Paul Boutros & Marlon Brando's Rolex GMT¶
Published on Mon, 16 Sep 2019 10:00:23 +0000
Controversial stories and legendary watches make for a pretty exciting week.
Synopsis¶
In this episode of Hodinkee Radio, host Stephen Polverin sits down with Paul Boutros, head of watches for Phillips in the Americas, to discuss the upcoming fall auction season and an extraordinary find - Marlon Brando's Rolex GMT Master from Apocalypse Now. The conversation reveals how Boutros was first contacted in May 2018 by Petra Brando Fisher, Marlon Brando's daughter, who had the iconic watch engraved with 'M. Brando' on the caseback. The watch, remarkably well-preserved and rarely worn by Brando, will be featured in Phillips' December 'Game Changers' themed auction alongside other significant pieces like Jack Nicklaus's Rolex Day-Date.
Before diving into the Brando GMT discussion, Polverin and Hodinkee editor-in-chief Jack Forster discuss several trending watch topics from the week, including Odell Beckham Jr. wearing a Richard Mille during an NFL game, the rise of smartwatch sales (with Apple, Fitbit, and Samsung now ranking among top watch brands by revenue in the US), and the controversial new Bell & Ross BR05 collection with its integrated bracelet design. The episode also features Paul Boutros's personal journey from passionate collector and electrical engineer at Lockheed Martin to auction specialist, beginning with his childhood fascination sparked by an IWC Portofino pocket watch at age 10. He shares insights about the auction world, including how Phillips uses code names to protect confidential consignments and his philosophy of following one's own taste rather than market trends.
Links¶
Transcript¶
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| Unknown | Hey everyone, I'm your host Stephen Polverin and this is Hodinky Radio. The watchworld's back in full swing and that means that auction season is coming up soon. I sat down with Paul Boutros, who's the head of watches for Phillips and the Americas, to talk about what's coming in their fall sales. And he brought a little something special with him, uh Marlon Brando's Rolex GMT from Apocalypse Now. I hadn't seen it in the metal. This watch is amazing. Uh you're gonna hear it in my voice during the interview. This thing is super, super cool. We also talk about how he made the journey from being a collector and an enthusiast to being a professional in the watch world. It's a really great chap. Paul's somebody I've known for a long time. But first up, I sat down with our editor-in-chief Jack Forrester to talk about some of the more exciting and controversial stories from the past week on Hodinky. We've got nothing but hot takes. Let's get right into it Hey Jack, good to see you. Yeah, good to see you too, Steven |
| Unknown | . I've been uh out of the office I guess what since like Monday morning. Yeah, and it's uh this is one of those rare and wonderful occasions when we are uh geographically co-located. Yeah, that doesn't happen too often these days. No, no. C |
| Unknown | ertainly doesn't. But uh I've been following along. I've been following all the action on the site, and it is abundantly clear to me that summer is over. We're back. We're doing this. Watches are are back in full swing. Yeah, for sure. There's uh uh the |
| Unknown | news is starting to come in, um and uh there's uh the the bottom half of the year, or the bottom quarter of the year I guess at this point. Uh it's uh it's an interesting time uh in the watch world because uh the brands are all sort of priming the pump for next year's announcements already. Um and because of the more widely distributed nature of watch communication now that uh you know the two f trade shows are a little bit in flux, uh there's uh more to talk about this time of year, certainly than there was ten years ago as far as I can |
| Unknown | remember. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um I wanna start off, you know, we're gonna go through kind of the top top stories on the site this week. Uh and it started out with one that actually ran on Sunday, so I guess before the week, uh, which was that Odell Beckham Jr., former New York Giant, uh not that I'm too salty about it, but uh former New York Giant, Odell Beckham Jr., uh was spotted wearing a Richard Meal during his first actual Right. |
| Unknown | Yeah, you know, uh I'm not uh I don't follow football terribly closely. Um the idea of wearing I mean how much does that Aaron Powell I think that watch is 200 grand, something like that. Something close to that. fundamentally democratic sport that uh you know Joe Q public loves across the board, right? Uh rich or poor, um, you know, football fans are brought together by love of the game, love of the sport, fascination with the people who play it, and this guy's wearing a s you know extreme |
| Unknown | It's just it's a weird look. Yeah, I mean that's a pretty pretty uh big flex, I would say. Uh I just looked it up. It looks like that watch. Retail price when it was announced was one hundred and ninety one thousand five hundred dollars plus applicable sales tax. Okay |
| Unknown | . |
| Unknown | Yeah, there's been a lot of chatter about it and it's it's gotten a lot of mainstream news coverage. Um last I heard he has a hearing with the NFL. They're gonna talk about whether it violates uniform codes. Uh his response is that and this is great. His response is that the watch is made of plastic and thus is not dangerous, which I'm sure the folks at Rechard Mail love that he's walking around referring to the watch as plastic. But uh it kind of is. I mean it's a T P T quartz and carbon and like it's not metal. So it's not as dangerous. No, no, it's not plastic, but it's it's not like he's wearing a sharp metal object on his wrist either. Um I don't know. I mean I think the NFL's probably gonna come down on him and unless he wants to pay a relatively large fine every week to keep wearing it, which he said he's gonna do, but we'll we'll see what happens. But I don't know. People have very strong feelings about this, which is the thing that caught me off guard the most is like I see this and I'm like, oh, okay, like that's fine. Like it's another guy with another kind of high visibility watch. I mean the watch is bright orange and sort of grayish brownish, which is the Yeah, that was my first thought. Yeah, exactly, right? Like it it fits. But uh I know. I mean I I looked at it and was like, oh, he found a watch that matches his uniform. Cool. So what is it that people were riled about? I don't know. I mean peop people are upset. I mean there's a lot of people who are like, Oh, why why is he wearing this on the field? What a jerk he's showing off, blah, blah, blah. And then you have people on the other side who are like, hey, this is cool. Like it's a high visibility thing. It gets watches in front of people. Uh, you know, the story on the site has as of the time we're recording this, almost a hundred comments. Uh and a lot of people seem to think this is a big win for Richard Mill, and I tend to agree with them. I mean, Beckham's not a brand ambassador. As far as we can tell, he was not given this watch. He bought it himself. So it seems like a pretty, pretty good deal for for RM. I mean it doesn't hurt, right? Yeah. I mean it can't, right? Um so let's go to the the opposite end of the spectrum. So we started the week with super high visibility, totally crazy experimental Richard Meal chronograph. Uh but then we spent some time this week talking about smartwatches. Uh we had two kind of big smartwatch moments uh on the site this week. One was our colleague Joe Thompson's uh story about how US smartwatch sales are better than ever uh and continuing to grow and show no signs of slowing down. And then the second was the release of the new Apple Watch. So let's start with Joe's story. So Joe wrote this story and kind of the thing that precipitated this was that some new data came out and it looks like the five best selling watch brands in the United States are now Rolex, Patek Fully, Apple, Fitbit, and |
| Unknown | Samsung. question comes up quite a bit. That is not units sold. That's total total value |
