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Finding J.P. Morgan's Long-Lost Million Dollar Pocket Watch

Published on Mon, 10 Jan 2022 13:00:00 +0000

The most complicated British watch ever made had dropped off the radar, could Daniel Miller find it?

Synopsis

In this episode, James Stacy welcomes back Daniel Miller, an investigative reporter for the LA Times, to discuss his remarkable story about tracking down a long-lost pocket watch commissioned by J.P. Morgan in the early 1900s. The timepiece, created by British watchmaker J. Player and Son, was completed in 1909 and featured 18 complications, making it the most complicated British watch ever made at the time.

Miller's investigation, which took place largely during the pandemic, traced the watch's journey through a fascinating cast of owners spanning over a century. Starting with J.P. Morgan's brief four-year ownership before his death in 1913, the watch passed through various prominent collectors including Benjamin Mellenhoff (head watchmaker at Tiffany & Co.), Jan Scala (a Manhattan antiques dealer), and Sam Bloomfield (an aviation industry engineer and serious watch collector). The trail went cold in the 1970s, but through persistent research and numerous connections—including communications with Archduke Geza von Habsburg and watch auction house founder Osvaldo Patrizzi—Miller eventually discovered the watch's fate.

The breakthrough came when Miller connected with Andrew Chrisford, founder of rare timepiece dealer Bobinet, who revealed that his company had acquired Bloomfield's entire collection in 1983, including the J. Player super complication, and sold it that same year to an undisclosed buyer. The watch remains with that same anonymous collector nearly forty years later, cared for and cherished. While Miller never got to see the watch in person, he was able to secure the first-ever color photographs of the timepiece for his article, and found satisfaction in confirming its safety to Carl Player, a descendant of the original watchmaker who had been searching for information about this piece of his family's legacy.

Transcript

Speaker
James Stacy Hey, it's me, James Stacy, and we're back for twenty twenty two. It's my great pleasure to kick off the year by welcoming Daniel Miller back to the show. Daniel is an investigative reporter and a host for the LA Times, and he was on episode fifty three in which he spoke to Stephen about his podcast series, Larger Than Life, which covered the remarkable story of Big Willie Robinson, an LA street racer and, well, larger than life personality. If you're into cars or great stories, you can find the link in the show notes. It's definitely worth a listen. Today, Daniel returns to the show to talk about a wonderful story he wrote for the LA Times covering his attempt to track down a long-lost pocket watch made for JP Morgan in the early 1900s. The hunt would take Miller on an impressive jaunt through history, supported by a cast of characters that spans Sultans, descendants of Marie Antoinette, and even a great many horology obsessives. For an inside scoop on this incredible story, let's chat with the man himself and let's get to it. Daniel, welcome back to the show. How are you? I'm doing well. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, this is a real treat. I remember listening to episode 53 which you were on and then going on. I I think you and I share being pretty big car nerds within certain niches and and I really enjoyed uh larger than life. So this is a bit of a treat when I got an email. I had heard some word and and had been sent the link to your story and just hadn't quite read it by the time I got the email from the folks to uh to see if you'd like to come on the show. So I'm I'm thrilled for this. I think it's a great way to kick off the year. Well I appreciate that. Yeah, this story was a real labor of love that spanned much of the pandemic. And uh for me was really a diversion from a lot of the ugly news that was out there in the world, some of which I was covering. Now that it's out in the world, I I've been really gratified by the response to the story. Uh I don't really write about watches at the Los Angeles Times. I'm a business reporter. So to be able to dip into an area that's a you know personal passion of mine was just a lot of fun. Absolutely. And and I I really want to impress upon people that like if if you have the ability to read this story, which is basically everyone, I think you can get six months of the LA Times for a dollar. So it please pause this and and go read the story first. It's not that long, all things considered. It's really nicely written and and it it has a pace to it that kind of everything you go through I don't know it's twenty five hundred words or something like that and you can just kind of whiz right through it. It's really, really nicely written and and a fascinating story. Assuming that people have passed and and gone and read it, I uh for those who who are in their car already and and couldn't couldn't do that, how about we do a brief synopsis? Would you would you be able to give us a quick little summary of the story, Daniel, and then we can get into some of the more fun details? Absolutely. So about two years ago, I learned of a missing pocket watch that was said to be made for uh JP Morgan, you know, the world's most famous banker, let's call him. And uh I learned about it from a website called uh SJX Watches, which had done a fairly deep dive into the watch and its history. As I mentioned, these were the early days of the pandemic when I really started to wonder, could I figure out what happened to this watch? And uh early on in the process of kind of just going down an internet rabbit hole, I came across uh watch message board posts by uh a man named Carl Player. Now, the pocket watch in question was made by Jay Player and Son of Coventry, England. And when I saw Carl's last name, uh I knew I had to reach out to him and soon did and quickly confirmed that he was a descendant of the watchmaker who made this super complication. And I just it was there was just some poetry there. This accountant from Coventry trying to uh find a missing pocket watch