The Business of Watches [007] James Lamdin Of Analog Shift On The Vintage And Pre-Owned Market And Why All Authenticity Guarantees Aren't The Same¶
Published on Mon, 24 Nov 2025 18:00:00 +0000
Veteran vintage watch dealer James Lamdin goes in-depth on where the market for vintage and pre-owned watches is and where it's going.
Synopsis¶
This episode of "The Business of Watches" features a live recording from the UBS House of Craft event in New York City, with host Andy Green interviewing James Lambden, founder of Analog Shift and Vice President of Vintage and Pre-owned at Watches of Switzerland. The conversation provides an in-depth exploration of the vintage and pre-owned watch market's evolution, particularly focusing on the dramatic changes that occurred during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Lambden describes how the pandemic initially caused the secondary watch market to stop completely, but then sparked an unprecedented surge in interest as people spent time at home exploring mechanical watches through social media and online platforms. This led to his company Analog Shift being acquired by Watches of Switzerland in 2020, allowing for exponential growth—over 95% per year for five years. He discusses the challenges of meeting new consumer demand, the importance of education and authenticity in the marketplace, and the significance of Rolex entering the certified pre-owned (CPO) market in 2022, which he views as the start of a new chapter for the industry.
The discussion also covers current challenges facing the market, including tariffs on Swiss goods and their impact on margins, the ongoing consolidation and professionalization of the pre-owned sector, and the evolution of collector tastes from large sports watches to smaller dress watches. Lambden emphasizes the importance of hands-on education for collectors, advocates passionately for underappreciated American vintage watches, and addresses questions about authentication processes and market trends. He remains optimistic about the market's future, noting that even if 90% of new collectors leave, the remaining enthusiasts would still vastly outnumber previous generations, creating substantial long-term growth opportunities for vintage and pre-owned watches.
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Transcript¶
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| Andy Green | On the business of watches this week, a special live episode recorded at the UBS House of Craft event in New York City in October. We speak to James Lambden, the founder of Analog Shift and the Vice President of Vintage and Pre-owned at Watches of Switzerland. It's a fascinating look at the vintage and pre-owned side of the market. Lambdon tells us where we've been, where we are, and where we're going, plus plenty of thoughts and advice on the collecting journey from someone who has decades of experience in the watch space. We hope you enjoy. Indeed. And so we are here to talk about vintage and pre-owned watches. But let's to start, let's take a step back. Maybe back to 2020, 2021. What happened to the uh pre-owned watch market, what drove it and how did we get there and how significant was that era and event for pre-on wat |
| James Lambden | ches. Well, they they started with some very dark times, Andy. I think we've all been there. Extremely significant. Uh, to answer your last part of the question first. Um what we were experiencing in the run-up to the COVID era was already a very dramatic increase in interest in mechanical watches at all levels for new, for pre-owned, for vintage uh publications like Hodinki had reached uh untold new audiences, and the appreciation for these mechanical things uh was becoming far and wide spread by social media and the internet in new ways. And then the pandemic happened, and people weren't traveling. They weren't eating out. They were spending a lot of time mandatorily at home. And uh my favorite headline from that era was from Bloomberg, and it was the return of stuff, and people spent their money on stuff, some really cool stuff. Um, but it wasn't immediate. And in those first few months of COVID, we saw the secondary watch market and the vintage market, which are slightly different, uh, pretty much stop. Everything stopped. And there were a couple months where nothing happened at all. What then happened was this new generation of watch enthusiasts had a lot of time on their hands to go and study and go and learn and get on social media and get on the internet and engage with something where they actually had time to focus. And it came roaring in uh with untold and perhaps not completely yet measured impact uh for sales, but primarily for new and contemporary pre-owned, whereas vintage kind of took a slight left and it became slightly more rarefied air that was a little bit less understandable to a whole new wave of enthusiasts. H |
| Andy Green | mm. And as someone who had been in the business for uh over a decade at the time, more than that. Um what was your reaction? How did you deal with all the new people? |