| Unknown | . Right. Yeah, sorry. So that that is uh highest sales by revenue, not highest sales by by units. Right |
| Unknown | . So taken it you know with with that under |
| Unknown | standing, these are not actually surprising metrics |
| Unknown | . No. So |
| Unknown | what w you you were the editor who kind of ran point on this story. What are your sort of main takeaways from this story |
| Unknown | ? You know, I don't think this is really first of all it's not really news anymore that Apple is selling a ton of Apple watches. Um and it's certainly not news that Rolex uh has uh the highest revenues overall of any single company selling watches. I mean I think that uh where we will continue to see the biggest impact of smartwatches in general and the Apple Watch in particular, um, is you know in in competition with uh conventional quartz analog fashion quote unquote design quote unquote watches in the under-five hundred dollar price segment. Um I mean the Apple Watch is, I think, a beautiful design object. Uh I don't think that bringing to it the same set of expectations that you would bring to a high quality mechanical watch in the five to ten thousand dollar range from Rolex or Omega or whomever. I don't think that those considerations are really relevant to why the Apple Watch sells and to why people are interested in it. It has a feature set that you really can't get anywhere else, an integration with a larger uh ecosystem that you can't really get anywhere else. And it provides something that a mechanical watch absolutely does not provide in terms of uh utility and in terms of integration to uh you know one's larger life as a sort of digital person. Yeah. So And I mean you're saying this with a grand seco on one wrist and an Apple Watch on the other |
| Unknown | . Yeah, and they absolutely scratch different |
| Unknown | itches. So, you know, I don't think that there's any reason that uh a fine mechanical watch and smart watches can't coexist. And you know, to me one of the interesting things about that particular story was people are really starting to come out of the closet, so to speak, about wearing both an apple Watch uh and a uh a good mechanical watch and you know there were not insignificant number of people in the comments who said, Oh, I you know, I you know, it's it's sort of like admitting that you're wearing admitting that you are wearing a uh Apple watch on one wrist and a good mechanical watch on the other has become kind of the equivalent of saying that you were interested in mechanical watches in the 1990s. It's like, oh, there are other people out there who who uh are into the same th |
| Unknown | ing. Yeah, no, a hundred percent. And it's it's interesting when you start trying to compare the two businesses 'cause like you said, they're they're vastly different products that scratch very different itches in a lot of ways. Um, you know, depi Apple has not released any sales numbers on Apple Watch. We we don't know how many Apple is selling. Um but depending on the analysts you ask, some say that Apple is selling 23 plus million units a year, or that's what they did in 2018, which would put them higher than the entire swatch group in terms of actual volume of units, which is which is really fascinating. Some estimates place it lower. It's it's right around there. But it's interesting to see like what is a whole segment of the mechanical watch industry being sort of subsumed. Um and you know with swatch group you're also dealing with swatches with quartz swatches, which is a huge part of that. But um yeah when you think about the fact that the the largest mechanical watchmakers that we sort of think about on a daily basis, you know, the longine and Tissos and those sorts of folks, I mean those those places are selling two, three, maybe four million units a year. Um so this is a whole different order of magnitude. |
| Unknown | Yeah. It's really uh you know fossil, for example, I think is uh is really feeling uh the pinch from the Apple Watch and other manufacturers that make watches in the same price range. Um but you know uh for for what we think of as uh uh you know, starting good quality mechanical watches, um it's just a it's a completely different product. You know, it's like saying that um say saying that uh the Apple Watch is going to drive good mechanical watches uh off the wrist or you know somehow out of business. I I just think it's a it's a false comparison. You know, it's like it's like saying that uh uh a pair of uh you know um Lou Bouton stilettos are going to drive uh hiking boots uh out of business because they both go on the feet. |
| Unknown | Yeah. No, I I I think that makes a lot of sense. Um with that in mind, we got a new Apple Watch this week. Yes, we did. And and uh I believe you were there. I was in fact there. We are. I I am allowed to divulge that much. Uh yeah, so I was there. I was in Cupertino. Uh you may have seen we did some live live Instagram stories and a little live uh photo set on the site. Um yeah, Apple Watch Series 5. Uh the Apple Watch Edition is back now in titanium and ceramic as opposed to ceramic or 18 karat gold as we originally had. Remember that guy in China who bought two for his dog? It's funny you say that. Uh I may or may not be working on a story about the new Apple Watch and may or may not have linked to that that post. Yeah. Um that didn't go over so |
| Unknown | well. People were pretty upset about that. I mean, you know, as uh as the saying goes, it is what it is. Um certainly certainly there's no certainly there is no way that you can expect to buy two solid gold Apple Watches for your dog and uh you know, put that information out in the world and expect people to applaud your egalitarian broad mindedness. Yeah, that tends not to w |
| Unknown | in too many fans. But uh Yes, we got new new watches, titanium, ceramic. The display is always on, which is a big thing. I don't know about you, but that's the number one complaint I've heard from people. Is it really bugs people that the display isn't always on? That they can't like casually look at their wrist. Yeah, but you know, some people actually said they don't like that feature. Right. Right. In the comments to your initial coverage. Yeah. Uh you can turn it off for the record. Um but I I think people are gonna be convinced, personally. Um I don't know. What what were kind of having not been there, what were your sort of first impressions as a daily Apple Watch wearer? |
| Unknown | It seems like a uh you know it the the Apple Watch um struck me as a bit of a bit of an experiment when it first came out. And I think as of series three I really started to find myself convinced. And the biggest change, I mean, there have been significant changes in terms of water resistance, in terms of the ability to use it not necessarily when the phone is around. But to me the biggest um game changer was uh improvements in the user interface. And I you you and I have talked about this on um on the show in the past. You know, a lot of the stuff that you really want to they figured out w how to keep what you want uh closer to the surface in the UI. Yeah. And as a result it just becomes a much easier object to use um and a much easier object to sort of integrate into your daily life |
| Unknown | . Yeah. The days of there being that thing where like you swipe one way you get one set of menus, you swipe the other way you get the other set of menus and like the buttons it's not clear what they did, like those days are long gone. Like this thing is really easy to use at this point. Yeah, they figured out how to make it um pretty intuitive to operate. Yeah. So of the Apple Watches, which one are you most excited to get your hands on of the new models |
| Unknown | ? I mean I haven't ever had a chance to um really spend any time with a ceramic. I'd love to do that this time around. |
