Jesse Johnson & How To Make A Limited Edition Watch¶
Published on Mon, 23 Dec 2019 11:00:03 +0000
Some people are just collectors through and through.
Synopsis¶
In this episode of Hodinkee Radio, host Stephen Pulvirent is joined by Kara, who manages special projects, and Russell, the chief commercial officer, to discuss the intricate process behind creating Hodinkee's limited edition watches. They reveal how limited editions come to life—from early ideation and community feedback to working with brands ranging from major manufacturers like TAG Heuer to independent watchmakers like Grönefeld. The conversation covers the challenges of balancing design aesthetics, price points, and production schedules, while highlighting specific collaborations like the Swatch, NOMOS, and Blancpain projects. They emphasize the company-wide effort required for launches, from custom-designed marketing pages to fulfillment, and tease upcoming projects while encouraging listener feedback for future releases.
In the second segment, Stephen and Cole sit down with Jesse Johnson, keyboardist for Motion City Soundtrack and avid collector. Jesse shares his journey from discovering watches through a U-Boat collaboration to building a collection that includes birth-year Seikos, a 1997 Omega Speedmaster, and his great-grandfather's 1909 pocket watch. The conversation explores Jesse's broader collecting interests—from Bakelite backgammon pieces to precision dice—and what draws him to collecting: the research process and creating heirlooms for his daughter. Jesse also recounts Motion City Soundtrack's early touring days, playing 320 shows in a year, and teases their upcoming tour while promoting his Instagram project "Modern Patina," which tells stories about people's relationships with their objects.
Links¶
Transcript¶
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| Unknown | My biggest screw up in life is everything that I'm interested in, nobody else wants to talk about. Okay. Do you want to talk about uh bakelight backgammon checkers? Do you wanna talk about the different Italian producers or manufacturers of playing cards. Do you want to talk about limited numbered oversized handmade cribbage boards out of different types of wood? Because I've got those. Hey everybody, I'm your host Stephen Polverin and this is Hodinky Radio. We're gonna kick this week's episode off with something a little bit different, uh covering a topic that we don't talk about too much, and that's how our limited edition watches come to be. So I've got Kara who manages special projects, and I've got Russell, who's our chief commercial officer, and they give us some really great insight into what it means to create a limited edition here at Hodinky. It's a lot more complicated than you might expect. We're working with a lot of complex ideas, trying to distill them down, balance out our brand, the brands we're working with. It's a really fascinating look at how something that might seem simple when you see it on the site is actually the result of a lot of hard work and a lot of complicated ideas. After that, we've got a conversation between Cole, myself, and Jesse Johnson, who is one of the members of the band Motion City Soundtrack. In addition to being a longtime working musician, Jesse is also a consummate collector. He, of course, collects watches, but he also collects a ton of other things, and we really get into the underpinnings of why he enjoys collecting. It's a really interesting thing to think about, and the way that collecting can often be about research, it can be about community building, and it can also just be about cool products. He brought some cocktails, he tells an amazing story. I have a funny feeling you're gonna be hearing more from Jesse in the future. So without further ado, let's get into it. This week's episode is presented by Leica Camera. Stay tuned later in the show to learn about the new Sumalux M90mm lens. For more, visit LeicaCamera.com. I think this is the first time, Russell, we've had you on the show. Yeah, it's true. I mean if I've been here almost a year. I've been waiting for the invitation for a while. So you know. How rude. Yeah, my I like I said, my bad. |
| Unknown | Mea Copa. Uh CB, you're a you're a vet already. I don't know if I'm a vet, but yeah, I've been on here once or twice. Yeah. A couple times. Old pro. I know how to count. You know how to count with it for the mic tests. Sweet. Perfect. |
| Unknown | Um yeah, so I wanted to have you guys on the show because I know it's a very busy time of year for you both. So I appreciate you taking the time. Uh we're recording this the day between launching our latest no most limited edition and launching our collaboration with Leica. Uh busy week for the shop team. Yes. Yeah, to say the least. Say the least. I wish people could see the looks on both your faces. It's like a combination of like optimism and excitement and also just like complete exhaustion. And fear. And a little fear. Fear? Okay. Alright. Yeah. I mean it's it's always it's always extremely uh extremely fun to to launch these things. There's a high level of energy happening on the commercial floor on the shop floor when we when we're launching and fulfilling and doing everything uh surrounding these launches. But as you can imagine, it's a lot of work. We're still a small team, no matter how big we may seem. And we do, we touch everything ourselves. And so it's uh it's a really uh it's a really big lift by the whole company. We it's a you can see uh, you know, Ben comes up and packs boxes, we have engineers packing boxes, we have customer service, we have, you know, myself, we everybody chips in to make these things happen. So it's great. It's kind of a fun thing. I mean, as somebody who's not involved in that process day to day. It's fun when we do have these launches to like get to go upstairs and see all the all of it in motion and how excited everybody is. It's like it's a really fun moment for the whole company. The reason I wanted to have you both on is you guys are the the sort of king and queen of our our limited edition process. You're the ones who make these things happen from the like early ideation phase to like actually putting them in boxes and uh shipping them off to customers. So I thought it might be nice to give people some insight into what that process is like since I think it might seem a little bit opaque from from the outside, but it's it's actually a really fun, like cool, interesting process |
| Unknown | . Yeah, no, it's great. I mean, I guess I started working on these a year and a half or two years ago. Okay. Um and then Russell joined a year ago as our chief commercial officer. So he runs everything on the shop side and I kind of do our special projects, which includes an addition. So it is a really fun process from ideation to fulfillment. Maybe let's talk about gnomos since since |
| Unknown | we just dropped it. Like what's a good example. We did a project with Gnomos, I guess what, like two years ago? Two or three years ago. Two or three years ago. And uh but this this go around like what what was the process like? Like when did this project come about? This this is one that I really like I vaguely heard about in the background, but I I don't think I saw the final watch like the final final watch until like two days before launch. So I'm kind of in the dark here too. I |
| Unknown | 'd I'd love to hear about how it how it came about. Yeah. I mean first of all we you know before SIHHR Basel we like to go with um designs in hand to talk to certain brands that we really want to work with, or in some cases, brands approach us and they say they want to work with us also. So we kind of have meetings there because that's where everybody, yeah, everybody, everybody meets in the watch world. Um, so this year we went prepared with some suggestions, but sat down with Merlin and Russell and I chatted with him. And Merlin's the head of the US. Yeah, Fernomos. Um and you just kind of have a back and forth and you kind of talk about what's possible. Can you do this? Can you do that? Can you change the dial color? Can you change the dial texture? Can you do a bracelet? Can you not do a brace? You know, you kind of go back and forth and figure out what the brand is willing to do. Some brands are more flexible than other brands. For example, Gnomos is a smaller production, so they're able to kind of be a little bit more nimble. Um, they happen to have the Tangenta Sport case of, you know, a few hundred left. And we were able to use those um for this particular limit edition, which was exciting because it's a retired model and it's a great size. So we move with that. But if you, you know, work with someone like tag, for example, they're just such a they're a different thing. So it's harder for them to shrink cases down or kind of meet those needs that we are requesting. So you have to kind of find other ways to to make it work for both sides. Yeah. I don't know if you want to. Yeah, I think I think it's important too to just tak |
| Unknown | e a step back before we even put those designs on paper and before we really start to look at what the watch would look like. We we first look at, you know, feedback from the community, we look at, you know, comments on the site, we look at what we like and what everyone in the company likes, and we really take uh we really take into account, you know, w what's a brand that we would like to do something with? What's the watch that they're not creating that we would like for them to create? What do we think would um would resonate with the community and everybody that uh that would come in contact with this piece? Uh and then also what's respectful to our design aesthetic, what's respectful to the brand's design aesthetic. And then we work with our in-house designers and Ian or Nick or um and and put some ideas down and and really come up with something that we feel really good about. And I think when we put that much thought and effort into it and care into embracing not only our own brand but the our partner brands, and then we go to them, we present it to them, they're really uh it's it's i I I it's not easy. I wouldn't say it's easy. Yeah, right. But at least but at least you're coming from a place that that has perspective and has a point of view. Yeah. Uh and they they typically really it's it's really sometimes an aha moment for the brands and when they're like, Oh wow that's really that's great. And you know, and you you work from there and you you you work with them to uh to bring things to life that might align with other initiatives that they have coming out later in the year, but more importantly are really true to the aesthetic that we put down on paper based on the community feedback. Yeah, I always I always get excited when I see Nick or Ian get up and start walking around the office pulling books off of shelves because I know something is happening. So you know I I I've seen in the past where like they'll walk around and go get if we're working with a a certain brand, they'll go pull every book we have that kind of features watches from that brand's history and start kind of building a library of, you know, fonts, of numerals, of dial colors, of shapes. And it's so cool to see them take that stuff, which, you know, we use on the editorial side in a certain way, and they're taking the same kind of like source material and using it to do something totally different. You know, we're kind of focused on putting that information in perspective and recontextualizing it and telling stories around it, whereas they're taking that information and building new products around it. And it's it's really fascinating to see the kind of like same source material turn into two very, very different uh types of products. Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes it's sometimes it's really based in history and it's a historical reference that we're that we're bringing back to life, or other times it's taking uh a historical brand and bringing modernity to it, you know, like like you know, |