| James Lambden | I mean, it was exciting. Um I remember the very earliest days of COVID being at home and getting calls or emails or Instagram messages from a lot of my colleagues in the industry and suddenly there was this demand for new content. So we were creating Instagram QAs and uh live uh discussions and and chatroom kind of uh experiences through social media or on um one of the variety of new tech spaces that came and left during the COVID era for sort of live hangs with your friends. And the that demand uh was significant and the attendance was significant and I realized very quickly that uh we weren't talking to the same group of indoctrinated individuals. We were talking to a much larger audience. Um for myself, we decided at that time to actually accept an offer from Watches of Switzerland. And analog shipped was acquired uh in totality by Watches of Switzerland and became the vintage and pre-owned department for the group, which has been uh an incredible experience to take something that was uh a passion project and then expand it with incredible resources to reach yet another audience through their retail store network. And it came with a lot of challenges, but it's also resulted in uh exponential growth. |
| Andy Green | And was it a surprise to you that um this niche element, this side part of the watch industry all of a sudden became part of or in demand uh with a mainstream retailer like Watches the Switzerland Group. |
| James Lambden | No. It's really cool stuff. You know? Um part of the effect and in the in the last panel we heard a little bit about sort of the um tag along effect, you know, what's popular, what's hot. And that was probably never more prevalent in the watch industry than during the and since the COVID era. This is where we really began to see new manufacturers have wait lists. We started to see the hype cycle uh get out of hand in some levels, in many levels, with uh contemporary product. So the secondary market was uh very robust during this time. And it also allowed uh secondhand dealers, um, analog included, to maybe tap into uh to some degree uh that second uh second hand but ultimately second dairy market uh for new watches as well as traditional pre-owned as well as uh spreading the gospel of vintage. |
| Andy Green | In retrospect, what mistakes did the vintage and pre-owned world make in dealing with that new popularity, with that new prominence, with that new profile? Um, or was it ready uh to become so much more mainstream than it had |
| James Lambden | been Early days of our acquisition. You know, we did a nice brand refresh. We built a new website. And one of our long-term clients, actually, several of our long-term clients reached out and said, you know, you've got a lot less vintage watches on your website now. I said, actually, we have about six times as many vintage watches as we have ever had, but we have 30 times more pre-owned newer watches. So perhaps uh looking at our own business, what happened visually was that we were emphasizing the newer pre-owned stuff uh and less the vintage. But to our I guess to our defense, that's what people were asking for. So what's cool about uh being a secondhand dealer, being a vintage dealer is that we have uh we're very nimble and we can respond to changes in market demand, whether it's color or style or brand or country of origin or price point, much more effectively than a uh monobrand or a multi-brand uh dealer, even that's working with product that is supplied by a manufacturer, and you have really no say in what you get, and often you're not getting what you want because there's waiting lists. But as a pre-owned dealer, as a vintage dealer, we're very nimble and in many ways that puts the secondary market in a better position, particularly uh for c changing consumer demand and changing global e economic situations. Indeed. And how w uh |
| Andy Green | we talked about where we were. Where are we now? And and and what have we gained and and what have we lost uh in this space. Well |
| James Lambden | , uh the market remains as ever uh highly dynamic. And that's a word I've been using for a long time and uh it still holds. It's just the the reasons for that um dynamic movement have changed and evolved into exciting and terrifying new ways. Um we're working now in a in a space where some of the newer enthusiasm that has come from watches is beginning to mature. Uh perhaps the appetite to pay very, very strong secondary market prices for everything are beginning to tone down, but people are still more engaged with mechanical watches than at any point in human history. And that's super cool. That's quite a statement. Yeah, I mean I think it's true. I mean I think it's true. If not I just made it up, but sounds good. Um I think uh what we're dealing with today uh with the tariff situation in this country, with um other elements of international challenges in terms of distribution, um, responding to demand, and so on and so forth, uh remains a challenge for a lot of players in this space. Now, we're fortunate in that we have uh a certain level of resource and we have a certain level of uh distribution and and tremendous ability to reach far and wide, not just to sell our product but to acquire product. So we remain in a place where we can engage with the community and with the marketplace in um perhaps more effective ways than someone who's geographically limited uh or financially bound to, you know, what they have in stock as as a a working capital. Indeed. Well, |
| Andy Green | okay, let's jump to right now tariffs. What does this mean for vintage and pre-owned? I mean, is this is it all |
