Latest / What's on Your Riste? A Watch Podcast / S01E07: Living With a Collection: Storage, Security, and the Stuff Nobody Wants to Talk About

Transcript

S01E07: Living With a Collection: Storage, Security, and the Stuff Nobody Wants to Talk About · What's on Your Riste? A Watch Podcast

0:00
I want to start this one with something I don't usually do.
0:05
A warning. This episode is going to make
0:08
some of you uncomfortable. It's going to ask you to look at
0:12
your collection, your beautiful, considered, lovingly curated
0:16
collection, and think about it the way that someone would if
0:20
they were trying to take it. This isn't a fun mental
0:22
exercise, but it's a necessary one because I am one of the
0:26
people in this hobby that has lived through what most people
0:30
only worry about. And I what I learned from that
0:33
experience and what it cost me is what I want you to think
0:36
about. I'm going to share what I
0:38
learned. So maybe, just maybe, it'll cost
0:42
you less, hey? What's your ski?
0:47
What's on your wrist? Dad Professional calendar 3
1:00
hander Stainless steel on my skin.
1:03
I want a daily driver, not. Welcome back to What's ON Your
1:09
Rest Day. I'm Wachovsky.
1:10
You've been with me since Episode 3.
1:12
You know that my home was broken into in 2023.
1:16
You know what I lost. You know, some of those losses
1:19
were not financial. They were emotional.
1:22
And then no amount of insurance money would have been able to
1:25
replace them. What you don't know yet is what
1:29
I learned today. We're going to talk about that.
1:31
Specifically, We're going to talk about three things.
1:33
How to store your watches at home if you store them at home,
1:37
How to think about operational privacy in this hobby, and how
1:41
insurance actually works for collectors.
1:44
None of this is glamorous. All of it is the stuff that if
1:48
you're going to take this hobby seriously, you eventually have
1:51
to know. This is the episode I wish
1:53
someone had recorded for me before 2023.
1:56
So segment one, why this episode is hard.
2:01
Before we get into the actual advice, I want to say something
2:04
about framing. Watch enthusiasts as a community
2:08
love talking about our watches. We post them, we share them.
2:11
We do wrist shots, we make videos, we compare boxes, we
2:15
attend meets. We tell the story behind every
2:17
piece. That's the joy part of this
2:20
hobby. That's the reason we have a
2:22
community at all. And what I'm going to say in
2:25
this episode is going to feel in places like it's in tension with
2:28
that. There's going to be moments
2:31
where I am sharing things about my stories and my watches and
2:35
you're going to go, dude, you just told me not to do some of
2:38
this stuff. So again, there's going to be
2:40
this tension with what I'm talking about.
2:42
Because when you start thinking about security, you start
2:45
thinking about information. What you start thinking about is
2:49
who knows what about your collection and you start
2:52
thinking about who on the is on the other end of that screen and
2:57
what they might be deciding. And that is, is your place worth
3:01
a visit? I want to be clear, I'm not
3:03
saying don't share your watches. I'm not telling you to hide.
3:06
The community is too good and too important for that.
3:09
I'm sharing my own watches at times with you on this podcast,
3:13
literally like every week. What I'm saying is that there's
3:17
a difference between enthusiasm and advertising.
3:20
And the line between those 2 is what we're going to talk about
3:23
today. So let's start with where you
3:25
keep them. Segment 2 is going to be called
3:28
storage. Really the number one principle.
3:30
There is one principle I want you to take from this entire
3:33
episode. It's going to be this.
3:35
If you forget anything else, Please remember, and this is
3:38
going to be hard to digest and some of you are going to just
3:41
like, please just just listen to me and hear me out before you
3:44
just skip to the next episode. Never have your entire
3:48
collection in one place at one time.
3:51
I'm going to say that again, never have your entire
3:56
collection in one place at one time.
3:59
And that especially means your entire collection when you're
4:01
not home. I know, I know.
4:04
That goes against everything that's fun about owning a
4:06
collection. The dream is the wall display.
4:10
The dream is the watch room. The dream is opening one cabinet
4:14
and seeing them all lined up. Every reference, every history,
4:17
every dial. I, I get it.
4:20
I had that dream. You have the watch box, you open
4:22
it up, maybe it's a case or a travel case or whatever, right?
4:25
The problem is that exact dream is also the dream of the person
4:29
who's planning to take it from you.
4:30
Let me walk you through what actually happens in a
4:33
residential break in, because most people have kind of this
4:36
movie version of this in their head and the movie version is
4:39
very wrong. Residential break in, the people
4:43
doing it, they're in your house from somewhere between 8:00 and
4:46
12:00 minutes. That's it.
4:48
Sometimes they're not professional safe hackers.
4:51
They're not doing Recon. They're doing the most
4:54
predictable, fast version of what they came to do and then
4:58
they're leaving. They the the route that they
5:01
take almost every single time as they go.
5:03
Typically they'll break in from the back of your home if they
5:05
know you have cameras and that kind of stuff.
5:07
In my home, they did a little bit more homework, and I'll talk
5:09
about that. Then they're going to go
5:11
straight to your master bedroom. They're going to go into all of
5:14
your closets. They're going to turn over all
5:15
of your drawers. They're going to RIP apart all
5:17
of your night stands. They're going to check in the
5:18
obvious hiding places under the mattress, behind the clothes
5:21
that are hanging inside, shoe boxes that are on high shelves,