uh made by his ancestor. And uh from there I just knew we had a great tale. Basically, the whereabouts of the watch kind of had been unknown since the mid-1970s. And I really started my research there. I figured that if I could understand who owned the watch and sort of trace its history, I might be able to uncover where it eventually wound up. And that's what I spent, you know, months doing on and off and when time permitted. And so in this case this story would have been a a kind of in addition to all of your other workload? It was kind of a a a passion project on the side or did you have Well when I first discussed the story with my editors, I did not know how the story would end and I certainly had not found the watch. So I certainly am gratified for their uh imagination and for their uh willingness to go with me on this journey and see what we could find out. Yeah, I'm a business reporter. So um I I often write about uh Los Angeles business personalities and business culture, investigations, feature stories, stuff like that. So this was in addition to what I normally work on, though eventually this became, you know, on the front burner, of course. And it was a thrill to work on this with other journalists at the LA Times, whether it's my editor or the copy editors who saved me some from some embarrassing mistakes, an illustrator, photographers, et cetera. For sure. And I remember when the SJX story came out, actually because Jack, who's also on this call, it didn't feel right to sit down and talk pocket watches at length without Jack. Jack had kind of done a recommended reading pointing back to the SJX story, which was kind of the maybe the only uh image I had seen of the of the watch up until your story. Jack, you have any uh footnote for this uh story before we get going? I mean like were you aware that this was a missing thing before the SJX piece
Jack Forster came out in I guess summer twenty nineteen? Aaron Ross Powell I can't remember when I first heard about this watch, but the first time actually might have been through SJX's story. And I think the pretty much the only picture that anyone has ever seen of this watch um is reproductions of the original article from um the journal of the horological institute was it
James Stacy daniel yeah it was the uh the horological journal from nineteen oh nine and then the HIA journal in nineteen forty seven has had other images as well. Aaron Powell
Jack Forster This whole thing to me is just sort of an object lesson in uh missing treasures might not be as missing as you think they are if you're just persistent enough. I had really just because of the amount of time between you know when this watch had last been written about and actually seen by anybody. Um and and and now I'd kind of written it off as irrecoverably missing. Um but uh apparently not. And you know, thereby hangs a tail as they say
James Stacy . So I'm interested in starting with uh JP Morgan because the guy was a real legit like a benefactor of the of the entire idea of especially even British watchmaking. And Daniel, maybe I'm not I'm not sure necessarily how deep you're into watches at just a generalal person level or pocket watches, but British watches is a weird thing where it it almost seems like the the whole concept dried up after the war. It obviously kept going and now we have this resurgence and and you have Roger Smith and you have Braymont and you have Verdex and you have all these big brands now. But I mean they were a seat of absolute horlogical power at the time when JP Morgan would have been interested in collecting and commissioning watches, no? That's my understanding. Uh you know, while I'm not a pocket watch collector by any means, I certainly appreciate the craftsmanship and uh this story allowed me to connect with the that era. Yeah, JP Morgan was an inveterate collector of everything, coins,, art furniture, and of course watches. I know that he was a big supporter of Charles Fraudscham in England and other British watchmakers. He was sort of one of maybe a handful of people in the world at the time who could commission a timepiece like this, and uh perhaps one of a small group for whom you know this was you know the ultimate treasure. It's no surprise that for somebody like JP Morgan, he only wanted the best, and of course he he could afford it. You know, a big part of my story was untangling the JP Morgan provenance. Did he actually commissioned this watch. I spent a fair amount of time trying to understand that. You know, that, you know, had been sort of repeated unequivocally over the years and become part of this watch's legend, but there was reasons to be skeptical about whether JP Morgan actually had commissioned this watch. As we lay out in our story, there's plenty of people who vouch for that fact, including the player descendant. I really enjoyed that part of the reporting process, which was probably more so in the early days, because of course, like I said, I've got an editor to sell the story on. I need to make sure I have the goods early on. Yeah, for sure. To checks and you know make sure that things are are aligned as they should be. Because sometimes these stories really like you get a push and maybe even it's corroborated Did it feel like you were the only one looking for this specific wine Well look, I'm just as paranoid as any other journalists out there. So I just assume that there were like five other reporters at five other outlets trying to find this thing. But uh yeah, no, I can acknowledge that i was probably the only one looking besides of course carl player you know uh i really commend sjx for that piece which really resurfaced this watch and uh you know, for me, I know I mentioned this earlier, but it throughout the pandemic, this story was like a balm. To be able to immerse myself in this kind of research and tap into a passion of mine while doing it was just sort of like a way to Aaron Powell Well there's a l and there there is a little bit of a respite in looking back at this time of like industrialization and and you know JP Morgan was so powerful he literally saved you, know at, least in two scenarios, the the panics which could have become, you know, by