| James Lambden | I think it would be easy to sort of categorize it that way if you think all right, well like i i if if we're having challenges getting product into the United States, then we are geographically limited to whatever's here, right? That uh and that's to a certain degree true, um, but the reality is the nature of our business is international. And we're we're bringing in product that originated overseas all the time. Tariffs do not work for the margins on secondary product. Hard stop. So I remain optimistic, hopeful that there's going to be a resolution to the situation that we are currently in at this moment with a 39% tariff against Swiss goods. But again, even if it did stay in place, while there would be certain brand or style limitations, there are a lot of watches in the United States. So if we can evolve and our our marketplace can evolve to have interest in maybe some of the stuff that's already here, uh, shout out again back, to the last panel where Tom was making fun of weirdos who like early American watches. I'm one of those weirdos. And there's a lot of early American watches in America. Now it's gonna be a minute before uh people stop demanding a uh you know, John Mayer Green Dial Daytona and start looking at a pre-war Waltham. I recognize that's a jump. But that's a journey. It's a very it's more than a jump. It's a free fall. But there are watches in America and a lot of them. Um, it just so happens though, most of the stuff that people are really engaged with uh are primarily located overseas at this time, predominantly in Asia. |
| Andy Green | Is vintage and pre-owned a has it made the journey to being perceived as legitimate and on the up and up and on the same level as uh the primary market, or does it still you know have a ways to go uh in terms of you know be |
| James Lambden | ing Yeah, another great question. I mean I think categorically it has a long way to go. There are certainly players in the space who do a better job at uh providing a level of authenticity and a level of uh consumer security. And once they've sort of established themselves and they reach their audience, yeah, they become their clientele becomes comfortable with buying a secondhand or uh vintage item. But categorically, there's a tremendous difference that uh exists in a consumer's mind between buying a new product with a warranty from an authorized retailer than from buying some old watch from somebody they don't know or, you know, perhaps saw on the internet once. |
| Andy Green | And talk about how that relationship. I mean, so I mean, this is a digital world. Um uh the pandemic interest in watches was a digital phenomenon. But where are we going in terms of that experience of buying vintage and pre-owned. Is the trend of uh inevitably becoming more and more digital? Is that are we still on that journey or are we starting to push back? |
| James Lambden | I'm gonna ramble through this one a little bit, I think, Andy. So you can like nudge me back into place if I get too far into the weeds. But you know, firstly, analog shift, uh, my company was built with an idea of a passion for analog exact So the the product itself that we carry is predominantly mechanical and analog in nature. The way we talk about it, the way we built our brand is in tribute to a non-or pre-digital era. Yet we operate primarily in the digital space. So there's an irony there that's not lost on me. I'll also go back even further to my first sort of engagement with the watch community. Um, and it was also digital. Uh, for some of us in the room, might remember the era of forums, and there was a whole bunch of like HTML coding you had to learn or copy-paste if you wanted to upload a photograph. I was never very good at that. Um, and of course, watch collecting is a highly visual thing. So if you can't put up a photo of what it is you're talking about, you're like, you're not winning. Before COVID, one of the coolest things that happened for the watch enthusiast was that it was beginning to come offline. Uh groups like Red Bar and some of the other watch collecting communities that sprung up around the the world were engaging with watches in a physical sense. And then, almost at the height of its popularity, we all had to stay inside. Certain elements of that have carried forward in the collector community But a lot of the retail side is now still uh predominantly being pushed digitally, whether that's on an e-commerce platform on the web, through social media, WhatsApp groups, what have you. It is my belief that what we're dealing with here is a tremendously vibrant new collector community, new enthusiast community. Maybe just to make up some numbers, outnumber my generation, not by age, but by experience, like a thousand to one. That's how many new watch enthusiasts there are. That's that it's quite a ratio. Yeah. And I don't think, by the way, aside from all of you fine people in this room at the moment, I don't think all those thousand to one are gonna stick around for ever. Right? Part of these people came in because it w they were bored during COVID. Part of them came in for an investment angle. Part of them came in, got what they wanted, and we'll move on. And that's fine too. But let's say that ninety percent, again, another made up number, let's say ninety percent of those new people who came into watch collecting, watch enthusiasm, and over the last five, six years, let's say ninety percent dropped out. My generation would still be outnumbered a hundred to one. So what's gonna happen in that time frame is that those hundred are probably a lot more than a hundred, but let's say ten percent, are gonna become very experienced and knowledgeable. As you move forward in your collecting journey and in your enthusiast journey for watches, you're going to demand more and more uh expertise and more and more authentic interaction. I do not believe that that can happen exclusively online. So I think there is a demand for a analog experience. |