| Unknown | I could see that. Jack Forrester, white ceramic apple watch. Would you wear it on the white silicone band or would you wear it on something like that? I mean don't you kinda have to? I mean I I think you do, but yeah. Uh what would be the worst strap for that. Ooh, what would be the worst strap? Something like I don't know, like like blue alligator. Yeah, maybe one of the the leather loops that has all the little like segments. Yeah that would look kind of that would look a little weird. But yeah. I don't know. We'll see. Well, h hopeopefulfullyly you get one soon enough and we can uh we can have you give us your your thoughts on the show. Yeah, we'll see. Yeah. We'll |
| Unknown | see. Um Um but uh you know, I mean the take home for me is um you don't to answer your original question, it's it's it's basically more of the same as series four, but uh you know, a little bit wider variety in materials and improvements to uh again improvements to usability in the user interface. I'm into it. Cool. Me too |
| Unknown | so far. So we'll see. More. More coming soon. Uh the other big story this week, and what I would say was maybe the most controversial story this week, uh, you yourself penned, uh, and that was about the new Bell and Ross BRO5 collection. This is a whole new thing for Bell and Ross. These are their integrated bracelet, mostly steel, there are some gold version, but mostly steel integrated sport watch collection |
| Unknown | This is a story that people have been asking us for ever since the collection dropped. And to be fair, it was like five or six days from from launch till we reviewed it. Not that long. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um I think it raises a lot. I think it okay. To get the um the the main point out of the way, I I I like them. I think they're attractive watches. Um but they raise a lot of interesting that's a matter of personal taste, and and I think uh a larger question that's probably of more interest to people who s who are both pro and con on this is uh you know it just raised a lot of interesting questions to me. You know, and in thinking about how to approach the watch for the story, I went back and I listened to Ben's uh Talking Watches with Jean-Claude Beaver. And uh I love that that's how you prep for a story, by the way. That's great. Paddock Philippe Nautilus came out. And he was very, very clear that this was not regarded as a friendly move on the part of Paddock by the folks at AP. So you look at the elements of the BR05 that people say are derivative of the Nautilus. Some of those features in the Nautilus were derivative of the Royal Oak. And in the sub in subsequent years, certain aspects of the broader design vocabulary of integrated uh bracelet stainless steel uh luxury sports watches have be have passed from being kind of proprietary to any given brand and become, in my opinion, part of the larger vocabulary of watch design. And I also think that I mean I apologize because I'm kind of repeating l some of the points that I raised in the story, but I really do think that uh this is um you know a very honest piece from Bell and Ross. First, it's it is available. Um it has at least as much to do with their own design DNA from the BRZ BR01 and BR03 series as it does, you know, from anything that's been produced by anybody else. Um to those who say, well, it's, you know, uh nearly five thousand bucks for a watch with a Salita movement, I would say um a significant part of the cost is probably associated with the manuf the case has a very complex construction. The four screws on the front have um slots that are oriented um properly with respect to each other for the same reason that that's true of the Royal Oak. They actually are are bolts that go through to the back. So you're you're talking about a fairly complex case construction. You're talking about the same challenges in creating high-quality stainless steel finish that you see in watches by AP in uh you know in paddock. Um I I mean it's definitely not going to be everybody's cup of tea. And whether or not it's too Yeah, you know. Well, I mean what do |
| Unknown | es uh James Stacey like to say? Strong opinions loosely held? Yeah, no, I I think that's I think that's a good thing. I mean, uh I gotta say I first saw these scrolling through Instagram and my immediate reaction was, what the hell is this? Right. Like you gotta be kidding me. We have another watch that looks like a nautilus or a Royal Oak or whatever, and it's like the bracelet geometry felt a little bit derivative, the way that the bezel is cut, you know, the placement of the screws. It's like okay |
| Unknown | , but you dig a little different. And you know what?'s It perfectly okay if people feel that way. It's not it's not necessary for you know, you could you can um think about the design antecedents of this watch and about who borrowed quote or you know, slash stole from who when. You can have all that information at your disposal and still as a matter of taste find this watch too derivative. And that's fine. Oh totally. And |
| Unknown | and you know, for me personally, like it probably is too derivative. But I see what Bell and Ross is doing. That's because you're stupid, Steve. I know, I know. No, that's okay. I mean figured we get a little you know ugliness in there. Sure. Uh you know the other thing that that I I always tell people and and that we need to be cautious about here is like these watch companies are not artists. They are companies and they have to make money and they have employees they need to keep employed. And what sells right now? Stainless steel sport watches on integrated bracelets. So if Bell and Ross has the option to do that and they know that's what their customers want, they should do that. Like it would be silly for them as a business to not do this. And I can say it's derivative, somebody else can say it's derivative. You can say you think it's it makes sense. People will buy it or people will not buy it. And if people buy it, good on them. Then they've made a product that people want and people are willing to pay for. And if it doesn't sell, then they learn a lesson and we figure it out. And you know, they'll be fine. But I think it's really a case where uh everybody can and I would say should. I encourage people to have their their strong opinion, but like this is a marketplace. Like it's being too precious about it is just that. It's being too precious about it. I mean even artists nowadays are uh finely attuned to what the market wants in any case. So bringing it back to Earth, Jack. As always. Bringing it back. Uh cool. This was great. I uh I'll let you go 'cause I know you've got to get some stories ready so that we have some good content next we So I'll let you get back to that. But uh thanks for doing this. |
| Unknown | Oh sure. Oh I should say by the way, um for those of you who are uh who've been uh uh reading our magazine and are interested in what we're uh doing there. Um production is uh in full swing on the next issue. Oh boy it is and uh some great stuff coming up. Yeah some really really good stuff stuff we can't wait to share so uh and uh you and uh you and the rest of the magazine design and production team have uh are are gonna be burning the midnight oil again fairly seriously Oh yeah we are it's gonna be good though. It's exciting though. It's the moment when it's one of those moments I wish I could share uh you know with our sort of um you know wider public. Uh it it's amazing to see our digital newsroom, you know, twice a year turn into an old school print newsroom with people checking proofs by hand and making corrections, you know, |
| Unknown | uh by hand. It's it's cool. Yeah, it's so much fun and it's you know that moment where this thing we've been working on for at this point, some of these stories we've been working on for more than six months, they finally come together. Like you have a thing you can hold in your hand and look at and it's uh it's exciting stuff. It's nice to build a beautiful object play clear. Oh man, it is. Uh awesome. Well thanks, Jack. Yeah, yeah, thank you. Paul Buchos is somebody I've known as long as I've been in the watch world. He's currently serving as the head of watches for the Americas at Philips, and he's got some pretty cool stuff coming this fall. Good to see you, Paul. Great to see you, Steven. Long time. Yeah, it's been quite a while. It's uh we've got you in our beautiful new offices here. Yeah. Which is actually spectacular. I say uh congratulations. Thank you. This is my first day seeing the office too. So uh I've been traveling. So you and I are seeing it basically at the same time. It looks superb. Thank you. Well done. It's a far cry from the uh the old days. It's uh you've you guys have come a |
