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Michael Weisberg (Vintage Expert)

Published on Mon, 22 Oct 2018 10:00:00 +0000

To call Michael Weisberg a watch dealer doesn’t really do him justice. In addition to selling watches (and really damn good ones, I might add), he also deals in vintage design and furniture, classic cars, art, and more. From classic Rolex sport watches or rare Prouvé chairs, Sol Lewitt wall drawings or a vintage Ferrari, Michael is your guy. We sat down with Michael in LA to talk his career path, the state of the collecting community, and how his various interests all intersect. Enjoy.

Synopsis

In this episode of Hodinkee Radio, host Stephen Pulvirent sits down with Michael Weisberg, a Los Angeles-based dealer who operates across multiple collecting categories including watches, vintage design furniture, classic cars, and fine art. Weisberg's background is unconventional—he studied art history at Williams College, became a lawyer when he couldn't find work in the arts, but eventually transitioned to full-time dealing after his wife encouraged him to leave his legal career. His approach is scholarly and deeply informed, maintaining a vast personal library of thousands of books, catalogs, and magazines across all his areas of expertise.

The conversation explores how collecting and dealing have changed dramatically over the past two decades. Weisberg discusses the impact of social media, particularly Instagram, on creating a homogenized global market where collectors worldwide seek the same five or six models rather than developing individual taste. He laments the loss of the treasure-hunt aspect of collecting that characterized the 1990s flea market era. Weisberg advocates for buying the absolute best example one can afford rather than settling for inferior pieces, and he reveals his own unusual collecting habit—he rarely keeps watches for more than a few days, preferring to constantly cycle through new acquisitions. The episode concludes with Weisberg recommending a visit to Mass MoCA to see their Sol LeWitt wall drawing retrospective, with Pulvirent adding the nearby Clark Art Institute as a complementary destination.

Transcript

Speaker
Unknown Calling Michael Weisberg a watch dealer doesn't really do him justice. Yes, Michael sells watches, but he also deals in vintage design and furniture, classic cars, art, and more. Plus, beyond just selling these things, what sets Michael apart is that he's a true scholar, with a personal library containing thousands of books, catalogs, and magazines. He's just as well versed in Rolex sport watches as he is in prouvée chairs, Solowit wall drawings, and vintage Ferraris. The guy's truly obsessed and extremely passionate. He's always got some special insight to share. In fact, I can't think of a time that I've hung out with Michael and not come away feeling smarter and better off for it. He's someone I always make sure to see when I'm in Los Angeles. And on my last trip out to the West Coast, we made our way into the studio to have the following conversation. I hope you enjoy it. I'm your host Stephen Polverant, and this is Hodinky Radio. This week's episode is brought to you by Hook and Albert. Stay tuned later in the show to learn more about this global travel brand and their range of travel accessories. You can also learn more at hookandalbert. All right, thanks so much, Michael, for joining us. It's my pleasure. So I think you know, I I was talking to our producer Gray this morning before we got here, and we were kind of trying to figure out kind of the main themes of this episode, and Gray asked me to kind of talk through like who you are and your kind of how how you kind of fit into this world and I was saying, Oh, you know, you you come from from the design world and you're in the watch world, but you're also in the cars and art and you just kinda have like a good thing going, like a good a good general vibe. Um would you would you say that's kind of how you see yourself maybe
Unknown ? I see all of these media as a continuum and I see everything as interrelated. Um ever since I started first as a collector in all these various areas, I I I always kind of felt like these were all just things that I was drawn to. And when people ask me today, you know, what do you deal in or what
Unknown To this world, like you said, as as a collector first, but you have a really interesting background and kind of an atypical background. Um can can you tell us kind of where you were before you were professionally in the the collecting world? Sure. It just depends on how far back you want to go. Uh if you
Unknown want to go really far back, uh I can remember as a very young child um making my father drive me to the local uh Rolex dealership and also to the local Ferrari dealership in in Rosemont, Pennsylvania, to pick up the latest brochures and color chip charts that were available for that model year and meticulously storing them in my archive of of catalogs and chip charts. So I was always a bit of a maniac for the literature and the details on these sorts of things. And then if you go forward another ten, fifteen years, I studied art history uh in undergraduate school, which was purely by accident. I didn't even know that there was such a thing as a serious uh uh uh academic pursuit that was art history uh until I was introduced to it by chance at Williams College in the nineties and I ended up with a major in art history. And I always intended after that to work in the arts, but I was unable to secure gainful employment in the arts in nineteen ninety three. So I did the Next Pest thing and after a year off became a lawyer. All right. Um I worked And then by accident, over that period of time, I had sort of crept my way back into collecting. Um first thing I ever was buying for myself was old furniture. Okay. Um I was buying just after college and then in law school I was buying some American furniture, Knoll, some Eames furniture. It was all very cheap. People used to ask me when I became more serious and be started dealing, people would say, well, don't you w yearn for the days when you could buy an Eames chair at the Rose Bowl for $75 and the answer is no, because I couldn't sell it for a hundred. But uh that was the first serious thing that I got into my wife and I were buying collector furniture, mostly for ourselves and then little by little um for resale but, it's just purely by accident. Um I would end up with an excess of material and something to resell. And then through that, uh I ended up sort of becoming part of a community in Southern California of collectors and dealers for mid-century modern. That was kind of the term that had been coined at that point. But it was the only book at that time and it was called Mid Century Modern. And so that became kind of the touchstone for all of us crazies who were into Eams Chairs and Florence Knoll Credenzes. Um and there was a pretty active community in Southern Cal um where I was living at the time of people who were really into the stuff and would go to one of the weekly swap meets and try to see what could be found that week. And the great thing about that time in the 90s was there was always something to buyy. Ever week you went to one of the flea markets in Southern California and every week you could come home with George Nelson bubble lamps or Eames Shell chairs or plywood chairs. It just was a question of how many you wanted to buy. They were always available for purchase. And that's not the case anymore. It's definitely not the case. Um for reasons that we'll I'm sure get into in the next hour. Uh the whole notion of a flea market, a real world, you know, brick and mortar if you would, free flea market doesn't exist anymore. I mean they're just not they're not the the f the endless sources of fresh material that they once were just like the Salvation Army