Making Horology Mainstream

Visitors to British Columbia, Canada, are said to frequent Gastown, touted as one of Vancouver’s most unique and vibrant neighborhoods, brimming with an eclectic mix of shops, historic architecture, dining options, and cobblestone streets.

The Roldorf Cafe is back up for a new season of ‘casts starting really shortly. First up is a candid discussion with Jason Lim of Halios Watches.

The Tale Of A Lucky SOB...

So, you were dragged out to yet another string of garage sales on Sunday by your wife. While she shuffled from one table to the next, you found an old watch sitting inside the bowl of an old hubcap. Perhaps the owner found it at a thrift stop years before or it was passed down to him from a family member. Regardless, at this point, you're feeling pretty lucky because you're thinking you’ve scored! The thing is, when you look at it, it’s looking like a Fiat that’s been sitting outside the whole time, many years after ‘Tony’ passed away. You're not discouraged though, because you’ve been watching those car restoration reality shows on TV and you know this old banger can be turned into something that will just shine on that prime piece of real estate called your left wrist. You have thoughts of walking into a crowded room of watch lovers who are all frantically reaching for their phones or Sony Alpha cameras to take a shot of it. All of a sudden, the scotch is flowing like water and the room is full of your new best friends….. SCREEEEECH!

You wake up, rather abruptly,  as your vintage Angelus wrist alarm has just sounded its 5 AM morning Reveille. You're feeling inexplicably intoxicated from your dream and then it hits you! Frantically you reach out for your Angelus, still half asleep, knocking over the glass of water right next to it ( see post “To leak or not to leak, that is the question”) as you strangely fear that elves have been at work while you were sleeping, polishing your watch, restoring the dial and maybe even polishing the crystal for good measure. Pleased to have it in your hands, albeit wet, you emit a deep sigh of relief! Then, you start to wonder why you're having anxiety dreams about your watch of all things, then you remember reading this blog post the day before.

There’s a lot of talk, chatter and advice on the “interwebs” on the topic of watch restorations, from the “What’s acceptable…”, to “…are you off your rocker, why are you thinking about doing that?” All this talk suddenly becomes a scream inside your head as the thoughts of devaluation and nice looking swirl around. The interesting part about it is, taking a moment to play devil’s advocate, that all the information in the world out there is, in my humble opinion, individually subjective in a group think kind of way. What I mean by that is that there’s a sandbox  that’s globally fragmented where watch collectors/enthusiasts are often found to be in groups of enablers, following common forums or editorials. The editorials have their place in the sand box, being the older, perhaps wiser and charismatic kids setting out the rules for playing in the sandbox. The lore of the sandbox flows like sand in an hour glass, reaching new people and giving long lost brands a stickiness factor, taking them to a cult like status. With that comes an extraordinary nascent economy of luxury and worth, that grows each year, fueled by the sandbox.

Turning away from a deviant devil’s advocate, and putting on my MBA hat, supply and demand economics have a framework. In this case, the rarer the watch in its most original condition will demand the highest price. Of course, the Mavens and Connectors keep everyone informed, as Gladwell so precisely points out in the Tipping Point that “ Ideas, products, messages and behaviours spread like viruses do”. The “Law of the Few”  digs deeper into this  as the “…success of any social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts” which, according to Gladwell,  economists call the 80/20 principle. Behaviour is strongly influenced by surroundings, and the sandbox is a perfect environment to build a culture of less is more and polished is poor.

Now putting on a watchmaker’s jacket (as we rarely wear hats), we are most certainly in the business of making broken things work, maintaining working things so they hopefully don’t break. We are the agents of intervention with a ‘Minority Report’ pre-cognition of what we can see going wrong in the future, for the good of the watch and its wearer. By definition, the service watchmaker’s ultimate mandate and even that of certain companies, on the far right, is to make your watch like, or as close to as possible, new again. This then flies in the face of the sanctity of sandbox community on the topic of patina.

Then of course there is the history and story of a watch. Every ding, scratch and crack speaks volumes to the watch’s life and its owner/s exploits. This is the kind of nostalgia everyone loves. It reminds me of a certain scene in the movie Pulp Fiction where Christopher Walken holds up a watch in front of the little boy, you know the one! This is the mystique of the watch being intimately tied to its provenance. I feel here though that this is the type of watch in a collection that is very rarely worn, being treated more like a museum piece.  

Conversely, on a topic of car restorations, (which in the interests of transparency I know very little about other than to watch those car restoration shows on TV), it seems there is generally an opposed stance on restorations devaluing a car. A well restored car seems to sell at a premium even with a new paint job, interior and tyres, especially when it comes with a photo book documenting the transition from nasty to resplendent. So I might posit the Fiat is safe!

After all I would be so happy to drive to a wedding in a fully restored Fiat 600 that “Tony” had painstakingly returned to its original condition, as a legacy project, just prior to his departure. It might be worth something too!

So, what I’m arriving at is that we live in a complicated world that’s full of opinions backed up by evidence that may or may not be partly a result of an intervention of the mavens and connectors. One thing I can say for sure is that we have an inexplicable curiosity and desire for these wrist borne machines either way.

For the conservator in you here’s a guide of what not to do to a watch in order to maintain or increase your investment:

polish the case

refinish the dial and hands

use a generic or after market winding crown if missing

polish/replace the crystal as needed

So for the rest here’s a guide of what to do to a watch in order to maintain/increase your enjoyment and the life of the timepiece:

polish the case ( infrequently)

refinish the dial and hands as needed for practical reasons

use a original (preferred) or generic or winding crown if missing

polish/replace the crystal as needed

In both examples, servicing the movement is expected ( more on this in a later post)

The points above are interestingly similar but consider this, that a watch with a dial that has flaky paint or has loose luminous material runs a strong risk of these materials getting into the movement thereby impeding its function. Dial refinishing was a normal practice not that long ago, turning water damaged dials into respectable ones. In fact, it was an art and the best were highly sought after. Water resistance is also a consideration, in that it shouldn’t be a compromise unless the watch is going to be safely stored or framed.

This is where the author will perch solidly on the fence, in the most polite Canadian of fashions. I see both sides until there is a need to sway one way or the other based on what the client wants. This is what makes the independent watchmaker different. We listen to our clients’ needs, evaluating what is best based on our knowledge, experience and education. Once we have done that, it is up to the client to make a decision based on their personal wants and circumstances.

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There are references in this article to:

The Tipping Point Author: Malcolm Gladwell  http://gladwell.typepad.com/

FIAT: Fix It Again Tony

Mavens and Connectors: https://malcolmgladwelltippingpoint.wikispaces.com/The+Law+of+the+Few

The 80/20 Principle : the Secret of Achieving More with Less. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 9780385491747.

Minority Report: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_Report_(film)