| Unknown | punching it up a little bit. Yeah, fun. So I think Swatch is a good example of that. Like the one we just released was pulled from a watch that was made in nineteen eighty six and like Ian kind of was flipping through catalogs from like the eighties with Swatch and that's where he got his inspiration for for that. Yeah. So it's cool and and it's fun to see them come to life. And also like little Easter eggs of things that kind of like only watch you know, watch nerds know about, which are really fun. So the Swatch project is one that I I |
| Unknown | personally really like. And, you know, I was involved in the in the first one a little bit. Um, and it's just it's nice to see it's the third year in a row we've done a watch with them. Swatches is like, you know, it's so elemental to the watch industry. Like it's it's a foundation of the modern watch industry. Some would argue the modern watch industry wouldn't exist without swatch. Uh and at the same time, it's a product that like most people can afford. Like even if you need to save a little bit for it, like it's it's under $200 shipped everything and it's like you can have a a piece of this and a nice little thing witho |
| Unknown | ut having to spend, you know, fifty grand, sixty grand. Yeah, no, I agree. I think that that's one of the benefits of the swatch is it I think that is one of the community builders of all the limit editions is because it really does open to everybody and everybody likes you know they want it's an easy kind of takeaway and it's something that yeah. You know, a 14 year old can save up and buy or 25 year old can save up and buy or a forty you know, and just it fits everybody. It's exciting for everybody and it is kind of joins people. If you see someone else wearing it, you're like, oh, they've got like the hodinky swatch on. And like you know that person likes to read about watches. And like I think that that is what is so cool about limitations in general, but depth but specifically the swatch |
| Unknown | . Yeah, and it's the only it's the only product, as far as I know, the only watch product we've done that's produced in that kind of volume. So you can actually like you see them out in the wild and it's not people you already know, it's not people at our events. Like I've been to bars and restaurants and just like seen people wearing them in the wild in New York and California, kind of everywhere. Uh and it's a cool thing. I mean it's really there's something nice about seeing out in the wild like this little thing that we help make. Uh people are super nostalgic about swatch. I mean, I know myself growing up in the in the eighties and nineties and even before the eighties, don't want to divulge too much. But uh but you know, when swatch was in its heyday and and really like that was one of my first swatches, you know, and it was the first it was the first kind of like, you know, uh you know, watch that I obsessed about and it was the first uh brand uh that I obsessed about. And so being able to now bring that full circle and help bring that nostalgia back to life for people that are, you know, my age or older or younger or first time watch buyers. It's really a it's really a fun process. And I think it pays it it it it plays into, you know, kind of how we determine our limited edition strategy for the year, which is bringing different price points uh to life in the Hodenki shop so that we can reach uh different people and make things really accessible, make things for the uh the extreme connoisseur as well as first time watch buyers really important to us. |
| Unknown | And to make it fun too. I mean this watch is fun. That's a fun project for everybody. And like I, you know, same for me. I learned how to tell time on a flick flack. Like, yeah, I was I had one with bacon and eggs on it. I think we should bring that back. Should we bring that back? For 2020 is the bacon the CB breakfast special. Swatch. I love it. I love it. You heard it here first. Yeah, I tried to find that on e |
| Unknown | Bay. I ended up I end up giving the swatches as gifts to people, which is really fun. Like so much of what we do here is it's like not necessarily a price point where I'm like gifting it to a friend, but uh you know still good friends but not not gifting people you know five thousand dollar watches but uh it's it's nice that I can like I can give them to people as gifts. I can give one to, you know, my brother, I can give one to my buddies and and it's it's a fun way to kind of like involve everybody. Yeah. But uh you mentioned the the diversity of the products that we do, Russell, and I I think that's something that's always really struck me is you know, we go from, you know, a brand like Tag Hoyer that's that's huge to a brand like Bronfeld that's making, you know, a handful of watches a year. Laurent Ferrier is a similar, similar situation. How do you try to balance that out? Yeah, I mean, it's always it's always uh interesting and fun and uh to come up with the limited edition calendar. And I'm sure, you know, Carr, you probably have more perspective on that than than I do having this uh be my first full year here, but really looking at how we can um not only uh have different price points, different quantities within price points, uh as well as uh support the independent watchmakers out there. And I think you know the Gronenfeld's a perfect example where uh we were able to to create a uh a relatively small limited edition at a very high price, but you we really did everything from the ground up. And so you can really affect how the movement design uh plays into the case and how the dial design and the functions on the dial uh you know come to life. And what's great about that is like for a Grunafeld, we're we we instantly their number one dealer, you know, after doing a 10 piece limited edition. And it's great to be able to support that side of the of watchmaking because those guys are really, you know, pushing things forward and a really traditional way but then at the same time we want to do something that's that's really accessible uh and fun uh like a swatch or like an aurus or like a gnomos for every aesthetic appeal that's out there, as well as price |
| Unknown | points and categories. Yeah. Well I hate to tell you this, Russell, but the first year of limit editions, uh it we well, we were not as organized as we were this year. So uh not sure what calendar you're talking about, but um no, but it's true and I think like a good example is the from this year were the blonde pen and the aurus and like how those were back to back and they were both dive or dive watches. That was a tricky one because they're, you know, it was kind of you had to make sure that they they went out in the right way. And we went with the auras first. And like that was really exciting for everybody. And then the blong pen immediately after, which was also really exciting about exciting for everyone and I don't know if anyone noticed but we had dive month on the site. We did have dive month. We did have dive month. It kind of spanned two months but caught on how well it span two months. It was like second half of June first, half of July. Yeah. So that was like, you know, a little experiment to see how we could kind of create moments around things like that. The calendar that we put toget |
| Unknown | her around Ellies is is the ideal and perfect scenario. Right. And we know that this we know that the the Swiss watch industry uh sometimes things are spot on time in terms of production and sometimes there are delays that happen. You know, movement development, dial suppliers, hand suppliers, case manufacturers. Um, you know, they like to take vacation and as a result as a result Switzerland in the summer, man. Sometimes things don't come in when they're supposed to. There are also watches. So like they need to |
| Unknown | like if you're buying a ten thousand dollar watch like it better be perfect so it's kind of like you really need you know sometimes there are production slowdowns just because like you want to make sure everything is everything is the way that needs to be so sometimes that alters our perfect calendar. And so what starts what starts |