| Andy Green | So I mean, because at times it has seemed lately like everybody's becoming a watch dealer. Yeah, I noticed that too. So yeah, indeed, are we are we seeing the you know consolidation, the professionalization um uh of this side of the industry. I mean that's the journey we're on. How far how far along are we? |
| James Lambden | I think we're still very early days. You know, uh if we l zoom out and look at watches as a collectible category, as an investment category, you know, uh if we use art, whatever that means as sort of this overarching that's the big one, you know, somewhere down that list you've got spirits and wine, and then you've got classic cars, and then somewhere down here is watches. So it's still got a very, very long way to go before we reach the quote unquote collectibles market cap. I think we're very very early in the journey. But to answer the first part of that, yeah, we are already seeing a consolidation. I think during the sort of um core pandemic era, a lot of people became dealers. And a lot of that had to do with access and relationships and be able to get a watch that was in demand and make a few bucks or maybe a lot of bucks, flipping it on the secondary. A lot of those folks have moved on. And that's fine too |
| Andy Green | . What is the the traditional Swiss watch industry, um how uniform or aligned has their reaction um to the shift in in uh um interest in vintage and pre-owned watches. What is the industry itself doing? I mean there is an extraordinary sort of um difference in some brands not even acknowledging um uh the This part of the market. And yet others have moved in great ways. |
| James Lambden | Yeah. I would answer it this way. Any serious luxury brand that is not paying attention to its own heritage is blowing it. You know, and those that are doing it well, uh some of them almost overdo it. There are certain companies whose products are represented on these very walls that will never let us forget what great human achievements they were a part of. Whoever could you be talking to I don't know. We eat that up. You know, watches are a totally obsolete thing, a mechanical watch. You know, w there's gotta be some romance and some like history behind this. So heritage marketing is great. And we we love it. And whether it's Steve McQueen or you know it's a a camera brand or a watch brand or it's a car company that's still making the same damn car they made fifty years ago. We love it. That becomes an iconic thing. Some brands have museums, some brands buy their own watches to put in those museums. Some brands are supporting the secondary market by offering valuations or extract services. Other brands are still offering um restorative repair instead of the typical Swiss repair, which the word patina uh in Swiss means broken. And uh they just take a replace everything kind of approach. But some some companies have figured out that preserving the integrity of a vintage watch is more desirable to collectors who value originality and authenticity. And more still have begun to move into some degree of secondary market support for selling vintage or certifying pre-owned watches. And there's a big one that I'm sure you're about to ask me |
| Andy Green | about. Indeed. What uh what did it mean in I guess it was late twenty twenty twenty twenty-two, um when Rolex entered the CPO market. I mean, um was it ev was it should it be as surprising to some, I think as it was, that they were even acknowledging uh this part of |
| James Lambden | the market. I think it should not be surprising. Um Rolex is a wildly impressive operation and they pay attention to everything. Rightfully so. Rolex has a brand uh integrity that is of utmost importance to them, and I respect that. Some people who understand the way Rolex operates know that this was not an overnight decision. This is something they had been exploring clearly for some period of time. And they they launched it, and it has been, I would say, the start of the next chapter for the pre-owned world, the pre-owned marketplace. So goes Rolex. You can be very sure others will follow. And I think there's some value to that. God help us, we are as an industry, we are so far behind used car business, it's absurd. And the secondary certified pre-owned car business, by the way, I used to work at a car dealership. Make this simple. You don't make a lot of money selling new cars. A dealership makes its money selling service, parts, financing, and pre-owned. The reasons Rolex are doing this are not about the money. It is about the customer experience and being able to stand behind their product at the uh you know primary market and secondary market. But from a dealer standpoint, from a marketplace standpoint, it's also adding a level of consumer confidence. And that's what it's all about |
| Andy Green | . Why then uh have we seen some brands completely uh ignore um this side of the market. Why are they, why will they not get involved? I mean |
| James Lambden | , it's a it's a big lift. You know, and I think that any brand that has uh decades or centuries of uh history, there's a huge knowledge gap between somebody who is uh familiar with the current product line and somebody who's familiar with the entire history of that brand's products. So the authentication part can be overwhelming. Let's also not forget that watchmakers are in pretty short supply. A lot of these companies are, you know, they want to get more watchmakers just so they can make more watches to sell, never mind repair, or restore, or authenticate their old stuff. So I think part of it's bandwidth, part of it's the knowledge that these companies have about their own history. And part of it is where can they develop strategic partnerships to properly represent the other side of it. Aaron Powell And talk more about |
