If I Could Own Any Famous Person's Watch, What Would I Own?
There are many watches that we are all after that we believe will complete our collections. But, if you have that collecting gene, your collecting is never really complete. We have been looking at many prominent collectors collections recently, and we began to think - if we could have any of these watches, which would it be? We will caviate this with the fact that our opinion on this is almost certain to change, so this is the watches we would want at this current moment in time.
The first answer would be the first wrist watch ever made. Abraham-Louis Breguet was the creator of the first wrist watch which was for the Queen of Naples in 1810. The whereabouts of this watch are unknown, but Breguet has created a modern version of what they believe the watch looked like. Not only is this a significant watch for the history of watches, we also have been diving into legendary watchmakers and their histories which sparked our interested.
The next watch is from a well known collector, John Goldberger, or Auro Montanari. Goldberger is regarded as one of the most well-respected watch collectors and scholars today. In his Talking Watches episode on Hodinkee, he showed a beautiful Patek Philippe reference 570 which really caught our attention. It is a simple Patek, but extremely beautiful. It is has an incredible three-toned dial with breguet numbers and is exactly what we want in a watch. Not only would we want the watch because of its beauty, but John Goldberger is an idol when it comes to how we want to share our collection.
The last watch we would want to own is Ben Clymer’s Omega Speedmaster MK40. This watch is a triple calendar and is so cool. His grandfather gave it to Ben and it was really the start of his love for watches, and therefore for the start of Hodinkee! It is different than what we associated with the Speedmaster - it has a red chronograph hand with chunky hour/minute hands. It also has a blue and black sub-dial at 9 o’clock which stands out nicely. It really marks the start of when watches became mainstream.
Enjoy!