the time he passed before the major crash of the twenties, it he was a an absolute powerhouse and this watch was what, made in or finished in nineteen oh nine? That's right. And then he passed only two years later. So only even he only ended up having the watch for a couple years, you know, maybe maybe enjoying it for a couple years. And this watch, of course, for those you know, keeping track of dates, predates the Henry Graves complication. This would have been, by all accounts, the the most complicated British watch ever made. And uh took four years to complete J Player, according to your research. And if I'm not um stealing too many of your fun little factoids, it cost a thousand dollars and may very well have bankrupted the firm. That's right. Wild. So the watch was commissioned around 1905. It was completed in 1909. It cost one thousand pounds. So about five thousand dollars at the time. JP Morgan died in nineteen thirteen. And he got to experience this watch, let's say, for four years or so before dying. And when he dies, it sets this watch off on a long journey, which is really what my story is about, tracing its path from collector to collector. I think the the context here is really key. You mentioned the grave super complication. So that watch was completed about 25 years later. And that watch had 24 complications, and of course was made by Paddock Philippe, the most famous watchmaker in the world. The J Player watch had 18 complications. So six fewer, but completed about 25 years earlier, and of course made by a small shop in Coventry that you know is really not widely known now and was not widely known then. So uh it's not exactly apples to apples just to sort of like look at the number of complications. I think they're both remarkable timepieces. But a as you said, according to the experts that I spoke to, this watch was and remains the most complicated British timepiece ever. And I think it's an interesting thing to imagine the world. You were talking about how this became something of a of a bomb for our current scenario. But to imagine a world in which a leader of industry that that you you would said in some ways sort of what had become America's royalty were these industrialists and bankers and financers and such. And uh I I think it's an interesting to imagine a world in which not just the money, because if you look at it, I think I think you did a a calculation and this puts it somewhere around the price of say a hundred and thirty thousand dollars today, which of course you couldn't commission a super complication for from any firm. And it's an interesting world to imagine a space where this was kind of the rich guy with taste sort of flex in some ways, where if it was uh Morgan with this J player and then later it was Henry Graves and of course like the Graves watch is more famous, but Morgan's much more famous or known, his name is much more well known than than Graves ever would be. It's it's it is a really interesting time for horology and and and where people were spending their money. You know, this just predates the kind of major relevance of the automobile and coach building and that becoming a, you know, if we're talking nineteen oh nine, nineteen thirte,en that sort of thing. It is a fabulous time. And the other thing that I find remarkable is when you look at it, this is like well over a hundred years ago, and yet you're still able to trace that that line and find where the watch had been even up like you said, up until the 70s and then beyond. That period was a really interest
Jack Forster ing one in English watchmaking as well, because British watchmaking never really managed to establish a strong industrial base, and that's one of the reasons that it kind of went dark, especially after World War II. The United States had uh a huge industrial base for watchmaking, uh, but it was all concentrated in basically three companies, and when they went out of business, there was sort of no infrastructure to support its return. The Swiss were developing an industrial infrastructure for watchmaking. But for the British, high-end, you know, watchmaking was pretty high-end comparatively speaking. And it was really something that was done on a craft basis. You know, if you uh I mean if you wanted to get a high-grade English pocket watch in the late 1800s, early 1900s, you know, you had like one guy in Clerkenwell who was just making main springs and another guy in Clerkenwell who was just making hands and another guy in Clerken but they all seem to have been in Clerkenwell, and another guy in Clerkenwell who was just making cases. It's funny that um, you know, we have these individuals like JP Morgan whose wealth was really built on industrialization and the repeatability of machine manufacturing. Absolutely in love with these, you know, basically unique, I mean not basically unique, absolutely unique, one-off pie
James Stacy ces of mechanical genius. No, that's an interesting point. I hadn't thought of that. I'm curious to get your take on this. So I wrote my story that, you know, watchmaking like this was once the province of kings and queens, that that those were the people who could afford to commission timepieces like this, but that it was really, you know, the robber barons, whatever you want to call them, the industrialists in the United States, who were becoming American royalty, who sort of carried this line of watchmaking forward by commissioning these pieces? And it seems to me it was such a brief window during which that was the case. JP Morgan dies in 1913. Of course, we have the Grave Super Complication. We have uh the Watches, the James Packard Commission, but it's really a brief window during which these industrialists are supporting this business in that way. And I think that it is in fact the industrialization that Jack just mentioned that sort of flips the script, that that pushes people to new ways to, you know, to to flex, if you will, whether it's, you know, racing Ferraris or private jets in these days. It is an interesting thing how how this would have represented the peak of sort of both technology and craft and art. And for a guy who uh Daniel, like you said, is collecting kind