and the estate sale once was. But around the same time that we were buying I also had always been very interested in mechanical wristwatches. And right when I finished law school in ninety-seven, um I became obsessed with finding myself a a Rolex and specifically a vintage Rolex. I had always wanted a cosmograph for myself. And that's because I can still remember I don't remember exact year, but it would have been I would have been in high school, so it would have been sometime in the middle eighties that I saw an article in an Esquire magazine, probably in my dentist's office, because I didn't subscribe to Esquire. And I remember the article at that time already was talking about how the new model Daytona was coming out. So we know about when it was. It was the first automatic Sapphire Crystal Daytona, the Zenith. Um but this article was actually talking about how the earlier ones, the plastic ones already were being sought after by the Italians. And I looked at them and I remember noticing that a couple of the they weren't called vintage at the time, but the stores that were listed in the where to buy section were like the, you know, J and P Timepieces in New York, who were one of the very early places to buy uh an old Rolex at the time. Uh another place that was called um I think it was called Time Will Tell. Anyway, there were a couple of places in New York mostly that were reselling older Rolexes and they weren't that expensive. But you know, I remember looking at the at the profile in Esquire and thinking, man, wow, those are like $2,500. Where could I get $2,500? And it might as well have been $25 million dollars to me at the time because I didn't have it. But sure. That stuck with me. And when I had a little bit of money as as a as a young lawyer, I had resolved that I wanted to buy myself a vintage Rolex. And of course I didn't go and buy the Daytona first. I bought a whole bunch of other mistakes. Um but eventually as usually happened. That's how it works, yeah. Do you remember what those mistakes were? I do. Um the first watch I bought actually was not a mistake. It was a uh uh 6610 Explorer 1. Okay. Glossy dial. And in fact, it did have the original Gilt glossy dial, which most of them were refinished that I was finding at the time. But it it did have a great dial. And I paid twenty eight hundred dollars for it, which was too much. Um but it was really beautiful. And I loved the watch, but one thing that that adventure taught me, or well, that it should have taught me, but that I learned over the years was that I'm not much of a collector. I'm really more of a serial acquirer, if you will. I I I Okay. It's a very intellectual thing for me. And once I've I've handled the item, I've I've felt it, I've I've taken it apart, I've inspected it under magnification. I kind of feel like I've owned it. I I I've incorporated that knowledge into my arsenal and my memory banks, and I don't really need to own it after that. And so it it it took me a long time to realize this, but I'm really more of a trader, more of a and I'm more of a dealer. But I won't deal in stuff I'm not passionate about. I don't just buy widgets. Um, but it has to be something that really appeals to me personally. And it I always tell people when they ask me, what are you looking for now? What do you want to buy? When other commercial contacts ask me what I want to buy today. And I tell them, Show me something I've never seen before. That's the most fascinating to me. It doesn't matter if it's a thousand dollars or a million dollars. I want to see something I haven't seen before. Sure. And so what I what I'm getting back to is that that that 6610 didn't stay with me very long. Okay. And that was a series of mistakes was I would just trade one thing to the next thing to the next thing. Some of them were great, some of them were not great because I was a very new collector. And at that time there was not a lot of great information out there in the world either. You had the James Dowling book, and that was pretty much what you had. Okay. Um there were some very nascent internet forums, but they were very primitive and they weren't really about uh education or about sharing real data and information. They were just more about name calling and you know typical internet forum hij jinx.. They were the internet Yeah, especially early days. They weren't very well regulated. And so it was very hard to gain good information at that time. And so many people didn't even know how to spot a refinish dial. I mean we're going back now in the early days when most dealers didn't even call the stuff vintage. They called them the old ones. You know, oh you want the ones with the the plastic crystals. You want the non-quick set. Right. Before there was guilt dials and non-guilt dials. Listen, I can't even tell you how many guilt dials I bought for the same price as as MAT dials and sold likewise. I mean it wasn't we didn't this way
Unknown . So y you mentioned that when you were collecting furniture of but eventually you would have something and you'd have too much and you would just have to sell. Exactly. When when did it transition from that to being maybe you were looking to buy with the intention
Unknown of selling? So around uh after I had moved to the Bay Area and I was still working in the law, uh full time as as an attorney, um This would have been around the year just before the year 2000. And at that time, I had become we had become much more serious in collecting, but as a result, we had also been traveling more and it in part in order to time our travels with events worldwide. We had gone to Paris for some big events, we had gone to Amsterdam for some big events, design-related events specifically. And we were buying a bit more seriously and we also were coming up with quite a bit more excess of our own. Um and I also I became more open to the idea of buying something strictly for resale. If I found a great Eams hang it all, which was a very rare item, and I in fact did find one at a flea market in Alameda, which is was one of the great flea markets in the Bay Area. I found this object I'd never owned before. I had to possess it. It was uh an original Eams Hang It All that I'd never even seen and I other than in a museum show. And I figured, well, I have to buy this. I have no idea what I'm gonna do with it. It's not going in my house because I don't have a spot for it, but somebody will want it and will pay more than I'm gonna pay for it. And this was kind of the beginning of my my my dealing days. And it coincided roughly with eBay becoming like a serious venue for selling. And so I did start listing things on eBay to the point where I was spending more time per week on my buying and selling than I was billing law uh for law. Okay. And at that time when things started to get more time consuming and more uh I became a bit more dedicated to to doing that. It was my wife who really came up with the idea of quitting my legal career altogether and and transitioning to becoming a design dealer full time. Uh and she has to be credited ultimately with pushing me
Unknown off that ledge. Yeah. I think you you told me a story that she kind of like worked it behind the scenes, right? She did. She sort of tricked me. Okay. I I assume you'
Unknown re happy with the trick. I I am in in it in retrospect, it was probably the best thing that anyone ever did for me. But uh I don't I don't come natively uh to entrepreneurship or self-employment. I I like to tell people I come from a long line of employees. Everybody in my family, for better or worse, drew a steady paycheck. And there's that perceived, you know, that perceived uh uh uh comfort and safety of the regular paycheck. But it's really all illusion because as we learned, you know, in various downturns in the recent past, you know, your your employer has no loyalty to you and they can let you go at any reason or for no reason. Yeah. So um you know but she she doesn't come from that herself and she pushed me into uh into this new career. Um and by that time I had also started to incorporate um the buy the purchase and sale of fine arts into my my repertoire. And so the idea was that I was becoming more serious as an art dealer and that that would become a more significant part of my turnover ultimately. Um and and that has in fact become the case