| Andy Green | that variance in the idea of certification and how certification works. Because yeah, I mean, you know, certified, certified uh uh vintage watches or pre-owned watches have been around forever |
| James Lambden | . Original mean and what does boxes and papers mean? And what does certified mean? Certified pre-owned suggests that somebody is of knowledge, is backing this up, is doing the work to understand what it is. And I think the assumption is to a lot of consumers that that is a factory-backed certification. 99% of the watches that you see out there with certified pre-owned badging are certified by whoever's selling them. I once had a client bring me a watch that was highly suspect. And after voicing my concerns, not to slag the dealer who sold it to him, but to just caution the client about its authenticity, he came back to me and said, Oh, everything's fine. I got a certificate of authenticity. I said, Well, from who? He said, The guy who sold it to me. That's you know, there's a problem there. So there's a cognitive dissonance, I think, between the realities of the marketplace, what does the word certified indicate to the consumer versus what should it mean? And what it should mean is it's been factory certified. And whether that actually means it goes to the factory or a representative that has been approved by the manufacturer is doing that work. And that's not the case. So there is a huge difference between Rolex certified pre-owned and um, you know, Bill's watch shop. Uh I don't think I work with anybody named Bill. I think that's safe. Certified pre-owned. Um sure |
| Andy Green | . Uh absolutely. But how how much do we you know, does the industry do you need to explain that more. So much |
| James Lambden | . We we spend a lot of our time and this and this is again a little bit of a difference between the way analog ships is chosen to do business and what I would refer to as a path of less resistance, uh, which is we spend an awful lot of time educating our customers and our collector friends about where these danger spots are in collecting in general, because we value, I value full authenticity and full transparency. And sometimes that means burdening our clients with information they didn't know they needed to know. And that can paralyze them, by the way, in the moment. They may not buy the watch that they're getting geared up to. If you explain something to them about what original suggests versus what it should mean, uh as a word, as a descriptor, but I've always valued, I've always believed that a well educated client is gonna be a better client. And I would rather give them the cold hard facts about what other people might say to them. And, you know, they'll come back later. We're not saving lives. I'd rather educ |
| Andy Green | ate people. It's an important point to make. Uh indeed. So you you started Analog Shift in twenty eleven, twenty twelve? Twenty twelve, twenty twelve. live Twenty twelve. How has it changed in terms of buying and sourcing watches? I mean, what was it like then and what is it like now? And and what kind of scale are we talking about um for your business now |
| James Lambden | ? Yeah, it's um it you know looking back uh I was doing of course a little bit of uh exploration of the dealer marketplace before I sort of formalized and launched my website. Um in the early days I launched with a shoebox of watches under the desk of um an apartment on the fifth floor walk up of a crack house in Harlem. It's a true story. It's not the official bio, but it's true. And those watches were procured through hustling. I was all over this town. I was on the internet. I was on eBay auctions, estate sales, these were watches that I was beating the streets to go and get. Gradually through the brand that we built, uh the partnerships that we made, the reputation that we earned, more and more watches started coming to me and I was doing less and less of the procurement. Um today, it's like Christmas every day. We're bringing in tremendous volumes. Um, we're buying in sometimes in a week more than we sold uh before we were acquired by Watches of Switzerland in a whole year. So the growth of of the analog ship brand has been over well over 95% per year for the last five years. W |
| Andy Green | ow. Um how much more difficult is it to find? I mean is it is it not more competitive, more difficult to find watches and and what are you doing these days to continue to um you know feed that |
| James Lambden | supply? Yeah. Um there's certainly more competition uh for certain product, I think is the answer. But as I was sort of saying earlier, there are areas uh that we're constantly trying to explore and promote that are not in the core uh in-demand category. So there's always something to go out and find. But yes, uh particularly in a world where there are terrorists, it is competitive and there's um it can be fierce. Uh |
| Andy Green | do you think you or um with the help of others. Do you think this industry is is capable though of creating, you know, um tastes and trends in vintage and pre-owned and and pushing the consumer uh to a place. Many have tried. Ooh |