of at an insane rate towards the end of his life, or maybe not insane, but at a very passionate rate at any ways, used 20,000 pieces he amassed of various things and was publishing, you know, books and catalogs and and all sorts of uh sort of almost uh scholarly pieces about his own collection of things, even had a uh you know, semi-precious stone uh named after him. I love that tidbit, by the way. I had no idea Morganite was named after J.P. Morgan That's hilarious. It it is such a weird time. And and some of these watches are remembered and some of them were kind of forgotten. You know, the roadblock, which would take us, you know, into the 70s where you kind of picked up the the baton of actually filming That's a perfect spot to pick up the trajectory because uh it was known that Jan Scala owned this watch. That was already out there when I dug into this reporting. Scala was just an absolutely fascinating figure, one of the most fun people in the story to research. He was a prog native who was well established in Manhattan on forty seventh street as an antiques dealer and his shop sold everything. Pocket watches, fabric eggs, ornate cigarette cases, and he was a bit of a man about town. He was popping up in old newspaper stories in uh the sixties and seventies, so there was a wealth of material about him. Uh one of the details that I just love came from a nineteen seventy-eight New York Times story. He was bidding on items at an auction of uh collectibles from the estate of Henry Ford II. The story said he won 17 lots, gold and enameled boxes, all of them, and that he used uh code names while bidding. One of the code names was Toledo, if I recall. And then he said that he was buying these items on behalf of uh European museums. He spent, you know, upwards of $300,000 on uh these gold and enameled boxes. He was clearly somebody who ran in circles where a watch like the J Player Super Complication would be of interest. And um he wrote about it, in fact. He wrote to a trade journal in 1974 and basically announced his acquisition of this watch. He didn't say from whom he bought it. I love how much posturing exists around this watch. Exactly. Who has it, the uh you know, publishing books about it, and it almost seems like they knew eventually you were going to come along and want to put these pieces together because people who got it wanted to say, like, I got it. I'm not going to say from where, but I got it. Yeah. No, there were breadcrumbs to follow. Um, in this letter that he writes to this trade journal in 1974, he he announces his ownership of the timepiece and he also says that it was JP Morgan's watch. And that is actually the first time that Morgan's ownership of the watch is noted. And um that's what basically, you know, scholars and others who were looking into this watch knew about. That that was like the last mention of the timepiece in in in the public realm. So Jan did did not have any kin that I could reach and he died in 1996. You know, uh of course we wondered, both Carl Plair and I wondered if he had bequeathed the watch to a relative, but that that you know certainly couldn't be determined with no living kin. And we also wondered if the watch had been stolen, because after a fair amount of research, I found this pretty interesting legal case involving Jan Skala and a jewelry dealer named Louis Hyman. And Hyman was convicted of fraud. He was orchestrating this scheme that involved swindling Scala and another merchant out of objects worth millions of dollars. So I thought this might be an aha moment, you know, that that this watch was perhaps among those items taken by Hyman. But any of the legal records that I could rustle up didn't mention which objects were taken. So um it seemed it seemed that the trail was, you know, cold at that point. So the next connection kind of came from an even kind of stranger I I don't know. I I guess I guess stranger works. I mean, with a watch like this you, you have no way of knowing where it could have I mean, with any watch really. But with something like this, you know that it would have only kind of either been stolen and maybe then actually gone for good, or it would have kind of stayed in this very elevated space. Is this where we find the connection to the house of the Habsburg? That's right. It's such a crazy thing. You make a really good point. I just want to note it sort of seemed that either this watch was going to sort of remain ensconced in like the upper crust world of, you know, uh aristocratic watch collecting, or it was sort of parted out and you know, uh lost decades ago or or rusting uh, you know, in some in some drawer in some forgotten, you know, storage locker. It sort of seemed like eventually I I came to believe like those were the two options. So yes, it seemed like the trail had gone cold, but among the legal records in the Hyman criminal proceedings, there was a name that caught my eye, and the name was Geze von Hopsburg. Obviously, I remember my history and the and the Hopsburg name jumped off the page with a little bit of research. Uh, Geze von Habsburg uh is the Archduke of Austria and um a Habsburg and also an expert in Faberge eggs. And I was able to connect with him and you know, asked him a handful of questions what he might recollect about this watch. And he didn't have much to say about the watch itself, but he knew someone who might be able to help me. And he connected me with Osvaldo Patrisi, who was the founder of the Antiquorum auction house. And Patrizzi and I uh exchanged several emails. His emails were coming in in Italian, so I'd sort of like find translation software, you know, my heart pounding, wondering what this is gonna say. And uh I get the translation. And eventually Patrizi is able to share that he recalled this watch. He remembers talking about this watch with Jan Scala back in the mid-1970s, and that he knew who had acquired the watch from Scala. And the man who acquired the watch was a very prominent collector at the time named Sam Bloomfield. So just when I thought the story sort of had run its course, seeing Geza von Hopsburg's name in this legal filing set me down a new path that's such a that's so a a descendant of