Unknown . When when you took that jump and you said, okay, I'm doing this full time now, how do you try to turn that from something you're kind of doing on the side into like a a real business with some some focus Aaron Powell It's not easy. And
Unknown I have to tell you, I just figured it out by mistakes. When I first made that leap and I left what was a full-time job and an office to go to every day, I was I was pretty much paralyzed. I had no idea what to do, how to structure my time, how to how how to uh you know uh chart your business, how to make contacts, set goals, none of this stuff came naturally to me. And I really just kind of figured it out by making mistakes. And people will often ask me, well, how did you learn so much about fill-in-the-blank, Rolex, you know, whatever it is that you're doing. And I tell them the truth is you learn by making the mistakes and you have to make them yourself. Yeah. It doesn't matter how many people give you great advice for about business, about dealing, about a specific item or category. The one the the lessons you remember the best the best are the ones that you that came from
Unknown hard fought mistakes. Okay. What what do you think are some of the kind of like either particular mistakes or kind of the like archetypal mistakes that that people have to kind of learn along the way?
Unknown Well it depends what your goals are. I mean all these businesses are are they all look very similar on the outside, but they're often very different. You know, my business is one where I'm not I don't call myself I'm not a retailer. Uh I don't have a storefront. I don't operate a website. My specific preference is to be a bit under the radar. And I'm I'm kind of more of a dealer's dealer. Uh I do deal with with civilians. I deal with non-professionals, but the ones that I deal with, I feel are almost they're almost semi-professional. They have a lot of experience collecting. They have a lot of experience transacting. Um, they know the categories in which they buy very well. And so the level of of anxiety and hand holding and uncertainty that goes along with those relationships and those transactions tend to be minimal. I'm not great at taking somebody from uh from the cradle and turning them into a great collector. I don't have a time or the patience to to do a lot of that nurturing. And so I'm probably not for everybody. But um I do uh come up with a lot of material because I do a lot of transactions. Um I'm always open for buying something cool, whatever it is, whether it's a uh uh a drawing on paper, a chair, a great watch, whatever whatever it might be, a tapestry, whatever it is, if it fits into my aesthetic, into my sort of wheelhouse, then I'm open for buying it. And so because of that, I come up with a lot of things and I do a lot of transactions every year. Um and so because of that, I end up dealing mostly with other professionals, with dealers. I would say the biggest mistake that I do see collectors make is looking for bargains. Um it seems counterintuitive, but this is a mistake that most especially starting collectors make and sometimes they make it only once or twice, but sometimes they make it through their whole careers. Whenever I walk into someone's house and I see their collection, I can always tell when they're a bargain hunter. Uh there's a thing that I call uh right artist, wrong piece. Okay. They bought a portrait of you know they bought a uh a a Calder portrait of the artist's mother from nineteen thirteen, you know, from the the pre-abstract years. You know, I mean, you can always tell when somebody is checking off names on a list, but they they either just don't have a feeling for or they lack the confidence to buy the thing that they think is great. Um and I think that one of the biggest problems we see today is collecting by checklist. We see it in watches, we see it in cars, we see it in art. Um, you know, people have because of the ubiquity of social media now in collecting because of the websites, informational and otherwise that are on the web that that purport to tell everybody what they should own because of the the ubiquity of you know editorial content in certain magazines that are also kind of pay-for-play. You see this continual barrage of images, many of which are the same, many of which are sponsored by the same people that tell you, well, you've got to have your, you know, your manual wine cosmograph Daytona, and best if it's a Paul Newman, you know, you've got to have your 250 series Ferrari, you've got to have your, you know, your Kusama net painting and you have these checklists that have become derived and and it used to be that collecting was more regional. You know, you would say, well collectors in France really prefer this type of material and collectors in South America are much more interested in in the other thing. That's not really true anymore because of Instagram, because of these worldwide websites that that you know collect that that attract collectors from all parts of the globe, because of marketing sites like Chrono 24, there's such a homogeneity of what are what's being offered, what's seen as desirable, and what's being sought. And I think because of that, there's a an alarming uniformity to the collections that we see because everybody feels that they have to fill out the checklist. Um I regret that. I look back at auction catalogs from 20 years ago and I see the breadth of material that was saleable and offered at auction was probably ten times what is available today. And the reason why the auctioneers offer so much less breadth today is simply because they know they can't sell it. And I think that the collecting public for so much of that kind of material across all categor
Unknown ies is simply gone. Interesting. And do you do you think, you know, you you talked about a bunch of different things there, you know, social media, the rise of kind of pay for play, editorial. D is there kind of an inflection point or a moment where you think things changed and we kind of ended up in this this new world of kind of homogene
Unknown ity. I mean it's been a it's been a bit gradual. It kind of creeps, but I do I think Instagram is a huge culprit of that because I I think that collecting today, and I hate to say this, but collecting today is so much more about status than it is about passion. And I mean, when I started buying this kind of stuff, and you know, by no means was the 90s the first days of this, but it was pretty early days. When I started buying this type of material, it was so difficult to to find the material at all and to and to get good information about what was original, what was worth buying. You really had to be passionate. It was insane. I mean, I used to, you know, I used to buy these obscure magazines about design. There was one that was called Echoes and one that was called Modernism. And there would be a whole bunch of of pay of ads in the back, you know, these like eighth page and quarter page ads by these little shops. In every city had a little shop that dealt modernism. There was one in Seattle, there was one in Tulsa. And if you wanted a coconut chair, and I did, and there was none in LA available for sale. You would go down the list and you would call every number and you would meet some of the craziest people. And maybe you'd find your coconut chair. Probably you wouldn't, but you might find something else, and you might meet some cool people and that might expand your your network and this was how you learned about the stuff that you were passionate about. You don't really have to do that anymore. And so I think also, you know, the proliferation of these magazines, these lifestyle magazines, these home and design magazines where everybody has their apartment showcased, I think people began to sort of to adopt this sort of code. It's and it's a worldwide thing, you know. It doesn't matter whether you go to the Fiat Art Fair in Paris or you go to Art Basel in Basel or you go to, you know, a fair in Miami or in Hong Kong. It's the same material that's going to be on offer and people all across all around the world are going to be looking for the same thing. And so I I think that collecting is very different today than it was say 20 years ago. And so I couldn't pinpoint an exact moment where that changed, but I do think that the proliferation of images and soundbite information available worldwide is largely the culprit for that