| James Lambden | . We're getting juicy. Um I think it's been done. I I've been accused of some things. There was a great tinfoil hat conspiracy years ago that myself and and some other folks were sitting around a table strumming our fingers and stroking our hairless cats and boa hahaing our way into market manipulation. And I'd love to tell you that was true. It's a great image. But the truth of the matter is a lot of what we're doing, a lot of what Hodinki's done, a lot of what are the other, you know, tastemakers in this space have done is talk about things they're truly passionate about. And they've caught on. And that's great. But more often than not, it's reactionary. I would love to tell you I stockpiled these things before blowing them up, but that's not it's not the case. There have been cases where brands have tried to get a lock on a large percentage of the available supply of something they believe uh is going up, but again, that's speculation. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Do I think that we as players in this space have the ability to influence taste and design? I do, but I don't think it's through tastemaking and the styling on Instagram or TikTok. I think it's about interacting with the brands themselves. Again, any luxury brand that's paying any attention is paying attention to their own heritage. So there's actually now more of a straight line between the vintage market and the manufacturers themselves than there has ever been. And that is kind of exciting to me because there are opportunities that can come from that to influence new product design. And then it becomes a cyclical thing. Absolutely. Absolutely. And why do |
| Andy Green | we um why do we see um though trends and ebbs and flows um and you know all of a sudden we're talking about smaller watches, we're talking about dress watches these days. It's no longer about professional Rolex or sport watches. Why do is it is it simply um people going on, you know, the collectors going on that journey that they go on and their tastes evolve and change and uh does the market do it |
| James Lambden | together? That's a great philosophical question that I'm not sure I can do justice in answering. Um, short of maybe sharing my own experience, which is this. There are watches that I get really excited about that I seek out that I even lust after today that if you had told me twenty years ago I would even consider uh being caught dead wearing one, I couldn't possibly imagine that. I do think um to some degree that there's a little bit of a zeitgeist here. And I don't know that myself, uh, you know, speaking for myself, that I have that kind of influence, but I do think that there as a sort of organism, as a community, I think perhaps that does. And there are folks who really do speak softly and carry a big stick with a style standpoint. And if their journey evolves and that catches on with a larger community, yeah, I think so. But probably not me |
| Andy Green | . Um you know, we think about often yeah about numbers about the size of the market. Um often a a fifty billion dollar uh number is thrown around for in terms of the size of the primary market uh for Swiss watches ha yeah, then we hear numbers like 10 billion, 20 billion, 25 billion for um vintage and pre-owned. What kind of numbers are you thinking about and operating under when when you're considering the size of this part of the market |
| James Lambden | . I've seen a lot of numbers thrown around as well. I mean, I I've seen reports suggesting that the growth in in the pre owned market could be, you know, two hundred billion dollars by twenty thirty-five or something. And and you know, to a certain degree, maybe. You know, it's totally possible. I know there's a lot more um there's a lot more pre-owned launches available on the market in a general day than there are the the new watches uh that people want. So sure, it's also a harder thing to track. You know, where are we talking about watches that are being sold by authorized dealers or by independent um vintage experts or at auction or on eBay or you know on Canal Street. Um not sure. I think what's exciting about it is that uh well it's two things. One, it definitely speaks to the growth opportunity. And I know that there is a tremendous opportunity to keep growing our business. I in America and globally, again, that 10% of people that stick around in my silly little uh example earlier, they're gonna become very knowledgeable and they're gonna want what's really special and exclusive, and that more often than not is vintage. So that a and everything along that journey is moving in that direction. So I think that it's very likely to see a tremendous increase. We're also looking at one of the largest transfers of wealth, generational wealth, uh, in history that we're coming upon. And that's going to affect a whole lot of things. And to take it a step further, the vintage market has predominantly been well, I mean, let's sort of call it what it is, it was basically created by the Japanese, uh perfected by the Italians, and eventually got here to America. Most of Asia has been left out on the vintage uh journey. And that's because traditionally culturally pre owned things are not super desirable. That's beginning to change. Art, cars, watches are now being considered valuable investments, and you know the sort of traditional way of looking at a used object is changing. I think it goes without saying that if certain parts of mainland Asia embrace vintage w watches, you know, there's gonna be a pretty substantial market increase on what that is valued at and then what the transactions are gonna look like. Um what was the question? |