| Unknown | long way. Clearly. And you've been there, you've been there basically the whole time. Yeah, yeah. I I was there at the WeWork Spaces years ago uh when I was contributing uh once in a while to hodinky and uh great to see where you guys have gone. Thanks. Appreciate |
| Unknown | that. Do you remember how you first got involved, how you first met Ben and kind of got roped into the uh the Hodinky world? Actually yes. |
| Unknown | Um I had a watch club that uh I used to uh you know invite people to every every month, and uh William Messina brought Ben as a guest one day. Okay. And uh that was the first time meeting Ben. And uh we hit it off uh that first first meeting. Do you remember when that was? I would say uh 2009. Okay. So that that was really early days. Yeah. It was it's it's amazing how time is fly flown, but yeah, |
| Unknown | way back then. So we'll get into all of this in a second, but at that point you were you were just a collector, right? You were not working in the watch industry. Exactly. Okay. So uh |
| Unknown | I was as active as I could have been in the watch world without being employed in the watch industry. Okay. So a definite passionate collector back then with a with a full-time day job that was totally unrelated to the world of watches. And now you're with Phillips. And now since uh September 2014, uh with Phillips. Wow, it's been since 2014. Since 2014. Five five years |
| Unknown | now. That is crazy. Yeah. Yeah. It's remarkable. And we've got a watch sitting on the table between us that I think is is a pretty good place to to start. I have admit, I did not know you were going to bring the watch, even though I knew we were going to talk about it, which is your latest, your latest find, which is Marlon Brando's GMT |
| Unknown | . Yeah, a watch we're absolutely thrilled uh to offer. Um it started in May 2018 when I got a cryptic email from that's how all the good stuff starts, right? Yeah, some some from someone named Petra. Okay. Um I think I have something of great interest to Phillips. Please can you contact me at your convenience? When I see great interest to Phillips, um my eyes, you know, open wide and I and I uh was very curious. Contacted her right away and uh she told me, I'm Marlon Brando's daughter. My name is Petra Brando Fisher. Uh I have what I think is something quite important. Uh, and maybe you'd like to hear more. Yes, please. Yes, absolutely. As soon as she said her name, I was hoping it was going to be the Apocalypse Now GMT Master. And sure enough, it was. And um, she said, I learned about your name and Phillips following the sale of the Paul Newman Daytona worn by Paul Newman. And we think we have something special too. And I said, look, pictures tell a thousand words. Um it'll be great if you can send me pictures. And she said, yes. I did a little bit of research on my own uh initially and after the sale of of Paul Newman's watch, I typed in uh Brando Rolex Apocalypse and she found the Hodinky article which described twelve greatest lost watches. She also found the Rolex magazine uh Jake Ehrlich's page dedicated to Marlon Brando's watches. And she recognized the watch. She said, I have the apocalypse now, role ex GMT master. I said, Wow, this is amazing. Uh please send me pictures. Uh so after you know some some further conversation, she sends me an email and I open the email, picture of the watch, just like we see it here, picture of the case back, which she didn't tell me, engraved Embrando. But not just engraved, it's like scrolled by himself. Um and I almost fell out of my chair. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. And uh it's been a long journey to get where we are today. So May 2018 was when she first contacted me. A lot of work, uh, a lot of um conversations, a lot of planning until we uh, you know, found the right moment to announce it and of course created a a great theme called game changers, uh, this thematic auction where we think this fits perfect |
| Unknown | ly. So when you get contacted about something like this, how do you initially make sure that you're not kind of going down a like a dead end path. Like to make sure that this isn't something that, you know, after the sale of the Paul Newman, right, everybody came out of the woodwork with, you know, quote unquote rare Daytonas because everybody thought they were gonna make millions of dollars off these these rare watches. How do you make sure that this is something real and something really worth pursuing kind of early on in the game |
| Unknown | ? It's really people. Okay. So the phone conversation for something like this is critical. And I just listen to the person's voice, get a sense, I look at the email address. Is it an anonymous Yahoo account? Uh those little signs make me feel good. And if it starts feeling good, then I get a picture and they're very responsive. I could feel if they're legit or not. Um nine out of ten people are legit, you know, in in the work we do. Uh once in a while there are, you know, characters that just are fraudulent, but it's really the exception. Yeah. But yeah, um and the pictures. So some people might claim they have something special. Show me a picture. Okay, well, you know, that's not as special as you think. Sorry. Uh and and oftentimes people's expectations are through the roof and we can't help them because we we don't like to disappoint. And if somebody's expecting ten million dollars for, you know, a rare common watch, but it's not, you know, the value's not there, we tell them. We're like, no, we don't think it's, you know, gonna meet your expectation. We'll have to decline |
| Unknown | . So you get this watch. When when was the first time you got to see it in person? So |
| Unknown | we met overseas. So so Petra's based in London. Okay. So she was on holiday in uh Switzerland and I had to go to Switzerland anyway. So I said, let's let's meet. And uh while she was on holiday with her family, I met her, I met her husband um and uh the consigner is her husband because he was gifted the watch uh by petra on their wedding night um and uh yeah we we hit it off it was just great chemistry and of course, when I when I held the watch, uh Aurel was was with me. We were just, you know, goosebumps. It was it was overwhelming. It was just wow |
| Unknown | . So at what point does Aurel get looped into this? Like at what point are you doing the kind of like reconnaissance work? And then at what point do you call Orel and go, I I think I think I have something here. You know, we're an |
| Unknown | international team. Right. And Orel is uh great at strategy and we love to bounce ideas off of each other. When something of this importance comes to us, you know, we all think together on what's the best way to approach it. What's the best proposal we can give to our client? We we work hand in hand and uh it's it's really a team a team effort. Um so yeah it's it's a lot of fun brainstorming fig,uringing out, speak to the clients, getting together and showing that it's a united force behind our marketing efforts, behind our sale of of the watch. We we wanna show commitment and when we have top leadership coming together to see such an important watch, the client understands that and feels feels that wow, this is the right te |
| Unknown | am for us. Great. Yeah, and while you're doing all of that, you know, something people may or may not consider is that this is this is a legendary watch. Like you said, we wrote about it. Ben wrote about it a million years ago as being one of the great lost watches of of all time. You now know where it is, right? And it's I guess about what, about a year before it was announced. How do you keep it quiet? Like you obviously don't want everybody else to know you've found this thing and that it's out there because obviously everybody would love to be the auction house to sell this thing. So |