| Unknown | as you know spaced out by watch type, by price point, uh, and and by quantity turns into dive month.. And dive month Dive month is uh how we could justify uh dive two dive watches back to back. And it actually worked out really, really well because you had uh a real connoisseurs dive watch uh at a higher price point, at a low quantity, a relatively low quantity, uh, and then the aurus, that was uh a higher quantity and a more approachable price, uh, and so they balanced each other really well. Yeah. Yeah. I also like the way that they together, I mean, maybe I'm I'm coming at this, you know, from an editorial uh point of view, but the way that those two watches kind of told a nice story about dive watches as a category, right? Like they gave some insight into like the sort of vintage enthusiast, you know, hard wearing, you know, beater kind of dive watch that like fades and ages really nicely over time. And then with the Bong Pong, we were able to tell some like really interesting technical dive history, you know, really the the generation of the military dive watch. And those two stories kind of balance each other out and I think give people perspective. So whether you bought either watch or not, I think you could still kind of read the the materials that we created for those watches and still get something out of them, which which is nice. And they they kind of played off one another that way. Yeah. Absolutely. And it's and it's a you know it's a great honor to work with uh you know brands like Blanc who are uh you know one of the oldest watch manufacturers in the world making super high end time pieces uh to be able to do something uh uh like the fifty fathoms, the bathascat for Hodenki, that was a smaller case, no date. We really touched every part of that watch to bring that to life. Uh as well as the auras. I mean you can't say enough about everything that we did to that. We made a slim down case, manual line movement. I mean, everything on that watch was was special for us in a sense. And so those are you know two examples of how we really worked hard to make sure that we were bringing the purest form of what we envisioned for those watches to life. Yeah. So I gotta ask, do either of you have a favorite limited edition? Oh it's like asshole. I know that's a tough political question. I mean like in the in the wor uh of all time? Yeah, all time. Like what's what's what's your favorite one? And it doesn't have to be one you own. It can be one you own. But what's your what's your favorite watch that we've done? Wow, that's really hard. I know it's tough. They're all really, really nice. I mean the Vasheron's pretty amazing. Yeah. It's a pretty spectacular watch when you when you see that corn de vache in steel, beautiful gray dial. Uh it's it's a striking, striking watch. Um the first Laurel Ferrier we did, blue dialogue. Pretty amazing. Yeah um I wear my aurus all the time. Yeah. I think that's a great one. The IWC. Uh I wear that all the time. It's one of the I would say it's one of the watches that got the most wear for me this year was my IWC from this year. I think my IWC might be the watch I wore most. Yeah. I love that watch. Are you putting that on in the article? I'm not. I'm actually gonna put the Grand Seiko that I have on my wrist. Spoiler, spoiler alert everybody, but uh it's because I basically haven't taken taken the Grand Saco off since I bought it. Don't be a party pooper. So sorry. There you go. Party pooper. I mean, but then I at the same time, how could you not say something about the H ten speedy, the Omega? Oh yeah, that's the one. I think we all have that watch and it there's not a day that goes by in an office where we see a a few of those on the wrists. Yeah, it's a pretty special watch. It's true. Yeah. It's also nice 'cause when you see people with that watch, the people who bought that are mostly diehards. Like they're the people who bought that watch, and I don't know how it worked out that way, but the people who bought that watch are almost all people who've been reading the site for five to ten years. They come to events. Like I have seen a sh startling number of them in person, um, just because they went to people who who are around and kind of in our in our orbit. And it's uh it's nice to see the people who have like really supported us over the years have have a nice little token of uh of that |
| Unknown | . Yeah, absolutely. The one I'm saddest about that got away was the skipper. I was just gonna say the skipper. Yeah. I thought about getting it and then I was like, uh it's a little big for me. I'm bummed. That was a good one. Regrets? Yeah. I remember from the |
| Unknown | outside looking in working for a brand. You know, I was on the brand side for you know almost 20 years and just dying over the skip. I was like, I can't buy that, I'll never wear it because I work for a brand and it's not Tagware. Um so it's one might one might say a direct competitor of Tagware. Yeah. But unbelievable that one. Yeah, that was a good one. So yeah. That I think is the one that people might have the strongest feelings about. Like the people are sad that they missed out on the skipper. Yeah. Ye |
| Unknown | ah, it's that's a great one. I also really did like the gnomos we just did. It's true. But I also think I like it because we did a I keep tooting this horn but the the lady in the campaign was my I feel like that was a good one. So that like made me happy. I mean it's what as a lady that made me happy. Well absolutely as a guy, |
| Unknown | as a guy it makes me happy. And I think we're we're trying really hard in the shop to be super inclusive of everyone and and uh in our photography standards that we're putting putting in place up there to to be able to shoot every watch we offer in the shop on on different wrists and the gnomos uh was the first real execution big execution of that yeah and I think it just I mean it looked phenomenal. I mean if you wrap everybody in Cuccinelli, it's gonna look pretty good. That's true, yeah. That's helpful. Yeah, cashmere helps, yeah. It was beautifully shot in a great location at the Whitney Museum, the bar flora, and I think just such a cool, such a cool part. We don't talk about that enough, you know. We talked about the watches. We don't have to talk about the campaigns. How campaigns are launched. Campaigns are all my fate that's kind of my favorite. Yeah. And that's that's where it really becomes also like a company wide thing. I mean, you guys are working really hard on the product, but then, you know, the guys who who obviously are are a big part of the design of the products, then have to design a way to market these things and a way to put them out into the world. And the editorial team gets involved and we end up bringing photographers in and we really like we get to kind of flex all of our muscles at once. It's product, it's storytelling, it's visuals, it's engineering, like all of those pages, if people don't know, are are custom designed and like coded specially to present each watch in house. Yeah, with people I can actually see from where I'm sitting right now. It's it's a big it's a big flex. It's it's a cool thing. It really is. And we try to take, you know, we pay special attention in each one of those pages to bring to life little bits and pieces of the brand or the product through uh through the design of the marketing page. And I think that that's that's really super fun because we can tell a visual narrative and and uh and a written narrative about the the the watch or the brand itself. But then like on the on the Blanc Pond page, the little depth gauge, as you scroll down, that might be my favorite one. Yeah. You see the depth gauge and it actually went from zero |
| Unknown | to a thousand. I think a thousand. Yeah. Which is the the the And then if you were in Europe, it was in meters. It was in meters. And you know, people. Out there, if you guys have not seen that, go to the blonde pen limited edition. I didn't meters in Chinese geotargets, so it changes to meters and yeah. So there's little Easter eggs in there. And now that this will have launched after tomorrow's product, we can talk about the Leica page that's coming out tomorrow, which is gonna be really, really incredible. Um lots of Easter eggs in there. And so yeah, I think that's for me professionally has been one of the most rewarding things is seeing the team kind of evolve from just doing like random product drops on Shopify like we used to to creating these really incredible pages. And if you look back at like Hermes, when we first started doing it this time last year to where we are now. it It just just makes me really proud to like work with the people I work with because they're really talented. You guys do a great job. I take it I take zero credit, but you guys you guys do an amazing job. I me |
| Unknown | an I don't I just I just make sure the brands are happy. I think to your point when you you're talking about everything that's kind of hidden the the little the little uh uh treats and and hidden experiences in the marketing pages, you know, I would invite everyone to even after you rush to put the LE in your shopping cart, and check out so you make sure you got it. And we know that's a challenge. But um go back and spend some time on the marketing pages because there's a lot of really cool features in there. Yeah. Uh there's a lot of uh great uh information about the brands and about the about the product. Um but then the design uh of the pages is is super cool. Yeah. Yeah. Each one tells a story. True. Very true. Which is what it's all about. So I know we can't give any like actual spoilers about watches that are coming next year. But what what would you say kind of like, whether it's strategically or kind of at a at a high level, what are you guys looking forward to in the next year for limited editions |
| Unknown | ? I think a continued organized calendar. Yeah. Yeah. The calendar. The calendar. I like that. Processed. I |
| Unknown | like that. I mean I I think really again it's continuing to make this fun and inclusive. I think those are the two things that we always strive towards. I think what's been so great about Hodenki uh since the beginning is is uh creating an approachable tone of voice around something that can be really intimidating and uh, you know, bringing that into the product uh and bringing that to life uh through uh different price points or different brands. Uh different quantities or different quantities so that we can continue to make um to make buying a great watch easy fun uh and and a great experience for everyone. I think that's what I'm most excited about is |
| Unknown | is is uh is uh product diversity. Yeah. I know and I I completely agree, but I I think it's also, you know, we read the comments, we read the Instagram posts, we read, you know, we kind of we really are observing and taking in what people want um and really trying to apply that to next year. On that note, we really encourage you guys to leave comments below on what you want to see for 2020. We're still in planning, so it's not too late and uh yeah no it should be a good year. Yeah. And to be fair |
| Unknown | , we are organized, so uh it might fall in twenty twenty one. Oh thank you. Yes. Sorry, I didn't I didn't like |
| Unknown | really disorganized but you know it was just a little it was just a little different in twenty ninete |