Unknown . And now we'll look at this week's sponsor. A few weeks ago, we told you about Hook and Albert's Garment Weekender bag, which is this hybrid of a duffel bag and a garment bag for when you need to pack your suits, your shoes, and everything without having to worry about what state it's gonna be in when you get to your destination. But sometimes you want something a little lower maintenance. For that, they have the getaway duffel, which in a funny way reminds me of a Richard Meal watch. The first time I picked it up, I laughed at how light it was. You still have all the great hardware and full-grain leather, but it's a little more casual and unstructured. My favorite thing though is inside you have all of these side compartments so that you don't lose your stuff in the bigger bag. It's perfect for a weekend away whether you're throwing it in an overhead bin or just in the trunk of your car. There are lots of different options, so to learn more about the getaway duffel, visit hookinalbert.com. Alright, back to the show. The Watchworld is when we speak about other categories, the the world cars, fine art, design, the Watchworld is comparatively very, very small. And do you think that that makes it more insul insular and kind of more I guess likely to get kind of uh trapped in this kind of cycle? Or do you think maybe it helps or maybe it's completely irrelevant? Well it's interesting. I I don't know that I agree with what
Unknown you just said. I think that the watch world The Watch World I think is actually larger. I think it's maybe not the people who are into watches, many of them are not as deeply into it as say an art collector is. Okay. You can't really be a dabbling art collector. You're you're kind of you're kind of all in or you're not really. That's fair. Um but I think in watches, there are a lot of people now who would like to have two cool watches to wear. Sure. And they'll probably dive into that into that world on the occasion that they're going to buy something and they might really become voracious in terms of seeking and trying to you know suss out the information. But then they might completely recede once they've obtained their quarry, and then they might be out of it for 18 months or who knows until they decide they get the bug to buy something So I actually think that the watch world is quite a bit larger in in a healthy way from some of those other worlds that are much more insular and smaller, I would say. When you go to an art fair in in Madrid and, then you go to another fair in Miami, you're gonna see a lot of the same people. It's kind of a bit of a traveling circus. Okay. Um I think in the watch world, there are an an astounding number of people around the world who at least want to have one cool watch. And more and more, I think for people, that's becoming a vintage watch. Um now, unfortunately everybody's looking for the same five models. Yeah. Um in vintage. But I I do think that more and more people are are open to and interested in looking at old watches. How how do you
Unknown think we get those people then interested in models other than those five models?
Unknown I mean it's always a chicken and egg thing. I I don't know how you do it. Uh you showcase more of the other material on the web, which you guys always do. Um and I think that's had some some effect. I mean, look at Hoyer. When I was first buying old watches in the nineties, we would never look at Hoyers. I mean they were they cost five hundred dollars and we wouldn't look at them. Um and now there's quite serious consideration of a lot of those models. And so I think the the you know, scholarship that you guys have have put forth and the um and the you know beautiful imagery that you publish on the on the website uh does help to raise a
Unknown wareness and interest in those other models. Aaron Powell You know, you you talked very early on about when you were a kid and you would go get catalogs and and paint samples. And I know you're also still a voracious collector of that kind of stuff, of of information. How how has that changed kind of alongside the changes in taste for the actual products themselves? Ye
Unknown ah, it's funny because I people always ask me, well what do you collect? And I I typically tell them my mistakes, which is a joke that I make. But but it in truth, the only thing that I really collect um is l uh literature and books. Okay. Um I I do not sell any of my books or literature. I once made the mistake of doing a big deal to an another dealer collector, and I sold a big lot of some original period brochures and catalogs that I had accumulated. Um and I was in some cases never able to replace some of those. So that's not something I do. And funny enough, I mean, in today's world where almost everything is available online in a in a couple of keystrokes, I probably consult those items very seldom. Okay. But I just love the security of having them. Right. There's something comforting about it, right? I love books. And so that is something that I'm still very passionate about and I still keep all of that. And you know, occasionally I have just the right book to give me just the right bit of information. Um but but more to more to the point, I just really like being surrounded by that stuff. And as I was just alluding to, you don't really need this huge library anymore because everything is available somewhere. True. But I I think this probably also contributes to what I'm talking about, which is that the understanding in a lot of collector communities today is maybe an inch deep and a mile wide. Okay. Where many most of the people who are in the in the in that collecting world or in the trading world haven't really delved that deeply into the material that they buy and sell. You know, they've got those key sound bites. You do hear the same sound bites repeatedly over and over. Of course. Whether it's in cars or in watches, you hear the say, like, hey, did you know that uh back in the old days the Daytona was the only model of Rolex that you could get a discount on? I mean, how many times have you heard people repeat this you know chestnut? Of course. But the truth is there's so much more information that could be gleaned if you actually had original Rolex literature from the period. But I don't think most people take the time to do that sort of analysis or investigation anymore. A
Unknown aron Powell Do you think both on the when you're dealing with other professionals and then also with with clients, that the kind of change in education level and specifically this idea of having tons of breadth but not much depth, does that make it easier on you or more difficult for you? Or you know now now that you have you're probably dealing with people who whether they actually know a lot or not think they know a lot. Sure, everybody's an expert. Yeah.