| Andy Green | But d no, I'd like to continue you to continue with that. Does the professionalization the um uh legitimize the true legitimization of uh of Vitigian Pierre. I mean, that's how you get that's one of the ways you get |
| James Lambden | there. It is, it is. And then the there's the other I think, okay. So the other second part of this is that every day that goes by something that's getting a little bit older, you know, and and I was always asked early days what how I define vintage. Again, we're we're working in an up in a world where there are no, you know, terms that are universally accepted. For me, I picked a date as a cutoff, and that date was one year before the year I was born because I did not consider myself vintage. That was almost 20 years ago. I feel slightly differently today. But things uh at the second question was what are you gonna run out of vintage watches? And the answer is no. You know, we might run out of the watches that are, you know, desirable in a time period, one style, one thing, sure. They could potentially all go to end users who never give them up. But every year that goes by, something else is aging a little bit more, tastes are changing, tastes are evolving. Neo vintage is a category we helped popularize. And we might have been a little too early. People weren't quite ready for it when I first started talking about it. And now it is a thing, it is a living, breathing part of this marketplace, and it's very exciting. And stylistically we're seeing new changes as well. And that's also really cool because watches that nobody cared about are now the hottest things on the planet. Being worn by celebrities on the red carpet at the Met Gala. Yep. Absolutely. Um |
| Andy Green | I think we should turn it over to the audience. I'm sure there's uh plenty of folks who have lots to ask you. So does anybody have any questions |
| Audience Member 1 | ? So uh my question is about vintage American watches. So what's happening with that market? So I know you are collecting them, I'm collecting them, but we are probably only two people in this room, like nobody gives a damn about the vintage American watches. There is no American watches in that room where there are iconic and it's like so the the the price of gold a little bit increased, so I see uh people in Hamilton group starting to melt uh vintage Hamilton's. Uh what's what's going on? What's |
| James Lambden | uh what what's your opinion? Listen, I love vintage American watches. You and I have spoken about that in the past and thank you for bringing it up. Um here's my soapbox. Before World War II, American watches were some of the highest quality mass-produced watches in the world at a scale that the Swiss couldn't even dream of. In fact, the Swiss were sending representatives to come visit factories here in America to figure out how to do mass production. World War II created an economic opportunity for skilled labor in America. And the the watchmakers for Hamilton and Waltham and Elgin and Illinois and Gruen began making equipment and uh weapons of war and instrumentation for aircraft and tanks and cameras and all of these things. And then that little thing that Eisenhower warned us about came true, which was the military-industrial complex and a lot of those watchmakers found a lot more money working in defense contract than in making watches in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, or wherever it was. So we never recovered from that. And in the post-war years, Switzerland became the de facto home for high quality watches and they they figured out how to scale and and produce at at volume. And I mean, honestly, by the time the courts crisis rolled around, nobody really cared anymore about Americans uh as a watchmaking center. And then vintage watches caught on and they've been largely left out of the conversation. So why? A lot of it has to do with size. When vintage watches started catching on, we were in the height of the Panorai era. Forty five, seven, forty-seven millimeter giant watches were all the rage and a pre-war Hamilton was positively microscopic. Also, a lot of those watches, because they're pushing a hundred years old or more, have been refinished with varying degrees of quality and people just aren't sure about it. And the people who really know these watches are aging out. I just did an event with them this past summer and I spoke to them and a and pleaded with them to stick around and share their knowledge because the knowledge they have about these products may die with that generation of collectors, which is tragedy. Because some of these watches are truly magnificent. Now I'm excited by the fact that brands like Piaget or Cartier are becoming popular on the secondary market because these are smaller, thinner, precious metal things. And to me, that's a hop, skip, and a jump away from a pre-war American dress watch. So I'm hopeful. But I'm gonna ask all of you to go home tonight and just post something nice about a pre-war Hamilton. You know, find something cool on eBay for a couple hundred bucks and buy it. Save them. Don't let 'em get melted down |
| Audience Member 2 | . Oh sorry. Uh thanks. Uh thanks for that. Um my question has to do around you talked a lot about education. Even right there we got some great education, but how it goes really hand in hand with vintage watch buying for your clients and and and friends and people you see. Um do you see what are the biggest gaps in terms of making a good collector and a great collector as far as education Aaron Powell I mean I I think |