| Unknown | en awesome well thank you guys this is great and uh I can let you guys go because I know we have a big launch tomorrow morning. I'm super excited about it. Um it's gonna be killer. People like if you're listening to this and you haven't seen the Leica landing page yet, go check it out right now. We will link it up in the show notes for this episode too. Uh it's one of the coolest things we've ever made here Make sure you click on all the all the things. Click on everything. Click on everything. There's something really cool everywhere you look. That's great. Awesome. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Next up, a conversation with musician Jesse Johnson. It's good to finally meet you, man. Thanks for having me. Never thought I would end up sitting here honestly. And uh we've also got Cole here |
| Unknown | Hey guys. And you two guys have actually met before, right? We have, yeah. I've been hanging out with Jesse for a long time now. A long time now? At least since what like Actually no, to be honest. The first time I saw Jesse was when I was in college. I went to this thing called um College Day on the Parkway in Philly. I didn't school in Philly but I was there. Okay. And I saw Motion City soundtrack. Amazing. And then yeah, literally like a decade later, we connected and and the rest is history. Now he's sitting right in front of me with some serious wrist candy on the table and some uh rosaritas. Rositas. I love a t |
| Unknown | able. I love a guest who comes with cocktails. That's that's the move. Uh for all for all future uh hodinky radio guests out there, if you bring a growler of cocktails, that's a good way to start an interview. Oh yeah. Even better way to end it. Yeah., that's true Uh so Jesse, we have talked on Instagram before, which is how you guys met too, right? Through this uh weird little uh Instagram watch community. Cole posted because I I follow the editor of Podinky, obviously. Uh and Cole posted something about like 70s design kind of. Okay. Um, which I follow a couple on Instagram and I I DM'd him. I was like, oh, you should check out uh uh daughter of the seventies. That was it. Shout out to Daughter of the Seventies. Great account. Follow it. Yeah, yeah. Um and that was it. Just hey, check this out. Um and I don't post uh on my personal account on anything about watches. It's like me and my daughter, my wife, the fun stuff that we do. Um and he messaged me back. He was like, hey, Motion City soundtrack. Is that that's you? Yeah. B, the the same one. He's like, I'm a fan. And I was like, awesome. Guess what? Guess what? I'm a fan of Hodinky and watches. And he was like, what? And uh and just started uh DM meing and all the stuff and I had a couple shows um that I was going to by other bands and I found out that he was fans of like the uh fan of the same style of music. Um and we went to uh we went to go see Saves the Day. Shout out. It's a great show, yeah. Um, good friends of mine, uh d we did some tours together. Um we went to go see Jimmy World again. Um I guess just to take it back, uh I released Jimmy World's second seven inch in nineteen ninety-five. Okay. And uh when they did their their quote unquote uh record release tour uh for static prevels, I was the only other person in the van. Oh I was the like, hey go go uh carry that stuff over there and uh go sell those CDs and uh that was that guy. Or go go ask the, you know, twenty five people in the room if we can sleep on their floor. Uh sweet, that was me kind of so uh yeah, we ended up having some uh very similar um things in life that we like and and really have kind of become friend |
| Unknown | s through that. Yeah. And also while we're on that though, you should say that in an alternate uh universe or whatever, you could have been at Jimmy Eworld guy. I could have been in Jimmy |
| Unknown | Eworld. Yeah. Which is crazy. This is like so I was having this conversation with a I'm a bartender also, uh, where he could have basically bought stock in Google like in the at the beginning and he didn't. And he's kicking himself and his friend put two hundred grand and and now has like five billion. So yeah, um I was in bands in high school in Los Angeles where I grew up. Uh and I also interned at Capitol Records, okay. Which is uh where Jimmy Earl was signed at the time. Um, shout out to Lauren Israel, who I worked with, um, and Craig Aronson. Uh and their original bass player, I'm just ho hoping the story' corsrect. The original bass player had to go on a mission. Uh for uh like a a religion, a religious thing. Yeah. And he told his parents, but no, we just got signed to a major label in my band. And they were like, well do you want to get disowned? And he was like, Okay, I agree. Yeah, wow. And uh this is back when we had answering machines. Um and Jim from Jimmy World had called me and he was like, Hey, you come out to Arizona, we're having this house party or whatever. And they kind of like gave me the offer, like, we need a bass player, because that's what I played in all my other bands. And I was like, Well, I'm in I'm in two bands in Los Angeles. I don't think I have time to be in Jimmy Eworld. Uh yeah. But not uh I've lived all right for you. I've lived an awesome life. You know, uh, it would have been totally different. And like the places I've been, the people I've met, the things I've done have been completely amazing. And I'm still friends with the Jimmy Worlds. Like we used to do a fantasy football league and nice. Playing fantasy football would with Jimmy World be pretty fun. Yeah. That's uh that's especially like as a guy who grew up in like the late nineties, early two thousands. Like that's uh that's like weird like headspace stuff for me. It it is. It's crazy. Um so do you know do you know Matt Scannel? Who's that? From Vertical Horizon? I don't, but I've I've listened to the pod or talking watch as one of the two. I feel like you and Matt need to meet. Uh yeah, for sure. Simil lots of overlap, I would imagine, in your in your worlds. Um so how I want to talk about music for sure, but first, while we have these watches in front of us, how did you end up a watch guy? Um I've tried to figure this out. So my father doesn't, he's always hated watches. Not not the idea of watches, but the idea of wearing something on his wrist. Okay. So it wasn't from him, which I know a lot of them are past, you know, he's like, oh my grandfather, whatever. Um I distinctly there's two two moments that I remember. Um one I lived in St. Louis, worked at the St. Louis Galleria. Okay. At The Gap. Very nice. You probably know exactly where it is. I know exactly where that is. I bought lots of stuff there. Uh yeah. Uh I was a stockroom manager, so I was just I wasn't on the floor I was in the back all the time, just unboxing clothes basically. And directly across the way was like the typical mall watch boutique. Yep. You know, not not in like, you know, not the Rolex kind of league, but the like maybe a citizen was kind of like the solar powered citizens at Eco Drives or whatever were kind of at the top of their range. Okay. And I remember like lusting after this. It's so weird to say a a a a Timberland, like the boot company okay watch. And I remember it was blue and I was just like, I gotta get that watch. And I don't know, a hundred dollars. I don't know, seventy five dollars, hundred dollars, one fifty, whatever. And and at the time that was like, oh my God, I gotta save up my gap. Yeah. You know, paycheck. Um, you know, I didn't live at home. I you know, I had to pay rent. Um, and I remember when I got it, and I was just like, this is it. And then I totally it cracked it and it broke. Um, so that's the one that was when I was like really remember buying a watch, like my first real one. Um and how old were you? 19, 20. Okay. Um I did own a lot of pop swatches and swatches as as a like early teenager, um like late 80s, early 90s time. Uh and then I remember when I finally bought a a solar powered citizen that I think was like $350, $400. And that was like, I was like, oh my god, this is the nicest watch I've ever seen. And honestly, it was. It was nice. There's nothing wrong with it. Uh and sadly, and I think you actually know the answer to this. The watch that got me into watch collecting was a U boat. You know what? That's something Do you know about these? Yeah, I did. Yeah, like I'm not. I've heard that I've heard that from a weird number of people. Like it's not a brand that we cover. It's not a brand I see much anymore, except once a year I see the booth at Basel World. But like they were big for a while. They were a thing. It was so it was two thousand and7, big watches were in, and I was uh I was Christmas shopping for my then girlfriend now wife. Um, and there was a it was a collaboration between U-Boat and um Modern Amusement, which was like a clothing company with the little bird logo. And like the way the dial was, the numbers are are are not the usual like, you know, 369 numbers and everything. I was like, that's really cool. And then it had a display back. And I was like, what is that? And I was like, and I think it was like, I don't know, a couple hundred bucks or whatever. And I was like, this is it. And then from that moment, I was on like watch you seek and like the forms. And I was like, how do these work? Like what is this thing moving in there? And like that was it. That was like the beginning of like I gotta need more. This week's episode is presented by Leica C Lens. 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The Sumalux M90mm is extremely compact for something so complicated, and it balances fantastically with all M cameras, whether you're shooting the latest M10P or a vintage M3. It can also be adapted to work with other Leica cameras, including the new SL2. For more on the Sumalux M90mm lens and Leica's other cameras and lenses, visit LeicaCamera.com. Alright, let's get back to the show. It it's amazing how quick it goes from like, oh I kinda like the this one has a a nice face, you know, like oh I like the blue. It's it's dial, Steve. Right. I I know I did that did that on purpose, my guy. Uh it's amazing how quick it goes from that to like on watch forums till three o'clock in the morning trying to figure out like which ebosh movement provides better performance twelve years from now. Like it it really like it's so easy to just go totally off the deep end, you know? Yeah, and it's it's it's even easier when you're home from tour and you don't have a job and you don't have to wake up in the morning and you're up until the sun comes up looking at the websites at WatchSeke and all the stuff. And it's it's amazing the amount of information that people have on there. Like it's I feel like there's certain things they should just publish into a book. Like it's you have to search for it and |