| Unknown | so discretion is the name of the game in the world of auction. So we have to always keep secrets. And fortunately I used to keep secrets for a living. I think you know that Steven. So I'm pretty pretty good at keeping secrets. Uh but also having a team in place where we can trust each other not to leak. And uh when we take in something so important, we're we take a little bit of extra measures to ensure that leaks don't happen. So we anonymize names here and there, and uh just discretion's the name of the game. And we're quite good at keeping things under wraps until the right moment. Uh similar to what we did with Paul Newman |
| Unknown | 's Paul Newman Daytona. So when you say you're anonymizing names, do you mean that like when you guys are communicating about this via email or kind of in the background, like instead of calling it Marlon Brando's watch or Paul Newman's watch, you're calling it something else? You have like a code name? We have code code names. That's amazing. I love this. Can you tell me what the code name was for this watch? Um |
| Unknown | no. Damn, I almost had you. Sometimes we reuse code names and we don't want anyone to see a a good code name and say that must be something special. Is |
| Unknown | that is that common practice in the auction world? I don't know, but we do it in New York. That's amazing. Yeah. So you talked about strategizing, right? Like how do you think about approaching the sale of something like this, right? Like you don't want to hold it too long, but you also want to make sure you give it its moment. How how do you how do you start to build something around a watch like this |
| Unknown | ? So I I mean I take these time pieces very personally. They are so important. And I'm the steward of this super important timepiece that's entrusted to us. And I want to do my very best to make the watch, you know, perform as it as it should perform and let the world know how important that watch is. So that takes time. You've got to know the story inside and out. Do your research. Do your vetting. Is the watch original? Is the watch have a service dial? Does the watch have the original crown? Is the strap original? Why is the strap not original? What's the story? How did the person who's consigning it get it? Track all of these leads and make sure that what you are presenting is as accurate as you you can uh you can get. And so there's marketing, there's photography, there's press, there's um press interviews. So we we work together with a great team. We work with Paul Lerner of Optimist Consulting, who helps us think through where we should, you know, announce it. And we take, we take that very, very seriously and we work very hard to figure out the best approach for for every aspect |
| Unknown | of what what we we do with a watch. Nice. Yeah, you mentioned, you know, kind of making sure everything on the watch is as it should be. And I have to say, having seen, you know, James shot this watch for us uh a couple couple months back, I guess and uh one of the things that stands out to me seeing it in the metal is the condition. Like I didn't quite get from the photos, even even the you know official photos. It was clear that it was in good shape. Uh it's amazingly sharp in person. I'm I'm happy you recognize that right away, even th |
| Unknown | ough you only had like 30 seconds to look at it. It's wild. Yeah the watch is remarkably well preserved and as uh Petra had told us, this was his most precious watch. He hardly ever wore it, wore it only for special occasions. He kept it in his walk-in closet and uh just really loved this piece. He wore it for her graduation from Brown University in nineteen ninety four and he gave it to her in nineteen ninety five. You could see if you look behind the lugs, there's hardly a trace of a bracelet having ever been on it. So our belief is as soon as he purchased it, the bracelet was removed. There's hardly a trace. And he always wore it on a strap. When you wear a watch a lot, especially on bracelet, you'll see the digging where the where the bracelet secures to the lugs. There's no sign of that. So his uh assistant, who was his girlfriend, was Caroline Barrett, who was Petra's mom. She was his assistant for 25 years. Now, but much more than an assistant. It was really his like right hand. And um she procured the rubber strap for him here that we see. And uh she just uh wanted to h get him the right strap for him to be able to wear in Tahiti. And that's the strap that's on it today. It's not the same strap that was on the Apocalypse Now movie, but it's the strap that the second strap probably that was ever on it. Okay |
| Unknown | . And so the question we keep getting asked, or that I'll say I keep getting asked, is how this relates to the Paul Newman. I think the Paul Newman is for most people the benchmark for kind of like all-time great watches, watches with celebrity tie-ins, uh, watches that achieve great prices. And I think any time a big piece these days, especially one with provenance, comes up for sale, that's what everybody wants to know. So so as far as you're you're concerned, kind of heading into the sale, how how do you think this relates to to the Paul Newman |
| Unknown | ? So d uh two two kind of different animals. You've got the Paul Newman, Paul Newman, which that watch launched an entire focus and collecting on Paul Newman type Daytonas. It changed the name of the exotic dial for these vintage Daytonas to the Paul Newman Daytona. And the Paul Newman Daytona itself had such an impact on watch collecting and the growth of watch collecting from the late 80s until today that for collectors around the world, the Paul Newman Paul Newman is the one of the ultimate watches to own ever. Here you have a watch worn by probably the greatest with someone widely considered the greatest actor of all time in one of the greatest films of all time from one of the greatest brands of the world, Rolex, in remarkably well preserved condition, um coming from the family, uh Paul uh sorry, Marlon Brando's daughter and consigned by her husband, and with his own signature, M. Brando engraved on the case back. So it's it's remarkably special in its own way and kind of a different animal though than Paul Newman's Paul Newman. So we don't speculate on auction performance, uh, but we we do think that the collecting world is Is going to be excited come the day of the auction. Uh the press for it has been amazing. Uh similar to the press that we saw for Paul Newman's Paul Newman, because it's just Marlon Brando. Yeah. He's such a iconic worldwide one in a billion type actor. And you've got, of course, the name Rolex uh on the watch. Which doesn't hurt either. Which doesn't hurt either. And and then and on top, it's a GMT master. It's a it's a sport watch. Yeah. And it was worn so visibly on in this film seen by probably a billion people uh around the wor |
| Unknown | ld. And so so you you think it's important to think of them as as kind of different things. It's important not to try to compare them too much. That's what I ad |
| Unknown | vise clients. Okay. You know, it has its own appeal. It has its own importance. It's its own thing. Yeah. And Marlon Brando loved watches. He was truly a watch guy. Uh, he loved time. He was super proud of the accuracy of his Rolexes. He would call the what Petra called the speaking time every day and synchronize his watch to the uh you know the the official time and anytime someone was late he would say up my watch is on time yours is all you know wrong um he really cared about precision. He would wear two watches, one on each wrist, to keep track of multiple time zones. The watch on his left hand would be Los Angeles time. The one on his right hand would keep track of time either in Tahiti or London. Interesting. He was obsessed with time. Huh. So true watch guy. So very different than than um Paul Newman. Great in their own ways. Yeah |
| Unknown | . So before we before we move on, I wanna and I definitely want to talk a little bit about your career and how you kind of ended up going from enthusiast to professional. But before we fully move on from this watch, um how do you then build a sale around this? Like obviously this is going to be the star of whatever show it's a part of. So how do you build a sale around it that you can kind of, you know, have things play off of it and maybe relate to it or not so that kind of the sale can be well rounded and and have sort of broad appeal. |