uh And uh apparently, you know, some something of a uh a a collector themselves. And then now we've got Sam Bloomfield, which uh I maybe magnate isn't necessarily the right term, but he was an industrialist within the aviation space in America in kind of the generation after JP Morgan, right? Yeah, that's fair to say. He was an engineer and he was the president of an aircraft company called Swallow Airplane Co. And uh in 1936, he co-designed the Swallow Model C. And over the course of a couple decades, he accumulated nearly two dozen US patents. He left Wichita in the 1950s when Swallow shut down, and he and his wife Ree settled in La Jolla here in Southern California. And he was a very wealthy man and had a taste for the finer things. And he collected, you know, stratavarious violins, he collected vintage Ferraris, and of course he collected pocket watches, and he was very into British horology. He owned a George Daniels pocket watch. He had fraudsham pocket watches. And as I mentioned, he is the man who bought the J Player super complication from Jan Scala. And you know, in the story, we we are able to reconstruct a little bit about the transaction. This all came from Osvaldo Patrese, who recalled his conversation with Scala in the mid-1970s. The short version of the story is that Sam Bloomfield visited Jan Scala's shop in Manhattan without any advance notice. Uh and it was just by luck that the super complication was there and it wasn't in the bank where it would normally be kept. Scala showed Bloomfield the watch, and as you might expect, Bloomfield wanted the watch at all costs. It was a high asking price. It was $250,000 according to Patrizi, uh, which in today's dollar is uh something like $1.3 million. And you know, with inflation, that number is probably probably rising. According to Patrese, uh, this is an exorbitant sum at the time for such a timepiece, but Bloomfield had to have it. He bought it without hesitation and basically brings it back to La Jolla. And this point in the story, this is where I was sort of in uncharted territory. It was not publicly known that Bloomfield uh had acquired this timepiece. And by the time you connected, Bloomfield had already passed, correct? The late nineties? So Bloomfield died in 1979, and his wife Ree died in 1996. So, and you know, this is one of those strange parallels that when I realized it, it it was almost a little bit of a goosebumps moment. So JP Morgan had four or so years with this timepiece that he commissioned. And if you do the math, uh Bloomfield had four or so years with this timepiece before he died. So for some of the people who were able to attain it, you know, it was like a short-lived ownership and you know, their deaths sort of send the watch on to a new owner. And I was really struck by that, you know, that this this constellation of people orbiting this timepiece And and the interesting thing is how often it seemed to find a new home with uh someone who appreciated what it was. Not just its value or or that it was an antiquity or it, at this point that represented kind of a bygone era, but people who were act who would actively know what a J-Player super complication was and why it was special and why it needed to be cared for. You had mentioned in the story that when the watch was sold to Bloomfield, the i money was great, but uh Scala was kind of a little bit bummed about it 'cause he knew he wasn't gonna see that watch again or or indeed a watch like it. Uh I may maybe he was delighted by the graves, who knows? Yeah. No, I mean i uh you know it was uh but the transaction it sounds like was tinged with melancholy, a sense that, you know, a watch like this would not pass through his hands again. I yeah, I mean, you make a good point. The the number of sort of serious people in the world of horology who own this thing is is remarkable. And each seemed to know what it was. We haven't even mentioned it in in the middle of the 20th century, uh one of the watch's owners was a man named Benjamin Mellenhoff, who was the head watchmaker at Tiffany and Company in New York. And he's the one who supplied images of the watch in 1947 to the HIA journal. You know, another figure that, you know, had we constructed the story differently, I could have written an entire section on, but it didn't pan out that way. So yes, uh Bloomfield is just sort of next in a long line of custodians of this, you know, magical timepiece. And so uh y you effectively hit some sort of a dead end with Bloomfield that doesn't seem to still be in the holdings for uh you know his his uh company or his his uh assets beyond uh the passing of his wife. What what happened next? It was there a point where at this point you're going like I've come such a long way and now I find a new roadblock? Or is at this point do you get kind of get more excited? What's your what's your your thinking when you realize that you know his wife had passed in ninety-six and there was no you know kind of perceived record of where the watch went after that? Yeah, this was a significant dead end for me and I set the story aside for a while. I uh as you said, the custodians of the Bloomfield Estate basically had no record of this watch. And I went back to um Patrizzi, Osvaldo Patrizzi, with this information. And, you know, he kind of was just musing perhaps the timepiece had been acquired by the Sultan of Oman, who was an eminent collector, very well known, you know, in watch collecting circles. Of course you've got these Rolexes with the conjar on the dial. A lot of your listeners will know what I'm talking about. And look, I lobbed a couple of requests for interviews with the, you know, Ministry of Information in Oman and uh was promptly ignored each time. And uh he he had died. He was already dead when when this all sort of played out. So I didn't really know where to turn at that point. And like I said, I set the story aside uh for a while. And then there was a moment, and it was earlier this year, if I'm not mistaken, where I was looking at a message from Patrice, and he had mentioned somebody while telling me about the Sultan. He had mentioned that uh John Asprey, whose family uh had owned the luxury goods store uh