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Luxury: Living in exciting times
How has the pandemic impacted the journey of a fledgling watch collector? What’s changed and what are some things that will stay the same
I’ve been a collector for as far back as I can remember. It all started innocently enough with MAD magazines. Over my pre-teen years, this became a borderline obsessive drive, doggedly nudging me to own the entire set from the first edition till the latest one, hot off the press.
A decade hence in 2001, I launched an art advisory practice with a perfect flicker of serendipity. This afforded me a ringside view—the perfect seat in the house, really—to witness, right from the outset, a phenomenon that would become a true-blue elite collector sport in our country. Identifying master artists with unique voices and a powerful practice, zoning in on subjects and stretches within that signature’s repertoire that are the strongest in terms of visual and critical expression, rolling up one’s sleeves and setting about sourcing, negotiating and completing all due formalities on these works—all of these are integral facets of collecting; steps that are mirrored across all forms and categories of collectorship.
Over the past two decades, I’ve stumbled into collecting, in addition to the obvious selection of art, an assortment of objects of all sorts—pens, cars, umbrellas, socks. But the one object that has proven elusive is watches.
Wake up call
In 2019, I’d finally made up my mind to set about adding three more watches to the three respectable ones that I’d owned till then. I spend an inordinate parcel of time reading, researching, exploring and generally getting my hands dirty, so to speak, before diving into the subject and 2019, I had decided during a cursory query on new year’s resolutions at a punch-drunk Christmas party in 2018, would be the year I would dedicate to this explorative quest.
Over that year, I met over a dozen reputable watch dealers around the world, from Tokyo to Paris, during my visits to their cities. I connected with communication and management teams in the headquarters of all the major watchmakers of my preference to better understand how the brands were navigating the years ahead. I visited the Salon International de la Haute Horlogerie (SIHH), the celebrated by-invitation-only trade show held in Geneva. I was properly pleased with how well I’d utilised the year when, with a now acceptably decent understanding of this domain, I opened 2020 by proffering a few stray offers to some of the dealers in my phonebook—something to get the clocks ticking and the conversations going.
I wasn’t terribly keen on owning brand new watches. Perhaps holding and handling artworks that had richness of age, character and a story of their journey all their own, till they made their way to me, had warmed me up to the consideration of only considering timepieces that had already seen life from outside a display window. As the opening months of 2020 passed, none of my offers was accepted. All were, I have to admit, dismal, low-ball opening offers that were derived based upon years of a hardened negotiating manner that obstinately refuses to relent.
Sound the alarm!
As 2020 unfurled itself in all its glory, the world rapidly realised that what we all were experiencing was not an emergency drill. In the months of uncertainty that followed, time, and how we used it, became one of our most important deliberations. Ironically, while the value of time increased, my preoccupation with watches took a momentary pause. By the latter half of the year, the Indian art market had started rumbling and the numbers had begun to skyrocket. According to a recent Artery India Financial Knowledge report, between April 2020- March 2022, all-time highest record prices were established for 266 Indian artists—a global record by itself.
Somewhat unbeknownst to me, much like the art world was exploding financially, the horological community was also similarly recording record highs through the ranks. In the two years since I had actively engaged with the domain, interest had significantly zipped up. Interestingly, the three watches that I’d shortlisted in 2019—an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Jumbo Extra-Thin in a salmon pink dial, a Patek Philippe Nautilus 5711, and a Rolex Daytona 40mm—all had very nearly trebled, if not higher, in price. I tried to feel a touch better in the knowledge that all the models I’d chosen were flaming winners, though their present pricing in the comparative context did cause me some digestive concerns for a few days that week.
A few months and several shots of Pepto-Bismol later, I decided it was time to shake it off and get back on the horse, and what better way to do that than to ride back to the greatest watch event in the world—SIHH, now rebranded as Watches and Wonders Geneva 2022. The show was set to open in the last week of March and I decided that I would be there, hungry wrists and the rest of me in tow.
Past, present and future
The event was exactly what was needed—a literal shot in the arm. Thirty-eight brands, including the giants (brands owned by LVMH and Richemont) as well as the glorious independents, presented their workshops’ latest creations in person after two digital-only editions. An interesting mix of models were unveiled, some gladly embracing the present while tiptoeing towards the future—think the use of carbon fibre to render featherlight some heavily robust watches, as seen in Panerai’s spectacular Quarantaquattro that’s been crafted from the company’s own Carbotech material. Similarly, IWC’s Pilot’s Watch Chronograph Top Gun that was released in a range of coloured ceramic and Ceratanium, a form of ceramic titanium, its own proprietary material. On the other side of the spectrum were those doffs of the hat to legendary classics that were re-released in a contemporary order—like the beautiful and hugely collectable Triple Two from Vacheron Constantin that, though inspired by its original, is undeniably a contemporary statement. The big ones—Rolex, Patek Philippe, IWC, Audemars Piguet, Cartier and Jaeger-LeCoultre—had quite a wonderful roll-out with enough to make the four days I spent there seem like fleeting seconds, though I was perhaps as, if not more, impressed by the range and vision of some of the comparatively smaller, independent brands, the highlights being the workmanship on display from H. Moser & Cie., and Czapek Genève.
There was a strong turnout from India that included several collectors in addition to those from the trade representing the brands, dealerships and the media. A number of high-value, low-edition timepieces were considered, and confirmed during the event, validating the presence of collecting muscle from our country.
Ring my bell
A consideration of how this market has exploded reveals a carefully deployed strategy on the part of the trade—limited release, extreme scarcity, huge levels of inventory hoarding, relatively new models being discontinued without any alarms sounding—every angle in the book has been measured and activated. The result is a mammoth increase in the queues growing rapidly with every next tick of the clock.
I’m not someone who chases after that which has attracted hype. I’d rather try and forge my own movement and find the models that make bells ring in my head. I therefore am back to the drawing board, re-evaluating the brands and models of interest that I feel are being ignored at the moment and might become hard to source over the next two or so years. I’ll be sure to write a follow up to this column in that week’s HT Brunch. Do make the time to read it.
Arvind Vijay Mohan is CEO, Artery India. La dolce vita: that’s his life’s guiding principle, and one that he gladly endorses in all his pursuits.
From HT Brunch, April 16, 2022
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