| Unknown | Yes Ye.ah, so so our theme is titled Game Changers and Game Changers is dedicated to watches owned by people who could be considered game changers in their fields. It's also dedicated to watches that have changed the game in watchmaking, but also watches that are outliers in terms of condition, rarity, provenance aesthetics. So we love to think about great watches in many different ways. And that's what we're seeking. We're always seeking the world's best watches that we can find. And having a theme around game changers focuses us pretty well. Uh so we have Jack Nicholas's Rolex Day Date. Yeah. Truly a game changer in the field of sport. Um others to come. But yeah, so when th d j the Jack Nicholas was on the table, when this was on the table, the theme that just kept coming to mind was game changers. And it stuck |
| Unknown | . So I'm I'm gonna do a classic journalist thing here. So speaking of game changers, you change the game. And uh there we go. See? Seamless segue. Interesting segue. Uh yeah, we'll go we'll go with that. That's that's why they pay me the big bucks. Uh so you you made a move in 2014 from being a a collector to being a watch professional. Can you go back to kind of the beginning of the story and tell us how how you ended up interested in watches in the first place? Like where did where did this all start for you? Thank you very much, uh |
| Unknown | Stephen, for diving into uh this uh different um topic. Uh but happy, happy to share. Uh, I've been passionate for watches since I was 10. Uh, it was a joint passion between my father and me. My father was a collector of many diverse things. Uh in nineteen eighty six we went to a coin show and uh after the coin show it was around Christmas time in New York we're walking up fifth avenue and we walk past the Wempe boutique when it was on the other side of Fifth Avenue. Oh, it was 86. And I walk into the uh area where they're show showcasing the watches, and I see these high-priced timepieces. It's a world I had never seen before, 2$5,000, $50,000 for a watch? What is going on here? And a beautiful sales lady steps out, sees the sparkle in my eye, and invites my father and me to come inside. Come on in. I said, Dad, we have to go in. And she sits us down and she asks me, What would you like to see, young man? And there was an IWC pocket watch, $23,000 was the retail price. It had a large moon phase and a large seconds at three and nine o'clock, a portafino pocket watch I I later learned. Uh she brings it over, she opens up the back and I see the movement. First time ever seeing a watch movement. Under the halogen lights in this warm environment, very inviting, I see the balance wheel ticking and I see the gilt colored bridges gleaming from the light and the jewels. And it was love at first sight. And from that moment, I had to learn about watches. And I went home. Uh every day my dad would bring home the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times. I'd go through the advertisements and I would call the numbers listed. 10-year-old kid, can you send me a catalog? Learning as I could only learn. There was no internet back then. And uh we would go to flea markets for to coin shows, and I was always looking for watches. And I would research and research and research, and of course, 10-year-old kid doesn't know so much, but my dad saw this passion that I I showed and he got into watches and his focus shifted from a whole bunch of other things to uh to only watches and together we built a collection. I was the researcher, he was the bank, basically. And um yeah, until 17 when I went into college, then took a break from watches because I was studying. Uh I studied electrical engineering, and you don't have a lot of free time. Yeah. When you're an engineering, and if you have free time, you're gonna do your social life. And uh got back into watches when my dad passed away uh when I was 26 in 2002 and uh went back to the safe deposit box where uh you know the the collection was and I was overwhelmed with emotion. I said, wow, these are the happiest memories of my childhood. And dove in head over heels, 2002, got back into watches. Now I'm working and uh started writing, started sharing pictures, taking pictures of watches and writing my thoughts uh. And was this on forums? Was it on various forums like the purists, yeah, like timezone.com. Then I would go to the auction previews and I was out there and I was meeting people and it was a lot of fun and just learning and just learning from everyone who who I met. But was very, very active uh and writing as much as I could in my spare time. I had just finished grad school, 2002, and I had free time now to do the writing for watches. And all my energy really in my spare time went was devoted to watches. And then opportunity started to knock in the watch world. Uh and finally uh a great opportunity came when when I heard from Orell that uh he's starting a an all new auction department for watches under Phillips and help me build it, Paul. You're an engineer. It's going to be a clean sheet of paper and we're gonna do it the way enthusiasts would do it. I know you're a collector, and here's the vision. The vision was highest quality watches, uh, sell fewer than normal because we're focused on quality, scholarship, transparency, and client service. Those are the values he put forward. I said, This sounds great. Did a couple interviews, got to know each other, and uh submitted my resignation to uh Lockheed Martin. And the people at Lockheed said, It's about time, Paul. We were expecting this a long time ago. Uh, but it was it was great. They were terrific and they said please come back anytime. We know you're following your passion. Um but five years into it, it's it's been you're not you're not going back. A blast. No. |
| Unknown | Was when was the moment you realized like, oh, like maybe maybe I can do this as a career? Like maybe maybe I can make that shift. |
| Unknown | Yeah, so as I mentioned, opportunities started to knock and the first real work one was when someone from a luxury brand reached out to me on LinkedIn and said, I heard about your your name, Paul, and I'm looking to start a uh timepiece collection for the brand that I represent. Can we meet? And we met. I heard about what they were looking to do. And I said, wow, this sounds like a great project. Help us design a timepiece collection. And sure enough, I took the job as a consultant and within six months we put together a concept for a timepiece collection. Um, hired Eric Giroux to uh to support and it was such a blast. And I I knew something was there, and that's when I started put to my name out there as a consultant for the watch industry. And that's really when the opportunities started to to knock. |
| Unknown | Okay. And you know, five years in, looking back, what didn't you know about the watchworld when you were a collector that you know now that you kind of wish you'd known back then? How |
| Unknown | much there is to learn. You know, coming in, I thought I knew. Yeah. But wow, there's so much to learn from from this. I mean, you scratch the surface, and there's just an amazing amount to learn. And this is why it's a lifelong hobby. Every day you're learning something new. And it's wonderful. From the people you meet, the collectors you you sit down with, everyone has their experiences and what's wonderful is when they share and we share and what we learn and that's the best part of of this hobby is is learning about the greatness of these tie pieces |
| Unknown | . And kind of I wanna I want to reverse the question then and say what is something that really was kind of like ingrained in you as a collector that you've now brought to your life in the auction world? Follow your o |