| Unknown | find it, but it's insane. Well, it used to be that way. Like remember poor man's watch forum? Yep. S CWF or something? There was another one too. Yeah. There was a what was the Seiko mod forum that was huge for a while? Uh I feel like you would know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well I was on I remember this guy, Isthmus. Do you remember him? Sounds vaguely familiar. Guy for Seiko Mods and all that on Watch You Seek. But yeah. Anyway, yeah. I I was literally we were on the forums the same time doing the same thing. I was all of us, everyone were. I think Cole and I s |
| Unknown | hared, I don't know if you were in this, but the the the Yobo keys in the Degaz like Seiko modding. Oh yeah. And it was like a photo bucket. It was literally just a photo bucket with pictures and you'd have to like be like I need picture number three dash four slash bezel right. Oh yeah. I remember like the first time I was like, you know what I'm I'm gonna get something special. I'm gonna like customize something and it was like, you know, I was essentially ordering a seiko with a blue bezel instead of a black bezel, but like it felt like a big deal. at the time And it was. It was a big deal. It was. Yeah. That's the thing that like, um, so like I I mentioned I'm a bartender of this place in South Worlds, New Jersey. Shout out to the Fox and Falcon. Shout out to Jersey. Um and I've s something I feel almost proud of in like the watch world is I I'm not shy about being like, oh what are you wearing? Or what is that? Like whether it's a G Shock or like a Seiko and they're always like, Oh it's it's just a Seiko and I'm like no I have I have three Seiko this is awesome blah blah blah why did you get it like and he was like oh well well actually this happened and this and that um and I've gotten uh specifically there's this one lady that she always heard me talking about watches and And she was like, you know, I have I have some watches at home. Um I got like a long jeans, I got this, and she's like, but they're I think they're cursed. And I was like, what do you mean? She's like, well, as soon as I I got this watch, um, everything just like in my life got really bad. So I put her in a drawer and it's just there. And I was like, wow, that's crazy. And so I kept asking about the story. And then she came in uh like honestly, like two weeks ago and I saw her wearing a watch and I was like what's that? She was like well I got the long jeans fixed. I I'm I'm wearing it now and and like and she's like I think I'm gonna fix the cursed watch like I'm gonna wear it now and like I feel like I'm kind of like pushing that like, yeah, let's wear some watches here. That's cool. Yeah. That's a wild, wild thing |
| Unknown | . The this is probably a good time too. I so you're going on tour like very, very soon |
| Unknown | . Yeah, I fly to fly out of Boston on the twenty seventh. I don't know where this will error, probably after that. Um fly at six in the morning to get to Minneapolis where the band is from, to go to a brewery, Able Brewing, and actually brew a beer for Motion City soundtrack. Which is super cool. Do that all day long. And then the next morning fly to Chicago. Um and our first show on tour is New Year's Eve uh House of Blues, Chicago. Very |
| Unknown | cool. And while you're doing that, I know we had talked about it. You're gonna try and like meet up with watch folks around the co |
| Unknown | untry or whatever. Um I've got some meetups, uh uh Ben uh watch while driving, uh another shout out who I've been really talking a lot over uh Instagram and he he sent me that watch, which we'll talk about later. Um yeah, he's he's gonna do an Anaheim meetup and and I think these are gonna be like real big hitters. I'm gonna be like, hey, hi, hi guys. You're the guy who put it all together. That'll be cool. Yeah. Just so cool. I just I just want to be involved. Yeah. I just want to be around and like, you know, there's certain watches that I will always look at that I'll never have, and like that's fine. Yeah. Jack tells this story, and it's always stuck with me that he had a friend or has a friend who always wanted to collect Japanese samurai swords, but they were too expensive. And to get the quality that he wanted was too high. You know, he could buy something cheap, something not very good, whatever, but he always wanted the top quality stuff. So instead of actually collecting the physical swords, he saved up money and he would travel to Japan once a year and he would go visit the museums that had the highest quality stuff. That's awesome. And the idea was that if he couldn't have the best actual physical objects in his home, he he would instead spend the money seeing the best objects and essentially collect the experience of these things instead of the physical things. And I think that's for me, you know, after Jack must have told me this story probably four or five years ago, the first time he told me this. Um and it's something that stuck with me. And like that's kind of the fun thing about hanging out with other watch people is like you can experience all of these watches and you get to see them, you get to talk to people about what it's like to wear them, you get to handle them for a little bit, you know, snap a quick iPhone photo, whatever. And like that doesn't cost $80,000 and doesn't cost $100,000. And you like make a friend in the process. Like it's a, it's a, it's a fun thing and you get to kind of like experience them in a different way. I was recently listening to it's all shout outs here, the Blamo podcast. Yeah. Um, I think it was uh Eric Wind was on there. Yeah. Um and he was mentioning he was like in a similar aspect of the story you just told, like um he was like go to uh auction previews and go see these watches. Yeah. And I was like, I can do that? Yeah. I could actually like just go see these. So that's I haven't done it yet. This was I listened to it on a couple weeks ago. So now I'm like, I wanna I wanna know when these previews are and go see 'cause these are like watches that I would are out of this world, you know. You can go walk in and like sit down with an expert and like if you go in a not busy time, they're generally pretty happy to like hang out and talk about stuff and like you can sit and try on a you know 3448 perpetual calendar, you can try on an you know mark one oyster Paul Newman, like you can try on these crazy things that sit in like such rarefied air, and like you can do it with a person who knows a lot about them and can like tell you wh |
| Unknown | y they're special and it's fun. It's a fun thing. When we were at the OnlyWatch preview, the the Grandmaster Shrine was pulled out or whatever. Yeah, everyone was just passing it around. The most expensive world. It was it was a thing. Yeah. I mean |
| Unknown | everybody just like put a glove on and like it was literally passed around the table. It was pretty crazy. Yeah. You can do that too. Yeah. Oh, I'll go visit the swords. I'll go visit the washes. So we have some watches here that I want to make sure we we get a chance to talk about. So you brought a a section of your collection. Yes. Um from the moment you kind of like went off the deep end and started spending late nights on the forums, how did your collecting kind of develop? Like what were you interested in? How is how is how did we end up with this kind of like collection of watches in front of us? I think I actually have a list that I tried to make if I can turn my phone back on. Um let's see here. So early days was Seiko's, you know, double sevens, um, turtles, stuff like that. Um the old turtle. No, yeah, the old turtle. Six three oh nine, six three oh six, da da da da. Six three oh nine. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um because you could get 'em from used on the forums for a hundred bucks, 100 bucks or whatever.. Yeah Um and then what I kind of started doing was putting uh this is gonna sound I would type in watches that I couldn't afford into eBay searches and forum searches with misspellings. Pro move. Yeah. To try and pro move find people selling watches that nobody else would maybe find and getting them technically at a lower price point. So yeah, so I've got on the list of all the stuff I've gone through. Swatches when I was younger, Timexes, of Quartz, Timberlands, the Citizens, uh, the U-boats. Um I had this funny watch that I bought. So my wife is um Panamanian. Okay. And so my first time in Panama, I went to the the like airport watch shop. Yeah. And I got a Festina Manhattan dual time. Okay. And it was an automatic watch with a second uh subdial uh that kept a second time zone. Okay. And the sub-dial was quartz. Oh that's weird. Yeah. Yeah. Really weird. Um so that was fun. And then I started getting into kind of the indie kind of watchmakers of the time. So I had like uh Obris Morgan, uh McGrette out of uh Australia, I think. New Zealand, actually. Yeah. Yep. Uh Unimatics, like the U one eight, like th that stuff. Because again, it was like a lower price point. Yeah. And I kinda look back and I wish I actually kept some of 'em. You know, like I look back and there's like those are actually really cool. Yeah, they're cool pieces. Um a bunch of G Shocks. Like just like because you're like G Shocks. Yeah. Um and then when I started get on eBay, it was like Bell and Ross's, uh Sins, and then my first big uh purchase was a Tudor Black Bay. Okay. Uh yeah, the Maroon one. Okay. The OG Black Bay. Yeah. Uh before the I think I think they do in-house movement now. Like, a lot ye of peopleah, this was. Yeah. That's super cool. You mentioned G Shock. We have a really cool looking G Shock here. Can you tell me about this watch? It's the um so they did, I think it was for the 35th anniversary. Okay. A bunch of the all-metal G-Shocks. Um I originally bought the silver one and that has since gone to a friend. And this is the distressed black one. Uh And I know you can't see it because it's a podcast, but I have uh brass bull bars on there. Okay. People remember what bull bars are. It was so you couldn't scratch your uh the the face of the of the G Shock. That's super cool. And it's fun. It's just like, so this is my like if I'm going hiking. Yeah, yeah. Like it's gonna stand up to it. It's it can hit it on a rock. It's gonna be fine. Um, you know, it has four time zones, it's got a timer, it's got a stopwatch. Yeah. And nowadays they can connect to an app on your phone. Right. And you can set all the time zones or even like where you parked your car or whatever on your phone through the app, through the through your your your watch, which is I think really fun. |