| James Lambden | it's the I I think quantifying a collector's uh greatness is uh is an interesting way to put it. I think that the the core part of any collector's journey is getting hands-on uh with the product as many as many watches as you possibly can. Um it's a like I said earlier, it's a very visual but it's also an incredibly tactile hobby. So actually handling the watches may change the way you think about watches. Um seeking out as much information as possible and keeping a curiosity about a thing. I said earlier there were watches that I'd never would have dreamed of wearing, like maybe something with diamonds on it that was rectangular. Like I couldn't possibly have conceived of that when I started collecting diving watches. Totally on a diamond uh studded tank American and it is so cool. I don't wear it out a lot, mostly just around the house, but that's a that's a side note. Right. Yeah ye,ah. So like I think the idea that don't uh don't write off something because currently you don't like it is uh a trigger to remain curious and open And that's how I think you become an effective collector is not pigeonholing yourself into one thing |
| Audience Member 1 | . So I mean first off, thank you for you know being very early on my journey of collecting and many conversation that follows that had shaped my collecting and many things I do horologically speaking. Well we have talked about many categorically speaking, you know, watches and, you know, like whatnot uh market and things like that. Like and I have imagined you have seen most of the watches under the sun, not each of them, but each model of them. What is the last time you have seen something new that is exciting? It's like, oh, that's that is something that is genuinely you I mean new for you at least, right? Of course, that watch vintage that had exit before, but you know, something new and |
| James Lambden | exciting. And that's like the perfect follow-up to your to your question. I also stay curious, you know, and I think the day that I stop learning about watches is probably the day that I move on. Um I love this. If I don't learn something about watches every day, like it I just don't feel as fulfilled. Uh in LA in um February, I walked into Wanna Buy a Watch on Melruse. And my horological dad, Ken Jacobs, who taught me so much in the early days, was wearing this wildly cool nineteen seventies Hamilton, but Swiss made Hamilton diving watch, big cushion case with a red and black acrylic bezel and a red, white and, cream exotic dial. I'd never seen this watch before, which is odd, because that's exactly the kind of stuff I live for when I started collecting watches. I'd never seen this, you know, few thousand dollar Swiss made Hamilton Diver exotic and I tried to buy it off his wrist and he wouldn't sell it to me. He's not a very nice father. And it took six months, but I finally tracked one down and and Ken I think we have time for maybe one more question. We've got one |
| Audience Member 1 | back here. Yeah. So discuss um you discussed pre-owned watches a lot and I have a couple of questions. I wanted to ask firstly, how do you um or your company verify that the watches you resell are authentic? Like which steps do you take? It came with a certificate of authenticity from the person I bought it from. That's a joke. Okay. And and and the second question then um is would you trust let's say eBay's verification process that they I think offer for watches over two thous |
| James Lambden | and dollars okay um we don't we don't have the time um for me to give you a complete diagnosis of how we authenticate watches. What I can say is it is a process, it is a comprehensive process and it differs dramatically watch to watch. I have knowledge and the specialty in certain categories, and there are other things that I either need to go and research the living hell out of or call in and somebody else who has more knowledge than I do who I've developed an appreciation, a respect, and a trust for to help me. And I'm never afraid to do that. How do I trust other watches that are out there being sold by other platforms? Listen, I respect eBay very much for taking the steps to try and authenticate watches. What I will say is this I think it is the right direction. I think at any scale, but perhaps amplified at a large scale, you run into the same challenges that uh we were talking about factory certification. You have limitations on how many watchmakers are available on the market and what their knowledge level is amplified by every watch, every brand, every style, every movement, every color. They're going to statistically, it's an impossibility to get it right every time. I have bought watches from eBay for I think I got my 25 year pin. Um they should have like they should lock me out after a certain period of like in the evening. Uh I've spent a lot of money on eBay. Uh I kind of liked it better before because it was the wild west, and it was like, let's see what happens. But I understand why they're moving in that direction. I respect that they have. I can tell you with certainty, some of times it works and sometimes it doesn't. And by the way, the same thing could be said for any other dealer, including myself. We do make mistakes. The difference between uh somebody you can trust and somebody you can't, or an organization you can trust and an organization you can't, is whether or not they do the right thing, you know, when you figure out that something's wrong. And obviously we always try to do the right thing. Excellent. Well, thank you, James Landon. Thank you, Andy Hoff |
| Andy Green | man. Yeah. Thank you, everybody. |