| Unknown | wn path, you know and and to my clients I only or what we take in at auction I only take in and I encourage the rest of my team take in what you would personally buy and don't follow. Find what you love and buy what you love. Yes, somebody has an opinion, but a watch is going to work for you. And that's always been my mantra. I always just bought what I cared about and and focus on what I cared about. And everyone should do the same. Don't follow. Find what |
| Unknown | you love and and go after it. from from following, from people kind of spotting something and just doing what others are doing |
| Unknown | ? I think the collecting community can you can see that pockets. I don't think it's healthy, but I think no matter where you go, whether it's collecting cars, collecting art, you're gonna find people who don't have the confidence in their own taste and will kind of follow based on influencers or people they respect. I say have confidence in your own taste and learn as much as you can so that you don't have to follow. So it's it's always good to be inspired, but spend the time if you can and learn as much as you can and follow your own path. It's the most rewarding that way. Hmm |
| Unknown | . So that that initial watch that caught your eye was an IWC Portofino pocket watch. How did your personal taste evolve from there? Where did you kind of what were some of those early watches that you collected with your dad? And then kind of where has your taste gone since? So one of the lessons |
| Unknown | I learned years later is how difficult collecting vintage watches is much more difficult than it looks. So back then, we didn't know what a refinished dial was. And so many of those early watches we bought had refinished dials. And little did we know. In any event, looking back at that collection, there's a lot of mistakes. But that's how we learn. Uh my tastes are all over the place. I have a very big heart. Uh but as an engineer, what I care about is quality and precision. And I respect most those brands that have had a consistent focus on precision and also pushing the state of the art of mechanical watchmaking. Watches designed by these brands have their own aesthetics. Their marketing is their own. That's the brands I respect the most. They're not derivative. They've done their thing. Just like I, you know, advise clients. Do your thing. And Who are some of those brands? We've got at the top Rolex, Paddock Filippo, MRP Gave, Vacheron Constantine, Tana, Cartier, Omega, FP Jorin. So some goodies. Those are brands consistent uh with what I what I mentioned, that they focused on precision through their uh existence. Okay |
| Unknown | . And speaking of precision and Rolex, do you still have that uh QA chronometer? I do. That's a very special wat |
| Unknown | ch. Can you talk about that? Uh sure. Yep. So um it is one of the watches I'm most proud of. Uh it's a uh one of twenty-four Basically, Formula One race cars made for uh being sold. So it's an observatory chronometer. So it passed the most stringent chronometer uh certification at the Teddington Q uh laboratory where they were testing ships chronometers and certifying them for naval use. So this tiny, uh I think it's a 10 and a half line, uh about a twenty-three millimeter uh in diameter movement, tiny tiny movement, was hand adjusted and hand built by Rolex's top watchmaker at the time. Every single one of these movements was sent from Geneva to London in transport in the 1940s, late 1940s, tested for 45 days under all sorts of conditions that a chronometer, you know, this the Cosk doesn't test for. So the Cosk test, I think it's 15 days. The Q test was 45 days, and it received an A rating, like a big clock. So imagine a tiny, tiny little movement passing this m d test designed for a m massive clock with such uh tiny tolerances and making the sh the sh uh trip from Geneva to London and London back. So Rolex cased about 120 in a 31 millimeter boy size steel case called a speed king. Later, they still had an excess uh batch of movements that were certified, 24 of them. This is one of those 24 in 18 karat gold, 34 millimeter case. It says Rolex Oyster Observatory chronometer at the top at twelve o'clock and QA certificate at six o'clock. Um it's one of the rarest watches of any type. Uh one of the very few observatory chronometers originally cased by the brand and sold to the public. And it's one of five or six that have come come to the market, come up since uh their discovery. It has a guillaume balance, uh, which is at the time was state of the art. Charlotte Guillaume won the uh Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering Invar, which was a nickel and steel alloy, nickel and iron alloy that uh allowed consistent uh operation across a wide range of temperature uh temperature points. And uh this has that to allow it to pass that that uh naval designed uh observatory test. So yeah, uh I still have it and uh it |
| Unknown | 's still very special to me. Nice. Yeah, I remember you wrote about it for the site years ago and at the time I I was very new to watches and had no idea. I was just like oh, my God, what is this thing? Like how how deep does this rabbit hole go? Yeah, it's it' |
| Unknown | s really a nerd's watch, but you know, as an engineer, this is just ticks all the boxes for me. That's awesome. What are some other uh personal highlights from from your collection? Uh I have a early Jorn Resonance uh that I absolutely love. It's uh probably the most accurate watch that I have. It it has two movements integrated into one and two separate escapements and through resonance they eventually will keep identical rate. And not only do they keep the identical rate, but they assist each other in gaining greater precision. So it's it's super accurate. The watch is so so elegant. It fits my wrist perfectly. 38 millimeters. Uh, with the brass movement, it's an earlier version of the watch, and uh, it's just it's just wonderful. That's awesome. Any other highlights? Uh I think that's uh a couple good. What do you have on your wrist right now? Uh it today's a vintage brigade type 20 with a glossy tropical dial uh from the nineteen fifties. Uh it's got an oversized subdial at uh three o'clock that um when I saw the color of the dial it was love at first sight. And uh I had to pull the trigger right away |
| Unknown | . I have to say I'm not usually a huge fan of Bund style straps. That watch looks awesome on that stra |
| Unknown | p. Thank you. Looks really, really good. Um I was inspired by a post uh from uh Attila Asadi in LA. Uh he posted a yellow-gold watch on a similar color bun strap, and I had this in my drawer and I said, let me give it a shot. And the colors in the sun, it actually works pretty good. N |
| Unknown | ice. Are are there any facets of watch collecting that you feel like you either didn't didn't appreciate or just weren't interesting to you you before got into this professionally and now that you're doing it, you know, all day, every day? You you kind of have warmed up to |
| Unknown | the good question. Um I guess it's the interaction with brands and how brands are standing by to assist. And I didn't tap that as much as I could have as a collector. So coming into the auction house, being as part of our vetting process, for every watch we sell, we reach out to brands who are responsive. And the brands have archives and are very helpful when you approach them. And it's wonderful. It's wonderful when you have, you know, provide them with a serial number. They'll tell you where it was sold, when it was sold, the configuration. And um it's great. As collectors, I don't think a lot of people realize that the brands are out there willing to help |
| Unknown | . Great. And so looking looking forward for for you and and for Phillips, what do we have on the horizon you think to look forward to in addition to the uh the amazing watch sitting in front of us. So our au |