| Unknown | Nice. Yeah. Did uh anything here on the table are any of these watches tied to the rise of motion city soundtrack or did you mark any occasion in your career through one of these guys here |
| Unknown | ? Um honestly that that would have been the the the black bay. My first kind of big purchase would have been the the the black bay was when uh motion city was doing well.. All right Hey, that those days are coming. Next month. Yeah. A lot of these are tied to dates and numbers and years. Oh, cool. I love that. I have this is my great grandfather's pocket watch, which is engraved with his initials and his name dated uh December 6th, 1909. Whoa. Um and runs, you know, it's going to little fast. Um and is pristine. Like it's just absolutely pristine. So cool. So that's I guess watch collecting was in my genes there. Um this is a the other uh John Paul special. Oh yeah, yeah. John player. John player, sorry, John Player special. Uh the other JPS Seiko um chronograph, uh which uh with the original two tone bracelet, which is kind of hard to find. I was gonna say I don't think I've ever seen that watch in two tone and I don't think I've ever seen that watch with that dial. Um and this is by cause Seiko's fun if you're if you're looking for uh birth year even birth month because they're all their uh serial all their serial numbers uh tell you what it is and you can look it up so this is June 77 which is my birth month and year. Oh that's awesome. So that's a fun one. And then my other Seiko 6309 is also from 1977. Also on a Jubilee bracelet. Hashtag everything on a Jubilee. And this one's fun because uh you don't often see with the with the Seiko's like a ghosting on the bezel. You see a lot of scratches usually, but they stay black. So that's a fun there. Um uh 1997 Omega Speedmaster. Love a good speed. Professional. Um in what I think is kind of maybe the best condition I've seen one that's twenty years old. It's pretty sharp. Um flat end links, also kind of a trend that I like. Uh the bracelet itself is from a uh Seamaster the was it Skywalker or uh Anakin? Um from 1970. They only made this bracelet, I believe, in 1970. Okay. But I like the straight end links. Yeah, I love it. It's a great link. Uh and last year, last model that they did tritium and the last year in model with the 861. Oh, cool. Um, the bummer is the model number is the same as when they went to Luminova. There's no there's no uh reference number change. Okay. It's just in ninety seven or ninety eight it changed. Nice. Uh so yeah, in ninety seven is when I met the guy who ended up being the best man at my wedding. Oh. That's when that's actually when I moved to St. Louis. So that's cool. You're you're a bit of a numerologist. A little bit. So wait, w the the Speedmaster is what I want to ask about because like that's a watch that for a lot of people like is sort of like a totem. Like it sits in their imagination and it's something they always have to have and it it kind of like floats out there. Was this watch that way for you or is this just something where you were like, oh, this is cool. Like I'm gonna, I'm gonna pick this up. It has all these interesting details about it. Um, this actually all stems from my friend Mike Marzano. Um, who actually you know what? That's why I'm into watch collecting. Because of Mike. That's why. That's gotta be it. I remember. Okay. So I had my Black Bay. Um, and we were at Spritzen House, which is in uh in Brooklyn, and we were hanging out, we had a lot of friends. We all lived in uh we all lived in Bushwood, Brooklyn at the time. And he rolled up wearing a speed master. And I was like, What you got a speedy? And he's like, Yeah, dude, from like uh original owner for like way below value, like you know, uh not gonna list numbers, but like it was insane, like he was just like yeah I basically stole this watch from this guy and that and then and and holding it and seeing like kind of that that next level yeah I was like oh my god I need to get into this. Yeah. Like, yeah. It was Mike that got me into it, for sure. That's awesome. So I've actually owned uh this is my third Speedmaster. Okay. Um I had, I bought a what's up, pipes? Yeah, geez, man, these pipes are loud today. Um like a new one. And again, the numbers, I still remember the serial number was uh 7708065-7, which is I was born in 77, which is the first two. I was married in uh August 08. I was born in June, 06, and 57, I think, is the first year that Speedmasters were made. That's right. Wow. And the heck of a cereal. The uh the warranty card was dated um Valentine's Day uh 2015. Uh my wife and I got engaged on Valentine's Day. Well, that's a lie. I was in Japan on Valentine's Day, our first date when we got back, which was in one month later, March fifteenth, which is a Valentine's Day date, we got engaged, and our daughter was born in twenty fifteen |
| Unknown | . Do you think that there's some uh fate or someth there's something about numbers that determines the course of life and so forth? I don't know. I don't know what it is, but it |
| Unknown | 's what I see. Um this is gonna get real boring and feel free to edit. Um we were married on 88. Uh our apartment in in Los Angeles was uh the address was 1010, our daughter was born on 1111. Um uh there's ties to numbers of our apartment in in Brooklyn, which is 410, and our house where we live now. Um I play a lot of poker. I'm a big gambler. Our address is the number 52, which is the same number of cards in a deck of cards. So I don't know if there's anything that really connects at all or if I'm just overanalyzing everything. |
| Unknown | And I think this must have something to do with uh or it helps you uh keyboards, music, theory, numbers. Sure. Yeah. Um |
| Unknown | I mean I would guess that would totally go together. Um but I just it's it's weird, I just see connections between uh dates, numbers, repeating things. Well you're like watches are a good thing for uh exactly. Um one watch here that that you don't see too often is this guy sitting right in front of you, which when we when we walked in here, I was like, Oh, you have you have that. Can you tell us tell us about this watch? This is from an independent watchmaker. Uh, and he makes unique one-of-one, and he doesn't handmade. Um they're like, you know, hammered out, uh the dials are hammered out, handmade, and it's like uh jumping hour. It's like it's so you have to have a photo to really see what it is. Yeah, we'll uh we'll have a photo in the post. So if you're listening to this on a podcast player, just go to hodinky.com, check out the post, uh we'll put a link in the show notes uh so you can see a photo of this. So they're made by uh Fernando Lopez Ronzin. I'm don't know if I'm pronouncing it correctly, but he's on Instagram, F periodronzen, R-O-N-Z-O-N. And this watch actually belongs to a friend of mine, Ben, in California, and I he posted it on uh watch while driving and I was just like what is that? That I don't understand what that is. How does that work? It looks pretty wild. Um and he posted that it was handmade and then I I checked out the the the watchmaker and and go went back on his feet and just he was showing like techniques of how he was doing everything. And Ben being nice to it, he was just like, Yeah, I'll I'll I'll just send it to you. Cool. And I was like, okay. Well he's like, Yeah, just it'll it'll it'll be in New York. What's your address? Cole may or may not |
| Unknown | emul this back, didn't he? I yeah, I did. I literally happened to be in LA, ran into Ben, Ben showed me the watch and I was like, you know what? I like that watch too. Let me wear it a little bit. I will go take it back to you. All right. So I'm the only idiot here who hasn' |
| Unknown | t gotten to wear this watch. But uh Yeah, it's a cool thing. It's it's one of those pieces that like I remember seeing it maybe it was on Instagram a while back and then like I don't think I've ever seen one in the metal. It's a cool thing and it's it's a good uh it's a good reminder that there's cool, interesting kind, of like modern contemporary takes on on watchmaking being done at all price points. Like you don't have to buy an MB and F or an Urwork to get a sort of like mod quote unquote modern watch. Like you can you can do something a little more accessible. But if only you could get an NBNF. Yeah. Oh man. Max Max makes some beautiful things. Uh Max and his friends make some beautiful things. Um totally opposite would maybe be this guy right here. Uh I I feel like that would only be here if there was a story to it. It has a Velcro Mickey Mouse strap on it. Yeah, so this is um my daughter, uh Parker, who is now four, just turned four, uh already owns two watches. Starting them young. That's that's how we like it. So she has her one of her mom's old watches that I got in Japan that was um it's a baby G Shock as they called them, but they didn't make them in America this way. So it's actually just a scaled down sixty nine hundred. Oh. Like the same uh dials and everything, but just smaller. Uh white, uh with the black, like the inverted black, uh digital um white band um and they only as far as I've know they was only made and sold in Japan. And I bought it when I was there for my wife. She wore it a lot. And I gave it, you know, to my daughter who doesn't quite wear it yet. She wears it around and it'll take a beating.. It's a bracelet Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And this is uh this is a mini-lip, which I believe is French. Um, and this is an actual hand-wound mechanical watch um that was running for a bit. I'm gonna get it serviced so that it actually works properly. And it has a 24-hour track, and then it has a 12-hour track inside of that. And the hands are two different colors. Uh, and it's for teaching children how to read an analog clock. Um, because you can tell them, you know, the 24 hours in the day, 12 hours, tell them there's the hour hand, the minute hand, different colors. And what's really cool about it is it there's a third track that counts up to half an hour that says uh five ten one quarter twenty twenty-five and a half to count up to half an hour and then back down from half an hour. Quarter two that's cool. |
| Unknown | They don't make watches like this anymore. They really don't know. No, because most people I mean, I'm gonna sound so fucking old here, but like most people don't know how to read time anymore, right? That's why. I was they don't make it. No, you just use your phone. You don't need to learn how to read a clock. Yeah. So this teaches kids how to read analog clocks. Yeah. Yeah. Which is inc |