Unknown Um I think I think it's easier in the sense that it's easy to transact because everybody f there are many there are many experts and everybody feels confident to buy and sell because they feel that they know the material. So that's good because the market becomes quite liquid, and especially those those models that are well that are highly sought after are are very easy to trade and buy and sell, and people feel confident that they know what's correct and what's not correct and and what's worth buying. I think in reality it can lead to some sticky issues where you know there's things that crop up later where maybe not enough diligence was done, not enough investigation was done in the early stages of of buying and selling. And had we done more diligence and more vetting early on, we might have avoided some sticky situations later on. Sure. I won't get more specific, but you see what I'm talking about
Unknown . And I I think one other misconception that a lot of people have is this idea that the the dealer community is this sort of world of lone wolves who are all trying to find the best thing and kind of pull it out from from under the next one. But um in in my experience, the world, especially in the watch world, the the dealer community is actually pretty tight and kind of this funny little family and I I know you're you're a part of that. Can you can you speak to that a little bit? Sure. We sort of a
Unknown bit of a merry band of pranksters, a bit of a traveling circus, if you will. Like if this is October, then this must be Italy. Right. Um we there is a a pretty good core group of us who tend to travel the world um often together, um, headed to events and venues uh where good watches and good dealers are known to show up. Um and I think, you know, part of the key to this business now is the camaraderie and the trading of information that goes along with those, you know, those late night dinners and and all the other events that we go to together. And we're actually quite a collegial and friendly bunch. Um we are competitive, of course, but um more often than not we do a lot of business together. And so I think there' theres a's a great community of people um around around watches, especially old watches. Um and I can say that uh you know I think it's probably uh one of the richest um dealing and collecting communities that I've had the pleasure of being invol
Unknown ved with. That's great. I are are there any of these events on the calendar that to you stand out as as kind of the best or the the ones you look forward to the most? Um
Unknown yeah, well there's a lot of great events. Like for example, I'm headed to Hong Kong, um where there'll be you know four days of of two of the biggest shows in the world um with some of the widest array of merchandise on display from dealers that um quite literally hail from all over the all over the world. And that's a great it's a great show. It's a great show for commercial reasons. It's always interesting and fun to see what people are doing on the other side of the world. And then that's completely in contrast with where I'll be in October, uh which is in Parma, Italy. Uh Parma Show. Indeed. Uh which has a very more of an old world feel. I mean the Parma Antiques Fair has been one of the main antiques fairs in Europe for a very long time and with a very nice emphasis and specialty in watches and jewelry. Uh and there'll be always interesting things to see there as well. Um so I I love them all and I also will then go on from there to the Freeze Art Fair in London, which is just from the ridiculous to the sublime. Yeah. Um, but uh I wouldn't say that there's one or the other that I prefer more, but um it's always changing and it's always inter
Unknown esting. Okay. And and you know, when when you jump from from fair to fair and you go from a fair that's predominantly watches to something like Freeze or when you're at the Parma Antique show and you might be looking one minute at a watch and the next minute at a sofa. Um do you do you kind of have to like flip a switch in your brain or are you using kind of the same uh I guess mental energy to kind of focus on all of these things at once?
Unknown So the way I always view all these categories is I see them as a continuum. To me, a watch is design just as much as a sofa can be design. Um a a car is absolutely design. Uh and I see all of these things in a in a continuum. I I realize that they were all designed and and implemented at the same time period. And I actually tell people that what I'm most interested in is the historical period. I I predominantly deal in objects and artifacts that were from the postwar period, what I call the modernist period. And it doesn't have to be a modernist painting or a modernist sofa or chair. It could be a watch. I think a Rolex watch is absolutely a modernist object as well. Yeah, a hundred percent. And uh and so I see all those things in a continuum and I see them all as interrelated. Uh and so um for me, no, I don't find myself s flipping a switch as you say. I see them just all as one and the same. And it's you know, I always try to to to remind people that, you know, there's a there's that great photograph I'm sure you've seen of of um Pablo Picasso wearing his uh Bakelite six five four two GMT. Yeah. And it it it always kind of crystallizes for me the fact that these things are not in a vacuum, you know, and Picasso who is you know arguably the the greatest modern master, you know, in history. When he wanted to go pick out a watch, he ended up with a great modern watch. You know, because you can be sure that if the guy was looking at watches to wear, he wasn't making a random choice of which watch he was going to select.. Sure I'm sure that one caught his eye for a variety of reasons. And so, you know, I always like to think of those images. There's also a great image of Picasso riding in his friends 300 SL Goldwing. Yeah. And, you know, likewise, so this is a guy who who did everything with
Unknown style. Yeah. What what is it about that period though that kind of draws you in? Is it an aesthetic? Is it a set of values? Aaron Powell I think the
Unknown aesthetics are generally derived from the intellectual underpinnings, which is just that that that period, the post-war period, was a a very fertile period. Um you have all of these GIs coming back from the war, um, you know, many of them having uh opportunities to attend educational institutions that would never have had but for the GI Bill. You have a proliferation of new technologies which had become uh you know available after the war efforts. And then you have uh a rebuilding in Europe, uh the likes of which had really never been seen before, because much of Europe had been destroyed. And so you have the need to rebuild entire countries and cities from nothing. And so you kind of have a clean slate in a lot of ways. And I think that period, almost more than any other period that I'm aware of, um, is a period of new beginnings. And I think you see that in you see it in art, you see it in design, you see it in literature. Uh and I just think uh you see it even in in urban organization. And I think that um that was a kind of magic time. And I think everything that happened since, say, nineteen seventy or say eighty has been much more incremental. I mean, of course, the the improvements in computer technology and and and telecommunications have made huge changes to our lives in the last twenty years. But I think that the underpinnings and the and from that post war industrial period uh were what made it all possible