and company Asprey of London, that John that John Asprey had worked with the Sultan back in the day to source him time pieces and things of that nature. So this sort of seemed like a Hail Mary at this point, but uh I figured it was worth a shot to track down John Asprey and ask if he had ever heard of this watch or if he knew about it. I really didn't have any reason to believe that the Sultan of Oman owned it, but uh other than the this sort of you know um uh quick note that Osvaldo Patrizzi had mentioned, but uh that had had sent me, but I figured it was worth a shot. So at this point, I get in touch with people in John Asprey's orbit. I speak to uh via email a son who suggests I speak with an antiquarian horologist named Andrew Christford. Chrisford is the founder of a rare time pieces dealer called Bobinet. And that perhaps Christford would know about this watch. And at this point, the stories pick back up and and now w were there any kind of pins for timing for Christford or for Bob and A, possibly having the watch or at this point it's just you've got a new kind of a door opened and you've got to go through it and see what's there. It's definitely the latter. It's this is an open door, perhaps the only one it is you, know, me doing my due diligence, following every sort of possible lead, researching every name that you know uh is in front of me, really just to be able to say that I I did my best and that I saw it all through. And at that point, I think it's fair to say that I, you know, I began to wonder, you know, do we have a story without finding the watch? Is this is this yarn entertaining enough in its own right that without learning of the watch's whereabouts, can we take our readers on a journey? And I started to think that was possible. Uh look, we've like dropped some big names, JP Morgan, a Hopsburg. So I thought it might work. Uh so I was really kind of just like running out of ground ball at this point. But I get an email back from Andrew Christford. And he tells me, yeah, I know about this watch. Uh he saw it in the mid-1970s. He remembers it. And he is happy to tell me about it. You know, if you want to talk plot twist for me, that was a shocker. Yeah, for sure. So to make a long story short, Christopher had seen the watch in the 1970s. He had um uh an interesting experience with it. He was in New York, you know, on business, and he stopped in to, you know, visit with uh a watchmaker that he had had known uh for some time. And the the gentleman's name was Janos Weinberger. And the story of Janos isn't in my piece, but it's a fascinating one. He was a Holocaust survivor, and he had been a very prominent watchmaker in New York in the 1970s. And, you know, it's possible that he was one of only a handful of watchmakers in the United States, perhaps the only one that could have serviced a watch like this. And Chrisford sees the watch in Weinberger's workshop. Of course, like everybody else, he wants to buy it, but he's told that uh it it's being sold to Bloomfield. But from there, Christford is able, you know, to strike up a friendship with Bloomfield, and that's really where this this story kind of meets its conclusion. So you've traced the line all the way and what's the end result? Do you end up having the watch in your hands or is it is it is it in some ways uh uh not quite that rewarding? So I'm sad to say I I I don't have the watch right here with me. But let me tell you what happens. So uh Chris Ford, the founder of Bobinet, he he gets Snow Bloomfield in the late 1970s and, he visits him in La Jolla, and they really bond. They're both aficionados of burgay and really, you know, experts when it comes to burgay. Uh, one thing that I think Jack might appreciate is that Bloomfield, according to Christford, owned Berget's first turbillon, number two eight two. This is a watch that uh I think has been described sometimes as a prototype, but uh it's believed to be the first turbillon. And you know, I'm kind of humming along in a conversation with with Christford when he drops that. And you know, I like had to have him repeat it. I I I wasn't quite sure he meant the first Tur
Jack Forster bill. Yeah, that's a really I mean it's obviously an incredible piece. Um one of the things that's always kind of amazed me about the turbion is that with most complications in watchmaking, with most inventions in watchmaking, you can usually see some sort of progression. You know, with chiming watches, you start out with hour strikers and then quarter repeaters and then fifty five minute repeaters and then minute repeaters eventually come along. Um but the turbion doesn't seem to have had any precedent. It uh kind of just came came from the mind of bright. And uh something like you know, if you uh are after the extraordinary uh and the rare and moments in watchmaking that represent kind of a pinnacle of uh both imagination and technical knowledge triumphing, uh that watch kind of that particular
James Stacy watch kind of sums it all up. And obviously his time as a collector, you know, predates the internet, I I feel he's not widely known and his his name really isn't out there among kind of the eminent watch collectors of the second half of the twentieth century, but he was he was a serious collector and uh just down the road from us in Los Angeles, down there in La Jolla. So that that was also just a fun part of the story for me. That you know, this this story was this globe-spanning journey. I was talking to people in New York City, in Coventry, England, in Italy. And then of course uh the story basically concludes in in La Jolla, a sleepy suburb of of San Diego. It continues its American arc. That's right. So so to make a long story short, Bloomfield dies in nineteen seventy-nine, and a couple of years after that, Bobonet, which is Christford's company, is able to acquire uh his entire collection, including the J Player Super Complication. Uh Bobinet acquires uh that watch for an undisclosed sum and turns around and sells it that same year, 1983, to an undisclosed buyer, again for an undisclosed sum. And you know, I wondered: well, have there been six you know new owners since 1983? But no, that's not the case. Uh, the