| Unknown | redible. And it's so cool that you bought it. With an with an actual hand wine, I mean to be you know, as a watch, yeah, it'd be fine if it was quartz as for a four-year-old. Yeah. Like as I was just on eBay, uh, you know, I saw an article on these these watches and I put up my alert, you know, mini lip kids watch, and it showed up like a week later, and I was like, that's mine. It's gotta be mine. And shout out to the eBay alert. The eBay alert might be the hero of this uh this episode. The eBay tips here, the misspellings, the eBay. Yeah too. I remember I remember those days. I used to buy a lot of clothes like uh and stuff on eBay. And it was just like that's how you had to do it. You had to find like you know the names of tailors and the names of like a shoemaker and just misspell it every way you possibly could. And occasion occasionally you'd get that score. That's fantastic. Uh bad photos. Yeah. So yeah, watches I mean, not to usually sold by an older person that maybe doesn't have a top quality way to take the pictures and like zooming in and be like is that the correct like are the in this is like I think it's I think I think it's correct like I'm gonna take the jump because and then nobody everybody else is like, the photos are so blurry, I'm gonna do it. And then you get it and you're like, Yes. Yeah. Eric. That's another Eric Wynne tip. Eric Wind is a uh a champion of the look for the eBay listing with bad photos. Uh, you know, you can tell also like if you have a trained eye, like if you look at enough of these things, you get to realize like, are the scratches on the crystal or are they on the dial? Are is the bracelet scratched or is it dusty? You know, you start to be able to figure out like, is this thing a piece of junk or is this thing a really nice thing that's just been photographed and treated very poorly? And that's kind of actually that's how I kind of worked my way up to even afford most of these watches is um finding things that were misrepresented, misspelled, blurry photos, getting them for literally like I don't know, ch less than what they're worth, and then going on the forums, taking better for photos, putting them on eBay, taking better photos, better descriptions, and making a little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit there. Classic value. And then as you that moves up, you know, what you can buy moves up. And then that's kind of how I funded what I have. Yeah, yeah, of course. There was, you know. And you're also, I mean, all of these things, you know, we're talking about them specific to watches, but like you collect other stuff, right? Like you're you're a collector, you know how this works. I collect things that so my biggest likeike screw up in life is everything that I'm interested in, nobody else wants to talk about. Okay. So uh do you want to talk about uh bakelight backgammon checkers? I I actually wouldn't hate that. Like that that's the thing I know nothing about, but like I feel like this is the right thing. Do you wanna talk about limited number uh oversized handmade cribbage boards out of different types of wood? 'Cause I've got those. Love it. Do do you know what cribbage is? I know what cribbage is, yeah. I do know what cribbage is. Do you have family in Minnesota? I do now. I married into family. It's very big in Minnesota. Cribbage is huge. I'm married into Midwestern family. Do you want to talk about the different like Italian producers or manufacturers of uh playing cards. Oh yeah, that I would love to talk about. Uh that sounds super interesting. Do you want to talk about like um uh collectible board games and different versions throughout the fifties, sixties, seventies. Also super cool. Yeah, that sounds awesome. I don't understand what what the problem is here. Or do you want to talk about offensive and defensive strategies of playing sorry? What's the the kids game that I have played for money with adults. Oh, I love that. Anything you can do for money is fine. I'm it. You know? So I've kind of been in this bane where these like I'm deep into these things that in there are there are communities. There's like, you know, there's backend uh boards, uh poker chips collect poker chips different um which is like um there's different manufacturers that are consider pulsing for example is considered like the top yeah poker chip manufacturer and you can't buy them they only go to casinos but, then casinos close down and then you you can only buy them if you buy all of them which is all this money but if you're on the forum you do what you know group buy I don't know if that's a something somebody knows where like somebody's like I'll take five hundred of them and somebody's like, I'll take a thousand and, then you the group buys a half million chips or something like that. Half a child. Oh my god. Geez, a bunch. That's incredible. And then Diviama. Wow. That's okay. I ended up in a weird Instagram rabbit hole maybe maybe two, three months ago. Like late at night, I was just like bored and scrolling through my like uh recommended and I ended up uh like I guess sifting through a bunch of dice collecting. Yeah, I have uh big I have a whole jar of dice. Yeah. Yeah. Is it dye or dice? Oh it's dice. Dice would be singular dice as well. A whole bunch of dice. Uh yeah, it was really fascinating. I'm like I was I mean, big surprise to everyone, I am and was a big nerd. Uh used to play Dungeons and Dragons for sure. Uh so I had my fair share of dice back in the day, but they were not particularly like premium. So did you did you read about precision dice? No. No, no, no. So precision dice are well cut this out too. Um are where the material that's that's put in to make the actual dots on the die are the exact same weight as the material the die is. So there's no shift in weight on the die. Wow, interesting. Because six numerals of of a heavier material would make the six heavier and the one lighter. But then how do you compensate for removing the material th Aaron Powell You're just filling it back in. So it's two materials that are the exact same weight so that every side is the same week. That really appeals to like the uh like painfully obsessive and like totally pedantic part of me. I love that. Yeah, very cool. Uh so what was the first thing you got into collecting? Like when when did you realize like oh shit, I'm a collector, like I'm just gonna hoard things. Oh, mm keyboards, MOOC, right? Well, I did have a lot of MOGs, which actually when Motion City soundtrack started playing, I played a realistic MG1. You guys might be old enough to remember the name Realistic. That was Radio Shack's uh brand of musical instruments. Yeah. Um and literally plastic. Literally duct taped together. Um I think at some point we had about eight of them because they would break, get them fixed, break, get them fixed, break, get them fixed. We used to, I think the first one that Motion City Soundtrack got was like $75 on eBay. Um, and then throughout the popularity, unfortunately, of our band and me playing the realistic MG1, then they were like $500. And they were like $700. And we kind of shot ourselves in the foot with that one. Um will you have one for this upcoming tour? I've I've moved on to the big boy keyboard. Okay and I play a moog uh little fatty, which is Little Fatty. Yeah. A lot more a lot more bells and whistles uh and made out of some metal and wood instead of just plastic and duct tape. Sweet. Um, but yeah, the first thing I remember being obsessed with in collecting was He-Man toys. Okay. I remember when I got the like Castle Grace Gold to like put them in and play in. Um that was like the beginning of being obsessed with something for me for sure. And what is it about? Because cause like you said, you collected a bunch of different things. Like what is it about collecting that appeals to you? Like fundamentally, regardless of like what the actual object is, like what is it about being a collector that you like? I think there's two things that I've come to realize. One is I genuinely enjoy the process in the research. Yeah. Like my wife makes fun of me because like I enjoy reading the instructions to put something together. Like I read through it before I start. I'm like, okay, so this is what we're gonna do. Like uh like I I enjoy manuals. So it's like I enjoy the process of being like, okay, so this was manufactured from this time and this is like with bake-like materials, which they do like uh clocks and uh bezels on watches um and uh uh uh back M and checkers is like you heat it, you heat it up with your thumb and you can smell the formaldehyde. And so learning stuff like this and then getting stuff and being like, oh no, this one's not real, or this is like the process of getting there, I actually think I find really fun. And then there's also um the process of thinking about uh heirlooms for me. Um both sides of my family really nothing ever passed down, um like nothing's ever kind of been there. Well we found it. Uh huh. That we found in a box. Wow. And like my mom was like, you like watches, right? And I was like, Yeah. Classic. Uh and now, you know, being married with family and daughter and everything, like all of a sudden I kinda wanna have those things that are like daddy's things. Yeah. You know, like like so then then I then I want, you know, heirloom quality. Like my my the main back element board is like handmade by this guy in Chicago with I picked the wood, you know, and I picked the felt and the leather and all everything that it's made out of and stuff. And like the idea of down the line her being like, this was my dad's thing. Yeah. Like I c I kinda like that. It's a good thing. But to get to get there, there's like it kind of has to be like this this journey to find what that thing is. |
| Unknown | You know? Yeah. Um gotta put the time in. That's the thing. It's really just putting the time in. Yeah. Yeah. |