Unknown . Okay. And and do you think that that kind of spirit um kind of lifted the watch
Unknown world with it as well? There's no question. Yeah. Uh all all I think everything that could be touched by by technology and by advancement in that time was. And there isn't any question that, you know, uh Rolex, for example, with their various partnerships with, you know, all of the new industries of the time, the the airplane industry, the you know, the the automotive industries. I mean Rolex partnered with so many of these these other in the these other fields and and companies um because what they were developing were tools for the modern era. Yeah. And so I think part of what has set Rolex apart certainly then and and and still in collecting circles today is the fact that they really in in almost more than any other brand were the tool for the modern era. Aaron Powell
Unknown Okay. And do you think watch brands today still embody that that ethos in any way? Or do you think the kind of whole proposition has changed? A
Unknown aron Powell I think that so much of what is designed today, not just in watches, I think I see it in the automotive industry. I see really everywhere. I see it in the fashion industry. So much of what is designed today is historical reference. And unfortunately a lot of it is historical reference without any reason. You know, it's one thing when you design an object and you give it a feature because it has a a functional aspect. But I think so much of what happens today is is purely aesthetic reference, which in many ways is not a modernist thing, right? That's a postmodernist thing. Right. Um but I think that so much of what you have today basically are reissues. Okay. Um and so unfortunately I I think it's more marketing driven now. It's not technology or
Unknown need driven. Okay. And do do you think you know if it's driven by marketing, presumably then these brands think this is what customers want? So how how do you think kind of I guess the public's taste then has has formed into this strange place where you know people either want something that's actually vintage or something that looks vintage, but maybe not something that's kind of the the third way, the kind of like genuinely new thing
Unknown . My experience has been in many cases, I won't say all cases, but in many cases, people who are initially drawn to the newly released whatever, which is a slightly updated watered down reissue visually of the old thing, will eventually realize after they get that thing that hey, this is a reference to a really cool old thing that this other company, that this company used to make. And we'll then get drawn into the research and ultimately decide to buy the old thing and potentially even jettison the newer thing. Okay. Many times I can remember somebody who bought a modern Daytona and then said, Hey, I realize now that they the older ones are really interesting and I'm not so interested in my new one anymore and then ultimately after buying a vintage one will realize that they're not even wearing their contemporary edition any longer. Okay. So I think that if people have inquisitiveness inquisitiveness and curiosity, they tend to get drawn in
Unknown further to the rabbit hole. Okay. And and do you find customers also the same way that you kind of you know jumped into the rabbit hole through through the world of design and then you know sort of increased your interest in watches and and these other categories, um do you find that customers do that as well? That a lot of guys, you know, either get started in cars or watches or or design and kind of fill out the lifestyle?
Unknown Yeah, in fact, I I I I'm always happy and proud to have sold plenty of art to watch dealers and collectors and having sold watches to people who were previously art-only and design-only collectors. I I generally feel and I always say that if you show me an art collector who doesn't have a cool watch and isn't interested in watches, it's probably not because they're not interested. It's just because nobody ever educated them. I think if somebody's passionate about one of these areas and and they take the time to expose themselves Right. It's just their nature. You're either an inquisitive, interested person and you're you are drawn to visu
Unknown al culture or you're not. Right. Are are there funny like kind of pairings or like simpatico brands that you've noticed like the guys who are really into vintage sport watches buy this kind of furniture, or the guys who are really into these kind of cars really like these artists? I think there is. I I
Unknown think I mean it's become, you know, a bit uh a bit trite, but I I do think that, you know, Rolex has in a lot of cases started to pair off with Porsche cars, you know. I mean and maybe it's partly generational too, but I do think that the um you know the interest in early Porsche's, especially early 911s, has really has really risen in tandem with the interest in the Rolex sport model. Um but you know, again, it doesn't really shock that that would be the case because those two objects were both being worn, marketed, and used at the same time. And I think that also maybe you would say that the your paddock collector might more likely be a guy who would buy uh, you know, an older Ferrari. I don't know. But uh I I I do think that there's probably fewer boundaries in those areas than maybe there once were. Okay. Uh e even someone who is a a diehard paddock collector would probably have some old Rolexes in a in their Sirius collection.
Unknown Probably. Um and you know, there there are brands that kind of transcend these categories. Cartier comes to mind in particular, and I know you're you're quite a a Cartier fan yourself.
Unknown I am. Um yeah, Cartier is an interesting one because Cartier was never really about technology, right? They're not even so much about watchmaking for the most part. They're more much more about design. Yeah. Uh and the tradition of the Cartier company. And um which is sort of interesting because I think it's the only example of a company that I can think of from that period that has maintained its reputation and whose whose early material still is very collectible, but whose watches themselves were not really groundbreaking from a watchmaking perspective.
Unknown Right. So you think it's it's for the collectors even in the watch world, it's it's really that kind of design angle that that draws them in? They're icons. Yeah. Yep. And and where do you think they fall, you know, kind of you were saying, you know, Rolex kind of pairs nicely with paddock and or with um Portia and Paddock kinda pairs nicely with Ferrari. What what sort of things does the the vintage Cartier tank wearing man I think? I think Car
Unknown tier is is really more of a you know a a sort of a lone wolf and icono iconoclast. I think I think that not a lot of people will buy a serious Cartier as their first vintage watch. That is a pretty advanced thing. And uh I think actually you'll find that a lot of serious dealers have some small but serious vintage Cartier holdings of their own. Because I think people who who have seen a lot of watches and who have bought and sold a lot of objects can recognize the true rarity and special nature of those those items. You know, I know I can always find another Daytona. I can always find another Calatrava. But finding a great uh great Cartier tank from period is very, very hard to do. And so I I think that the people who are in the trade also recognize the the seriousness and scarcity of those items. And so that's more of an advanced collector's area, I would say.