| Unknown | ction season will kick off in November in Geneva and we have an exciting theme sale going on there called Double Signed. So a tightly curated theme sale focused on watches with retailers' signatures. Very exciting field of collecting. It's hard to find, you know, any watch with a double sign dial. And we're, of course, focused on collector's' watches at appeal to today's collectors. So it's going to be a great selection, followed by Geneva Watch Auction 10. Believe it or not, now we're on the 10th auction in Geneva. That's crazy. That's November 9th and 10th. And then at the end of the month in uh Hong Kongong, we'll have H Kong Watch Auction 9. I believe it's November 26th. Okay. Then two weeks, three weeks later, we'll have game changers, December 10th, New York, where we hope many Hodinky listeners, readers, the Hodinky team um will come to our exhibition, which will start on December 5th. Okay. Uh in New York. But the watches will go on a world tour. They'll be in London, Geneva, Hong Kong, Singapore, Los Angeles, um, and we'll welcome you all anytime at any of these stops. Gre |
| Unknown | at. How do you, as you're putting three sales together simultaneously in kind of different departments across the world, how are you figuring out? You know, this is all happening in the span of what I guess like five weeks, six weeks. How do you figure out what's selling where, how to pace it, how to kind of like met things out across the different the different sales? So the auction process |
| Unknown | is actually a little bit longer than it seems. So w when when one auction ends, we're already starting to take in consignments the next day. And and oftentimes we've postponed a consignment until the following season. So it's always ongoing. And if we have a duplicate, we'll always propose it to another um selling location. Okay. But what what's great about working at Phillips is we're truly an international team. We are always on the hunt helping each other. So Alex Gottby in Geneva. Oh, Paul, I know you're looking for this particular watch. Here's a good one. What do you think? Oh, great. Thanks so much, Alex. Or Thomas. Thomas is looking for something to for a private client. Oh, you know what? I've got a lead. Here you go. You know, we we meet regularly. We all have an international call uh once once a week and you know we're in communication through WhatsApp, through text messages, uh, but we're always trying to have diverse selections across the sites and we don't like to offer the same watch in the same sale, same model, because they cannibalize each other. Right. Right. Or if it's too similar, we say, you know what, this is better for Hong Kong. And it also depends on taste. Uh a little bit smaller sized men's watches, they tend to do better in Asia. Diamond set modern watches tend to do better in Asia. So we we think about where the market might be ideal, best suited for a particular watch. But everything, you know, with with today's connected world, we have participation from all over the world at any of our selling locations. So a watch in New York is going to find buyers from Asia. It's going to find buyers from the Middle East, it's gonna find buyers from Europe. So kind of it doesn't really matter where we offer them. Um so |
| Unknown | great. Well we'll let you go in in just a few minutes, but uh we haven't done it the past couple weeks, but I wanna get back and do uh a version of the uh the hodinky questionnaire. So we've got a couple of quickfire questions for you and then uh then we'll get you out of here. But um to to start things off, what's what's a watch that caught your eye recently |
| Unknown | ? I have recently found a lot of excitement in these transitional Rolex watches from the nineteen eighties, the reference five five one three and the reference one six seven five zero. They were produced from about nineteen eighty three till about nineteen eighty-nine, still with acrylic crystals but with glossy modern dials and the gloss used in this era is beautiful when the watches are well preserved. They have the best of vintage with the acrylic and the best of modern, and they're very rare. So Matt Dial submariners were made from about 1967 till about 1983. Matt Dial G T Masters the same about 1967 till about 1983. So it's a lot of years for Matt Dials. Then came the glossy dials, as I said, 83-ish until 89 with an acrylic crystal. So it's just a short time period. And finding these watches well preserved is pretty tough. They're still very affordable. It's a great place to focus for beginning collectors. Uh the watches are easy to wear and um really beautiful to look at. Awesome. What's uh what's the best place you've traveled in the last year? Tokyo. Uh really enjoyed Tokyo. It's uh an entirely different world than than uh you know New York City or or any other city I've been to. Uh the people are amazing, the culture is so uh service oriented. It's just absolutely fascinating. The food is out of this world. Awesome |
| Unknown | . What's uh what's the best piece of advice you've ever been given and who gave it to you? Oh boy |
| Unknown | . In college, it was um the dot-com era, uh, when I graduated engineering undergrad. And one of my electrical engineering professors, I was just debating on what what job to choose, and he told me, Paul, don't chase the money. Follow what you feel most comfortable in and let the money chase you. Basically, was his advice. But that's always been my uh, you know, whenever I I assessed a job, it wasn't chasing the money. It was w will I be happy doing what I'm doing. So it was always uh piece of advice that stuck with me. N |
| Unknown | ice. And the last thing is uh what's what's your guilty pleasure? |
| Unknown | Bling. Yeah. How so? Um factory gem set watches are spectacular and uh you would never guess looking at the watch I was I'm wearing, you know, at work, that I have a fascination for bling. Do you have a favorite bling dot watch that's in your collection? That you're willing to talk about? I'll just say I have a favorite bling dat watch that exists on the market and that's the Daytona Rainbow. I think it's superb. I think you should get one |
| Unknown | . I think Paul Boutras in a rainbow Daytona is something we all need. Um all right. So before we before we let you go, we do always wrap things up with a a cultural recommendation. So do you have uh a movie, a book, uh record, uh a restaurant you've been to, something you recommend people go check out when they're done listening to the show? So |
| Unknown | I will recommend a great Greek restaurant. Okay. Narai in mid-town Manhattan. It's very close to our offices at Phillips, uh, but it's spectacular Greek food, uh, really not pretentious. The restaurant location is is beautiful, uh, and um the fish and the the Greek dishes are are probably the best Greek I've had in this country. Okay. And where where is the restaurant? It's fifty fourth street between Park and Madison. Okay. Great. We'll link that too. you I likef Mediterranean food, Creek food, Naraye is highly recommended. Per |
| Unknown | fect. So for my recommendation, uh, I actually just started rereading a book that I hadn't read in a long time, uh, which is Fitzgerald's Tender is the night. Um, I saw a couple of folks reading it over the summer. I think it's kind of a popular beach read if you're gonna go for something uh a little older, or I think maybe that says something about kind of the crowd I run in that that's a popular beach read. But um yeah, I I hadn't read it since graduate school and I went back and I remembered not liking it as much as I like some of Fitzgerald's other novels, but uh I'm about a hundred pages into it and I'm really, really enjoying it uh this time around. So I would say go read Tender is the night if you haven't. Um but I would also say if there's something you read a long time ago that you don't remember loving, maybe give it a second chance. Uh, I think this this was a really valuable thing for me, and I'm really uh really excited to keep making my way through it. Great. Well, it was great having you here today. Thank you so much. It's always good to catch up, but great to see you, Steven, and congratulations once again on the new space. Thank you. Congratulations on this watch in front of us. I can't wait to see uh what happens in a couple months. Thanks so much. This week's episode was recorded at Hodinki HQ in New York City and was produced and edited by Grayson Korhonen. Please remember to subscribe and rate the show. It really does make a difference for us. Thank you so much, and we'll see you next week. |