| Unknown | So let's go back to music. So how did you end up emotion city soundtrack? So I was living in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the time, and I was working at um a restaurant and I was playing in kind of hardcore and punk bands mostly. Um what year is this? This is 2001. Okay. Um and those bands broke up and somebody that I worked with at the restaurant was in this band called Motion City Soundtrack. Um and they were like, We've seen you play in these other bands. You have a lot of energy, you have a lot of like you have a lot of fun, like cool. Can you play keyboards? Because I played bass in all my other bands. And I was like, absolutely not. Never touched a piano or a keyboard in my life. And they go, cool. We'll show you. Nice. I mean, that's honestly that's pretty punk. Yeah. Like that's a pretty punk attitude. Um and I had never played in like a poppy band. Like I grew up thinking I was like punk and like hardcore and like, you know, really aggressive stuff, you know? And they were kind of poppy, like pop punky ish at the time, you know. And I was like, maybe that'll be fun. Yeah. Maybe this give it a shot. Sure. Yeah. Why not? And I figured we'd be like local opener. You know, like oh the getup kids are coming to town. Local opener motion city soundtrack. Oh look the promise ringer coming local opener motion city soundtrack. I was like it'll be cool. Let's work at this restaurant, playing this band, everything's cool. Um and then we we were like, okay, cool. So we love the getup kids. They own this studio in Kansas. We'll go down there and we'll make this record with Ed Rose at uh Red House and then it became uh Black Lodge. And we're just gonna make a record and we're gonna do it in like four days. And we did it. And then we we would burn them ourselves on like two time C D burners. So yeah. It was a like a C D R W versus C with I was like, we'll get the ones that are colored on the bottom. So we'll do a hundred in orange and a hundred in red and a hundred in blue and a hundred in black or whatever. So cool. And then we cut, we took um a five-inch floppy disks. Yeah. If anybody remembers what those are. Of course. Um and would razor blade the very top off and pull out the floppy disk. And the inside of those are uh almost like felt, like it's you know, so it doesn't scratch the actual and we put the CDs in there. Oh so you're a marketer too. And then we made stickers that that were the same size as the top of where you would label a floppy disk. And that's how we sold our CDs. Oh, I'm loving this. That's cool.. Yeah Very cool. And then the big thing that I think that we did that actually made it all work um is 2000 and I want to say 2002, we did over 320 shows in one year. Jesus. Whoa. In a van with our gear, and we built um people out there that has ever seen a band or touring, like we built a loft in the back of the van, like uh plywood and two by fours. Yeah. Um so that there was about two feet from the ceiling uh of the van to the top of the loft and you would put all of your gear and all of your equipment underneath it, but then you could sleep three or four across just filled with farts. Like it's it was like yeah it was like you know five that van still smells like farts today. Yeah. Uh five or six people people, seven, depending like if by the time we finally had a merch person, you know, uh who is still our merch person almost 20 to 20 years later. Wow. And shout out to Beth Rabel. Uh and yeah, we just went on the road. We went on the road. We played I remember playing shows for three people. You know, ten people. I remember so this is another funny one. So we before if anybody knows the band All American Rejects. Yeah. Of course. Good friends of ours now. We did a quote unquote tour of three shows with them in the Midwest. Yeah. Columbia, Missouri, somewhere in Iowa. And uh the Iowa show. Motion City soundtrack all American rejects. Zero people showed up. No Zero? Zero. Wow. Zero. Do you remember the first show where you ever like walked out on stage and you were like, fuck, like what is happening here? Um, I remember a couple. Earliest one would be there's a venue in Chicago called the Fireside Bowl. Okay. Which when I lived in Chicago, I lived like five blocks away from it, and I saw every show at the Fireside Bowl. It was like a legendary, still is a legendary punk venue. Um we like the day we s we sold, that was our first like sold out show. I wanna that was three hundred people. I don't know. Like still sold out crazy. It's all that matters and we were like and and we sold we sold so much merch. And it was like not that much. You know, uh and that that was like a big like, oh my gosh, like we're actually doing something. We sold out the five like where I went to shows. Yeah. Where I grew up, you know, in my early 20s, going to shows, we sold that out. That was like holy crap. That's crazy. Yeah. And then there was um there was a festival in in Jersey called uh Skate and Surf. Skate and Surf. And then I was there. Yeah. And then uh and then it was later, I think, called Bamboozle. Uh so we were playing middle of the day and we weren't on like the big main stage and we weren't on the other cool stage. We were in, if any of us have been to Asbury Park, we were uh in the hallway of the convention center. Yeah, yeah. Like the big booming hallway, right? And we're setting up and we're like, cool, maybe people show up. You could kind of hear like in the background, like people talking and it was getting louder and louder. And the place was packed. Like two the gills couldn't get anybody else in. And we were all like literally tearing up, like on stage being like, what is life? That's so awesome. Like, I don't know the two thousand I don't I don't know how many people, but like just insanity, you know. And we were like, why aren't you watching like I don't know, Cohite and Cambria or like whoever else was on the the Say Anything, whoever was on the year. That was another one. Um I remember we were on warp tour maybe You've been on that a lot. We think we did eight or nine. Yeah. We held the record. One of my all-time life regrets is I never made it to the world tour. Oh my god, you missed out, Steve. I know, man. I know. How do you feel about porta potties and sweat? I mean, when I was like fourteen I felt great about it. Uh less so now, but uh I went honestly for sixteen. Honestly for like some good music. Fine. Whatever. It was great. Warp Tour's was the most awesome part about Warp Tour was kind of the it was like a the kind of family base of like a circus or what I think a circus would be. Um where like so we were in this kind of like poppy you know pop punk band but then we would hang out with like the casualties which is like full on mohawk punk band or like I remember like I talked to like uh Tim Timbaum from Rancid or uh the guys from The Offspring who were in these like gigantic like millionaire bands and we were all on the same playing field. Yeah. We would you know, I ran the poker table like one year in um uh and like hanging out with like fat mic from No Effects and like all these people and like everybody was on the same wavelength. Yeah. No matter how much money you had, no matter what city you were from, no matter what kind of music you played. It was like 800 or 900 people traveling together for two months. That's amazing. That's so cool. Yeah. Yeah. It was awesome. So you went on tour in a couple days. This we're recording this like middle to end of December. How long's your tour? It's I believe it's five weeks, so it's uh starts New Year's Eve, runs into the first week of February. Okay. Uh full US, most cities. Amazing. Um and then we have some hometown shows uh we're doing three shows in Minneapolis cool uh 15 16 17th um which is technically our hometown shows which we're really excited for um we're going over to slam dunk festival in England in May. Sweet. Um and maybe some more stuff. We're trying to figure it out. We're all kind of in that married with kids life these days where, you know, five weeks is a long time. Yeah. Whereas it used to be, you know, eight months. Right. Different things. Yeah. Crazy. Uh well we'll link we'll link it up so that people can hopefully come out and see you and uh we'll put your Instagram handle so people can can shout you out and let you know if they're if they're around and hopefully join these watch meetups. Yeah, I'm starting um a new Instagram thing. Okay. Uh that I've started I don't know, two, three months ago, still pretty new, um called Modern Patina. Cool. Which is uh modern dot patina uh on Instagram. And my whole thing on that, which is kind of my whole thing with watches, is in collecting and heirlooms and even like people that are into cars, all that whole thing is like trying to find and tell the story of the relationship to the object. Yeah. Um, so I've got a couple posts on there. I've got some amazing stories. Um, I'm I'm gonna get together with the lady that has the haunted watch, the cursed watch. Um and it's been really fun telling the stories and just literally just seeing people and be like, what's up with that watch? And they're being like, oh, I got it because I I g I broke the sales record this year or whatever. And like they were like, I was gonna get a like a put it towards a Porsche, I got the watch, and next year I got the Porsche. Um and then I was like do you still have the Porsche? And they're like, no, I still have the watch. Like in in um things that have been handed down. I've got watches on there that like have been from grandfather to father to son Rutgers watch or something. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, that was awesome. This guy, this I don't know he must have been in his 80s, and he was wearing um a double signed Seiko Rutgers University quartz. Wow gold or gold plated or plastic watch, right? And I was like, that's a cool watch. And it this the the dial looks like rough sandpaper. Uh-huh. But like on purpose. Like it was like made that way. Yeah. Um, and I was like, Do you have any other watches? It's like, no, I bought this in 1976. This is this is my only watch. This I wear this every day. Yeah, it's so cool. You know, like and it was probably at the time like kind of expensive for him. Yeah. He was like, I I bought this when I graduated and I was so happy that I graduated college. I bought this watch and I wear it every day. That's so yeah. Yeah. So modern patina is is definitely worth checking out. Yeah, check it out. Yeah. Um, dude, thanks so much for joining us.. This was a blast And uh I have a funny feeling this isn't uh your last time on this show. I feel like I feel like we could do a whole show on non-watch collecting, like just get real deep on a bunch of weird stuff. Uh all the stuff that my friends don't want to talk about. I love it. It's the story of my life. Um awesome. Thanks, dude. And in enjoy your tour and uh hopefully some people listening here will uh see some shows. Yeah, it'll be fun. We're uh we're gonna get sweaty. Give out high fives. Perfect. Love it. I'm gonna be there. Yeah, me too. All right. Awesome. Take care, man. Cheers, Jesse. Thanks. This week's episode was recorded at Hodinky HQ in New York City and was produced and edited by Grayson Korhonen. Please remember to subscribe and rate this show. It really does make a difference for us. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next week. |