Unknown Okay. I mean speaking speaking to collectors, I guess, are are there any sort of of tips you you would offer people? You know, these kind of things that you might not learn until you're a more advanced collector, but if you knew them a little earlier, it might help out. Yeah
Unknown . Well, let's jump off of my earlier joke about uh uh right artist, wrong piece. And I would say the best advice that I ever got, but often ignored for a while, was buy the absolute best thing that you can. Um, whatever that category is. And it if you can't afford to buy a great example of whatever it is you're seeking because it's gone beyond your means, then I would suggest shifting to another another category, another item. Because in the long run, buying the best example of whatever it is you're seeking is is the way to have a satisfying collection and ultimately a financially rewarding one too. I think that you see it in cars a lot where somebody who can just barely afford to buy a particular model will buy an example of a car that really is pretty rough and maybe has some problems and some gaps in its history and maybe some catastrophic issues in its history. And they, you know, they rush into doing it because they so much want to have this particular item, but then in the long run they really regret the mistake of having jumped into a substandard example of whatever it is they bought. And I think so there's only two ways to get around that. The first is just to stretch and to buy a little bit more of whatever it is you're looking at. But the other thing to do is is just to change gears if it's not working. Um, you know, for myself, whenever I buy cars and I I do buy cars for myself. Um I don't really call myself a collector, but I always have a couple of cars. And for myself, when I buy a car, I I never tell people find me the find me a good deal on this or that. I always say, find me the most expensive version of this thing that I'm trying to buy. Because I'm always curious, you know, okay, if if someone's charging 20% more for this particular example, why is that? Sometimes there's no reason. Sometimes the seller is just greedy. Right. But but oftentimes there might be a reason. And I've I've very seldom bought the cheaper item when I'm buying a car for myself for myself, for example. I typically buy one of the more expensive ones. Not because I'm wasteful, but because I realize that paying more up front is better than paying later. Yeah. And boy
Unknown , do you pay. In in addition to buying cars for yourself, do you have kind of your own personal type collection of watches that you really think of as as yours, things that are generally not for sale? I have
Unknown nothing. No. People always ask me, well what do you wear where keep? What do you wear for yourself? And the truth is, I don't collect watches. I'm so obsessive about finding new things that I just can't I can't keep stuff. Interesting. Yeah. I wear I people I tell people I'm wearing whatever I bought this morning
Unknown . Interesting. So uh how how often would you say the average watch that somebody sees on your wrist, how many times have you probably worn that watch? Maybe twice. Really? I very seldom own own a watch for more than five days. Wow. I actually never knew that about you. That is super interesting. Is it is that just unique to watches for you or is that across other categories? Um, I mean it does perv
Unknown ade my entire being. That is the need to constantly cycle and renew. But with watches, it's so easy because good watches tend to be very liquid right uh and tradable. And uh I I tell people like I feel like if I had a watch for over a week I must have made a mistake. I'm ready to dump it at a loss if I've owned it for a week. Okay. But uh but seriously, I I I very seldom will own something for for that
Unknown long. Interesting. So if somebody is is passionate as a collector now and thinks maybe they want to get into the buying and selling, how how would you suggest they go about kind of dipping their toe in into that realm
Unknown ? Wow. Well, there's a lot of different ways of doing that. If you're assuming somebody has no information, um obviously the internet is a great place to start, but it's always always difficult to know whom to trust. I mean, one of the easiest ways to start to get some information is just to look at auction catalogs. Um, look at a lot of catalogs, go to auctions. The best thing that you can do and the way that you really learn is by handling things. Looking at pictures is great. Reading someone's review on the internet is helpful. Reading a scholarly posting on the internet is great too. But there's no substitute for handling a watch in person. Handle as many as you can. And I have to tell you, like when someone hands me a watch, I just immediately get a feeling about it. Without pulling out a loop, without pulling the band to look at numbers or pulling the movement, I just get a feeling about it. And sometimes you can just tell a watch feels wholesome. It feels l honest. It feels like it has always been together. It doesn't feel like it just came from a workshop. And you just get that feeling. And sometimes you handle a watch and you feel like, yeah, this watch has too many secrets. I don't really like this watch. And honestly the best thing to do is to go to previews for auctions because you get the highest volume of watches that you can handle in in a one-day period. One of my favorite events, I will say, in throwing back to one of your earlier questions, is the Geneva auctions twice a year. Yeah. In May and in November. The reason being, not because of the auctions themselves. Everyone who knows me knows I do not buy, I do not sell at auction. It's just a policy of mine. However, I love to go and to handle everything in preview. Looking at a catalog picture is very uninformative. And reading an auction house condition report, well, that could be even worse. Handling things yourself will give you a good feeling for watches. Not only that, handling the watches before you've become heavily invested financially will give you an idea too. Is this something that I'm really into? Sure. Better than making a bunch of investments and mistakes and things then you decide maybe I'm not that into it. You know, maybe one category is cool to you and another isn't. But the more things that you can become physically acquainted with and really touch and handle the better.