pocket watch, Christopher told me, is still with the person that his company sold it to. And that was really the moment when I felt you know the journey in some ways was complete. You know, this pocket watch was not lost. And not only was it not lost, but it was owned by obviously a pretty serious collector, somebody who understood its worth and cherished it for what it was. Also somebody who apparently has absolutely zero interest in de-equisitioning it if they've held on onto it for this long. Yeah. So the the current owner has owned it for what? Uh nearly forty years and uh has remained anonymous this entire time and it has not changed hands again. This is clearly somebody who cherishes it for the masterpiece that it is. Of course, I asked Christford if he could share the identity of Yoner. Um, you know, and you know, he was very polite, but basically told me not a chance. And uh, you know, uh I respect that. I respect that. Do you have any idea where the uh owner is geographically? I don't, and I asked that too, and it was also gently robust. Hey, you can't you can never especially these days, you cannot begrudge somebody their privacy for certain. But I would think in my mind, as someone who loves watches and and loves sharing watches with other people, that this is kind of the second best outcome for this watch that it's with somebody who clearly loves it, has at least perceivably no interest in capitalizing on the heat in the market these days. I'm sure that they noticed what the graves went for. That was a number that was hard not to notice if you were in the the pocket watch space or watch space. You know, short of ending up in a museum where any of us could go visit it, which some of the Morgan stuff has, this seems like a a pretty nice way for the the story to end. I th I think in many ways I just feel bad that there wasn't a scenario where you ended up in somebody's kitchen and they left the room for a couple minutes and came back with a little box and and you got to like for you, like the rest of us, we can look at a picture and that's how it was probably always gonna be. But after all this work, you ended the story by by saying that you spoke with Carl Player who you know who who was worried that the watch was maybe lost and th the this history and and the legacy of of Jay Player was would be kind of incomplete without that watch being somewhere. And when he found out that the watch was safe and cared for, that was enough for him. And I'm curious, is was that enough for you, or does this feel like you might kind of keep on this for the next decade or two and hope to have Well, I'm always open to an off-the-record uh coffee or lunch with uh with any eminent watch collector who wants me to show me a super complication, uh especially this one. That said, no, I don't I don't expect I'll spend decades trying to find the owner because I think the owner perhaps knows of my interest. I think uh since we put it on the front page of the LA Times and I'm talking to you guys. That's been that's been well communicated. I I respect the owner's, you know, uh desire for privacy. No doubt the owner understands this watch would be worth millions. That's what experts told me at least. I think beyond the monetary value, it's just this this is so symbolic of British watchmaking and an era that's now passed. And I think that's what makes it so special. And I have no doubt that the owner understands that. You know, I I am satisfied by how the story ended. And most of all, I'm satisfied because the most sort of heartwarming moment of this whole journey was being able to get on a Zoom call, much like this one with Carl Player, and tell him what I discovered and see his face when I was able to tell him that this watch is not lost, that it's it's cared for by a collector who knows exactly what it is and is going to continue to cherish it. Um and I believe that he he really does feel satisfied that uh the watch is in good hands. Uh you know, I never expected to hold hold the watch, you know, but this checks a lot of boxes for me. I think it's fair to say. One thing that we did get and that we were able to share were uh beautiful color photographs of the watch, which had never been seen before. All the images of it were grainy black and white photos from decades and decades ago. We were able to get a photo of of both sides of this double-sided watch, and they're part of our story, and it's just it's gorgeous. And and um I hadn't told Carl Player about the photographs. Uh he knew the story, he knew what had transpired, but until he he saw the story when it published, um, he he didn't know that we we got these striking images. And that was a little treat for him. That's fabulous. And uh, you know, thank you so much for coming on and chatting about this. I I feel like we could do this for uh for some time. I I hope we can have you on again, w whether there's a story peg or not, just to chit chat about watches and the history behind them. It really was, you know, that this is a story that that came to you or or really kind of built steam during the pandemic. Is it kind of strange in your line of work to be doing so much of a story like this just over the phone and Zoom? Or were there scenarios in which you might have gone down to the La Jolla or to Europe or something to to meet with some of these people if that option had been available? Is it was this within the norm for building a story or or kind of adapted? Oh my God. I definitely would have been told by my editors you can drive yourself down to La Jolla and they probably would have declined my request, you know, for an open-ended plane ticket to Gallivant across Europe in search of the timepiece, whether there was a pandemic or not. But to be serious, yeah, I was a bit hamstrung by the pandemic in that there were plenty of interviews I could have done in person. And it felt a little strange at times to have these momentous interviews over the telephone or via email in some cases. And that's kind of a drag because obviously with email, you you don't capture a lot of the emotion that you hope for in a story like this. You know, I think about it in two ways. The pandemic certainly elongated the