One thing I find is that I'm always getting interested in new things. A couple of years ago, there were some interesting titanium watches from the Polagos, the Aquaracer, IWC. So all of a sudden, I was into titanium watches and I did that deep dive. This is really strange, but
00:42:46
Speaker
You know, November 2023, I'm getting interested in what may be sort of the anti-chronograph, if you will, which would be a dress watch, maybe gold, maybe with a black dial, something very elegant and dressy and maybe artistic.
00:43:11
Speaker
And let's say that would be from the 50s or 60s. Kind of a third corner that I'm looking around in addition to vintage chronographs and possibly these dress watches. A third category. I'm interested in the independence again.
00:43:31
Speaker
not the crazy cutting edge. You can't tell whether it's a watch or a fidget spinner or whatever. There are a handful of independent brands that I'm interested in. So I could see myself going that direction in a pretty quiet, calm manner, if you will.
00:44:00
Speaker
How about the unobtainable? So maybe this is in a museum or a private collection, and you just know it's just worth looking at a photo of. I mean, the craziest thing was around maybe it was 2008, 2010. The ultimate example of that in the Hoyer world was watching
00:44:24
Speaker
the Monaco chronographs that Steve McQueen actually wore in the filming of Le Mans. And, you know, having those essentially available, the one he wore for the stills, the one he wore for the filming, you could have had either one of those for $10,000. And, you know, now they're seven figure watches easily.
00:44:52
Speaker
I've kind of gotten over that. There's really not much that is like, Oh, I wish I had it. It's a shame it ended up in the museum. You know, I should have had the $10,000, you know, I should have made the buy. Uh, so really not much in the, in the regret category. I look at those watches, the McQueen watches, for example.
00:45:17
Speaker
and think, yeah, that's interesting, that's historic, but I think, you know, I've gotten past the point of thinking, I wish I owned it. The page one rewrites, so if you could collect anything besides watches, money is no object, what would it be? Well, I'm gonna put a historical, you know, spin on this. I read, you know, I listened to several of your episodes and thought,
00:45:46
Speaker
You know, page one is if I were starting again. I got my first job, had my first paycheck, moved to New York City. All of this happened in 1980. So sure, if I'm going to play Make-Believe, let it be 1980. I'm in New York City. A young artist, Jean-Michel Basquiat, was there. If we're playing Fantasyland,
00:46:14
Speaker
I didn't own a piece of art. It was all I could do to pay the rent back in 1980. But sure, if we're going to let the imagination run wild, I wonder what it might have been like to have put away a few of those paintings in the early 80s. I think you would own all the Steve McQueen Hoyer's. Exactly, exactly. How about the goat? Who do you look up to in the collecting world?
00:46:44
Speaker
That's the easiest question of the hour. Fred Mandelbaum, who some people say is the Jeff Stein of the Breitling world, or maybe I'm the Fred Mandelbaum of the Hoyer world. Fred and I have been in regular contact for many years. Fantastic human being. We've seen each other a fair amount over the years. I visited him in Vienna. We've gotten together in New York.
00:47:13
Speaker
He's just a great human being, a super smart, knowledgeable collector, great collection, very generous in sharing information. So no doubt it's Fred to the exclusion of all others. He has also had the incredible experience of
00:47:36
Speaker
of being affiliated with Breitling, you know, corporate Breitling in terms of their, not only their heritage, but their product portfolio. So it's been great, you know, looking over his shoulder as he's undertaken that. And yeah, he's the greatest of all time in my collecting world.
00:48:02
Speaker
I love it. He is a great guy and a great collector and a wealth of knowledge just like yourself. If you ever do go to Vienna, I recommend anybody to reach out to Fred because he gave me incredible recommendations when we were there. We didn't get a chance to meet, but we had a blast. I'm imagining his recommendations were more food-oriented than culture-oriented. It was all food. It was great.
00:48:33
Speaker
the hunt or the ownership? I'm going to kind of drop back to, I'll use the phrase, it depends. To me, the exciting phase of collecting is learning the education, the information. I'll go back to the silly example of the titanium Hoyer chronographs from the early 1980s.
00:49:01
Speaker
These are watches that you could get for a couple hundred dollars. You still can on eBay because so many of them are broken. But I loved learning about the watches, how they were designed, why they were titanium, what the problems were, how they were marketed, how they fit into the culture and styles of the period, et cetera, et cetera. So to me, it's not so much
00:49:31
Speaker
the hunt or the ownership. It's the education, learning about the watch, learning about the history is the exciting part. Sometimes that comes during the hunt phase. Sometimes that comes during the ownership phase. Sometimes you own something and you think you know everything about it. And then you learn something new or find another chapter. So I'm going to say it can be either.
00:50:01
Speaker
And the hunt, the ownership, that's to me not the essence of it. The essence of it is the discovery and the learning. Couldn't agree more. Jeff, most importantly, do you feel that you were born with the collector's gene?
Influences on Jeff's Collector Traits
00:50:22
Speaker
Well, I don't know if it's one gene. You know, I don't know if you can kind of look at the genome and say, ah, here's where it sits. In my situation, neither one of my parents, nobody in my family was really a collector. But I think I got some characteristics, some traits from both of my parents.
00:50:48
Speaker
I'll blame them for this, that got me to where I am. My father was very mechanically minded. As a kid, he was born in 1914, so he was telling me about the first TV his family had. He opened up the back and started taking it apart. He was great at taking things apart.
00:51:16
Speaker
less skilled at putting them back together. But growing up, we would work on cars, we would work on projects. So I definitely got the appreciation of mechanical things. It definitely came from my father. On my mother's side, again, no collecting in sight. Neither my father nor my mother were collectors.
00:51:44
Speaker
But my mother, she was English, actually born in Ireland in the 1920s, and then was in the service during World War II in the Signal Corps. She really appreciated good things. She didn't collect, but I think she appreciated beautiful objects, things that were well made.
00:52:10
Speaker
What's the expression? You know, I'm too poor to buy cheap things. So I think that was kind of the way my family lived. We didn't replace things. In other words, we got a sofa and that was going to be in the house forever. We weren't replacing the sofa. We weren't replacing the cars.
00:52:32
Speaker
So I think from my mother, I got this sense of appreciating beautiful objects, appreciating well-built things, things that would last, whether that was English silver, again, small pieces, nothing significant. But yeah, I would say it's this combination of
00:52:59
Speaker
an enjoyment and a love for mechanical objects, as well as just an appreciation of solid, well-built quality things. I think that's what I saw when I picked up that first Hoyer dashboard timer. I picked it up out at Monterey and I thought, this thing is beautiful.
00:53:24
Speaker
It runs, it's really built. And, you know, 25 years later, I'm still chasing things like that. I love it. Jeff, we all owe a big thanks to you for your scholarship and willingness to share. I mean, truly the watch world is a better place because of you and the efforts that you've put forth with On The Dash and all your willingness. So thank you and thank you for coming on Collector's Dream Radio today.
00:53:51
Speaker
Well, thank you. This was a pleasure. Anytime. Hope to have you back soon. All right, that does it for this episode. Thank you all for listening to Collector's Gene Radio.