Unknown Great. Um so we we toward the end of every episode do a little questionnaire, the the hodinky radio questionnaire, a little proof style. So we've got five standard questions and then a a bonus question for you. Um and we'll keep these keep these nice and short and easy. Um what is the best place you've traveled in the last year? Uh the best place I've traveled last within the last year was Sicily, Italy. Great. And uh what is the best piece of advice you've ever received and who gave it to you
Unknown ? Uh the best piece of advice I ever received was from another furniture dealer whom I was friends with early on, I'm still friendly with, but we don't talk as much. And he said to me, Michael, fast nickels over slow dimes. And that is generally the philosophy that has pervaded my dealing full my dealing activities ever since. Perfect. Better a quick deal for five cents profit than a slow deal for ten cent profit. Perfect. What's your guilty pleasure? Uh my guilty pleasure. Uh are paper magazines. I have stacks and stacks of periodicals next to my bed, which probably ten percent of which I'll ultimately get to go through. But I love paper magazines. I like handling them. I like flipping them late at night until I fall asleep with a magazine on my uh on my chest. I love pap
Unknown er. Perfect. If you had to do something else for a living, would what would we find you doing? Oof
Unknown Gosh, breaking hot rock breaking rocks in the hot sun. I don't know. I mean, I've been doing this for fifteen years, full time, twenty years in some respects or another. I can't imagine myself ever doing anything else. All
Unknown right. Uh last last standard question, number five. What is the thing you're looking forward to most right now? I'm looking forward to most seeing whatever is around the corner. Alright. Uh last thing, bonus question just for you. Across all categories, cars, watches, furniture, you get to keep one thing. You have to get rid of everything else. What's the one thing that at the end of the day we find you holding on to? Well, I would say that probab
Unknown ly Assuming I get to still live in my house, uh I would probably let you we'll let you keep your house. All right. Then I would probably hang on to uh a late Salawit wall drawing that resides in my entryway in my house. Um partly because it's so darn difficult to to get rid of it. You can't really easily uninstall it, but but but truly because um it's an it's a work of environmental art that is part of the architecture and that I get to walk by and see in different lights probably 50 times a day. And living with art in that way, with an immediate uh in i immediate exchange and and in your presence throughout your entire existence in your home is kind of a magical experience. And so I would say
Unknown that would be the last thing I'd want to sell. Can you uh we're we're gonna kind of veer off here a little bit just because I think people will find this interesting. Owning a soluit is unlike owning any other piece of art. Can you tell people a little bit about exactly how this works or what what that's like? Sure. You own
Unknown a piece of paper. Right. Uh basically the way it works is that during his lifetime, um the artist Saul Lewitt came up with a concept in the sixties, uh which he called wall works. And up until he died, um, he continued to come up with these these wall drawings. And the way it works is that you have a certificate from the artist which sets forth very specific instructions, or sometimes less specific. And anybody can install the wall drawing. Uh if as long as they own the certificate, that anybody can install it. You don't have to hire a specific installer. You are not required to hire the estate or their studio artists. As a practical matter, most people do hire the estate. Right. But Lewitt was quite democratic about it, and he was quite clear that whoever has the instructions can install it themselves. And there are many different styles and types of these, but there's a really fabulous installation of many of these right now in North Adams, Massachusetts, just down the street from my alma mater in Williamstown. At the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Mass Mocha, there is a 50-year retrospective of Sa Lewitt wall works that spans his entire output and career. There are I think about 200 wall drawings on display there. And it's really unlike anything else. Uh I was actually there a week ago. Well there you go. It was unbelievable. It's amazing. And it it gives you an appreciation for these, I think beyond what you can get from just being in front of one or and there are many great places you can see them in New York, for example. Christie's has a great one in its lobby. Um there are many other buildings in New York that have them in their public spaces. But seeing them all in sequence and lined up chronologically in that way at Massmoca is a And in fact, it's funny, my wife uh who went with me the first time I went to Mass Mocha to view it, really didn't know anything about the Lewitt Wall drawings. And it was after seeing that that she became so uh transfixed by it and decided that she'd love to own one. So I think it's it's a pretty magical experience, even for people who are not necessarily art collectors and don't see themselves even as art people. And so it's it's the ultimate conceptual work because all you own is the certificate. Uh and even if your house burns down, you still have the artwork. It's in your it's in your safety deposit box with the certificate. Per
Unknown fect. Well, to close each show, uh we finish with a cultural recommendation. Uh something that people can go check out when they're done listening. So what would you uh like to recommend everybody? Well in fact what I was gonna recommend was M
Unknown ass Mocha. Perfect. I think that not just the Lewitt installation, but MassMoka has really increased their exhibition space since I was there last, which was five years earlier. I was there just this summer. And they have an amazing array of primarily large scale conceptual and minimal work. And it's a it's an amazing experience, whether you consider yourself an art enthusiast or not, it's a great day. You absolutely can spend a full day there. They have a wonderful couple of Terrell pieces that they've recently installed. And they have a fabulous installation of Anselm Kefer work that I'd never seen before. And the grounds of the moon of the museum in general are also quite uh quite touching. It's uh it's the old Sprague Electric plant, um, which was the lifeblood of Western Massachusetts, the Sprague Electric Company, and it's now been repurposed in a very different way. Um and it points the way, I hope, towards a new future for Western Massachusetts, which has been economically depressed for quite some time. So uh I would absolutely recommend it. It's easily reached and there's some really nice accommodations and and uh uh restaurants in the area and it's a it's a wonderful trip from New York.
Unknown Great. I'll uh I'll kind of piggyback on that then actually and say you should go just down the street like maybe fifteen minutes to Williamstown, Massachusetts. No it will. And you should go see the Clark. Indeed. Another fantastic but very different museum. Where I would say the space is just appeal as appealing as the artworks inside. Kind of a very diverse collection, sort of r relatively small collection, um, but really diverse and fascinating and an interesting mix of architecture and just I think doing those two museums back to back. I did it two weeks ago, a week ago. Um and it makes for a really really, lovely day. And in fact, it's great tim
Unknown ing because the coming months are the best time to go. You'll get the fall colors and it'll be a little bit cooler and it's a wonderful trip if you want to make a a weekend trip from New
Unknown York. There we go. This episode brought to you by the Chamber of Commerce for Western uh Western Massachusetts. Um well thanks so much for joining us. This was a ton of fun and uh I think we we got some interesting stuff here. It's been a real pleasure, thanks. This week's episode was produced by Grayson Korhonen and was recorded at the Network Studios in Los Angeles, California. Please remember to subscribe and to rate the show. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next week.