reporting process, and you don't ever want things to linger too long and get stale, but we probably have the pandemic to thank for the story actually ending the way it did. Because I had so many other things on my plate as uh as a business reporter. This thing kind of was backburnered so many times, but allowing it to sort of linger and coming back to it with fresh eyes and looking for a different avenue to pursue is probably what allowed me to eventually get in touch with Christopher, who kind of cracked the story wide open. If I was under some tight deadline, you know, Daniel, you've got a month to do this and I want you back on your normal beat, like it wouldn't have ended this way. Yeah, I I could see that for sure. And and I I would just commend you on the work because, you know, I I do a little, you know, every Jack does more of this than I do, but you know, we' there interview base, kind of investigating something, talking to a lot of people. And it's really hard to develop the relationships, which relinquish those nice little secrets that get you past the roadblocks. That's such a skill to do that over a text message, over an email, or even over a Zoom call. It's so much easier and and natural when you're meeting somebody face to face and maybe, like I said, sitting in their kitchen or or meeting them for coffee and you make a connection. It's a lot harder to do it uh the way that you did it. And I think the fact that you were able to not only pick up with the great work that SJX had already done on on the story, but then to make not just one or two connections, but kind of a an almost spider web level of connections that brought us to the watch is safe, it's it's it's happy, it's you know, it's in a it's in a warm uh place, being treated well. And I think that's the best that kind of outcome you could have expected, regardless of there being a, you know, a pandemic and all the other constraints. Yeah, well that's kind of you to say. I think probably my own enthusiasm for watches and and you know collecting vintage timepieces probably came through in some of my initial notes to the collectors and other people that I was reaching out to. And, you know, maybe that enthusiasm put them at ease in in terms of sort of divulging long held information to basically a stranger over over email. You know, I know I know I sent Osvaldo Petresi a a picture of an old Brightling chronomat that I had just gotten back that had been restored at Brightling 769. And uh, you know, it was, you know, maybe a little bit unsubtle, but it was my way of trying to communicate you're you were talking to somebody who Oh lovely. Last time I came on this podcast, you know, I showed up with a watch roll with Stephen Pulverant uh and just shoved watches in his face for a half hour. I mean, that sounds like a good time for sure. So this is the watch that I was telling him about. I mean it you can't really see on on Zoom. It's beautiful though. It's a silvery white dial, gold case. Yeah. I I'm just a sucker for vintage brightling, manual wound, chronographs, you know, mid-century. I somehow became a collector of these watches, and uh I you know, I'm not the first person to say it, but to me, just a totally overlooked brand compared to, you know, their their competitors back in the day. I'm wearing a Bright Link sprint that That's beautiful. They've done a reissue of I think they call this like the the Zorro. I just think what a disconnect between you know their contemporary brand and their vintage brand for many years, although uh I'm really impressed by a lot of the the timepieces they're putting out these days. Yeah. I think they've made a uh a pretty smart turn in terms of uh you know really respecting their heritage and taking a look at it at what what the appeal was in the fifties and the sixties and then finding a way to emulate that today. I I would absolutely agree that they seem to be on a a a good trajectory. Speaking of trajectories, what's what's any other watch stories on the horizon? Any anything else, uh uh threads you're pulling at? Anything we might want to put out to the audience for h for some help or or you d taking a little break from being uh the the Watchworld's investigative journalist. I would just say that if anybody wants to talk to me about the whereabouts of Buzz Aldrin's uh Speedmaster, uh I'm all ears. And uh we can do we we can can chat on any sort of encrypted channel you prefer. I'm at Daniel N. Miller on Twitter. Look, that's you know, to me, that's sort of like the holy grail of missing watch stories. Oh, for sure. I have no immediate plans to to pursue that one or really any other. I mean, you know, I'm just I'm interested in telling good good yarns, uh interesting narratives, but uh, you know, it's so rare that I get to write about watches. Uh so the chance to do it the this time was really a pleasure. Well, uh in turn it was a rare treat to have you back on the show. I think this story turned out beautifully. I really hope everyone listening uh checks it out. Everything's in the show notes, of course. Uh the Daniel, thank you so much for coming on the show and chit-chatting. I know we went a little long, but I I really appreciate it. And this has been a nice way to kick off the year as well. A very watch uh I I love the history. I love this era of watches and the rest of it. And it it's been really uh a treat to get to kind of dig into it with you. And and Jack, of course, uh despite your uh internet connection. No, thank you guys so much for spotlighting the story and sharing it with your audience. Like you said, you can read it at LA Times.com. It's it's also available to uh Apple News Plus subscribers, and there's an audio version of the story there as well. So, yeah, thank you again and happy new year. And to you, thanks so much for coming on. And if you're enjoying the show, uh, you know what I always say, please tell a friend, maybe send this episode to them if they're into pocket watches or you know classic American Titans or uh or just great storytelling. I th I think we covered all three of those bases pretty easily with this one. Thanks so much for listening and uh we'll chat to you in about a week's time.