5:24
on top of dressers and surfaces. That's it.
5:27
That's the route. They've done this 100 times.
5:29
It's kind of muscle memory for them.
5:31
So if you're hiding watches anywhere in that route, they're
5:34
gone, period. There's no special hiding spot
5:37
in the master bedroom that they haven't seen.
5:39
There's a drawer with a false bottom, they've seen it.
5:41
There's a sock hiding it. You've got this watch hiding in
5:44
the sock in there, they've seen it.
5:47
The clever compartment that's behind the bookshelf, they've
5:49
seen that right now. The next layer is interesting as
5:52
well. Just remember that when you're
5:54
going through this, some folks are going to be more
5:57
professional. My, my home was broken into.
5:59
They cut cameras, they cut power.
6:01
There was 1 camera that they missed, which was a nanny Cam.
6:04
And as they were crawling through the home to make sure
6:06
that they could avoid cameras and and alarm systems for as
6:09
long as possible, we saw looped zip ties in their back pockets.
6:13
So these guys were ready to party.
6:14
They knew I had children and they were ready to zip tie my
6:18
wife, myself, my kids and take whatever they wanted.
6:21
So just be aware that these are the people that you're going to
6:23
be dealing with. If you have your collection in a
6:25
single watch box, again, beautiful considered all of your
6:29
pieces that are lovingly arranged and organized,
6:32
congratulations, you just gift wrapped it for them.
6:35
They'll pick up the box and they'll walk out with the box.
6:38
They will deal with sorting all that stuff later.
6:40
They don't care about boxes and papers.
6:42
If you have a safe, and this is critical, if you're safe is not
6:45
bolted down to the structure of your home and not several 100
6:48
lbs, they will take the safe and they'll open it later somewhere
6:51
quiet with tools on their schedule.
6:53
The safe didn't protect anything.
6:55
The safe just made the packaging easier to carry.
6:58
Now here's the version of this that almost nobody talks about,
7:02
but I'm going to talk about it because I think you need to hear
7:04
it. And I know it's going to it's
7:06
going to polarize some folks and that's OK.
7:08
We're we're allowed to disagree on some stuff.
7:10
If you have a huge collection and a huge safe and it's bolted
7:13
down and it's secured and you're so confident that everyone in
7:16
your life knows that you have this safe, then if you have a
7:18
break in your home turns into home invasion.
7:22
Meaning that the people don't just want your stuff, they want
7:25
you. They want you at gunpoint with
7:27
your family and you will open that safe because of course you
7:31
would anyway would. The safe doesn't help you in
7:34
that scenario. The safe makes you and this
7:36
entire scenario more likely because it's telling people that
7:40
are coming that you have something worth taking.
7:44
I'm not trying to scare you. I'm not trying to intimidate
7:48
anyone. I'm just trying to tell you what
7:49
I've learned from my experience and what people who do
7:53
residential security for a living will tell you the exact
7:56
same way. The only, and I mean the only
7:59
durable answer to all of this is the principle that I started
8:02
with. If you spread out your
8:04
collection, you do not have it all in one place, you do not
8:08
have it all known to all of the same people, you do not have it
8:12
reachable in the standard burglary route, and you do not
8:16
have it visible enough that someone has reason to come and
8:19
take it from you specifically. Yes, that sucks.
8:22
It sucks for me to have most of my collection not even in my
8:26
home. It sucks.
8:28
But having to go to a safety deposit box or other locations
8:32
to go and access some of those watches, It's part of the game
8:36
at this point for me. I cannot have, and I can't risk
8:39
having an entire collection in one location anymore.
8:41
I just can't. So unfortunately for me, that
8:44
means that I only have one or two watches in my home at a
8:46
time. It sucks, yes, it sucks.
8:50
It means that you don't get to look at them all at once.
8:53
For me, it means that I don't get to open up a box and see all
8:56
of my watches all at once. It means that it takes so much
8:58
more effort to access certain pieces and it means that you
9:01
have to actually think about logistics.
9:03
Now again, a lot of folks are going to disagree with this and
9:05
go, dude, you know, I my watch box is not even worth a couple
9:09
100 bucks, man, I'm you're way overthinking this stuff, right?
9:12
And we'll get into some of that stuff as well in a little bit.
9:15
But it means that again, for me, that dream of displaying them
9:18
all in any meaningful collection is a dream that I don't get to
9:21
indulge anymore. But based on my experience now,
9:23
again, I've lived this, this is the price of admission.
9:25
If you actually want to keep your watches and you have mid
9:28
range to high end stuff, you will not be home when this
9:31
happens, hopefully, but your watches will be.
9:35
And the only thing that stands between you and your collection
9:39
and someone who's deciding that they want to take it away from
9:42
you is how you've set it up the day before.
9:44
Segment 3, we're going to call the Flex problem.
9:46
Now we get into the part of the episode that's going to make
9:48
some people in our community uncomfortable.
9:50
As if that wasn't uncomfortable enough, if you post pictures of
9:53
your watches online, and especially if you do it
9:55
consistently with a real face and a real name and a real city
9:58
tag and a real lifestyle context, your target, period.
10:03
You are a target if you have your location settings turned on
10:08
in your images, meaning that you save your pictures, then you go
10:11
into and you search and you go where, where.
10:13
Let's go find the pictures that we had in San Diego and you can
10:16
find them based on the location your location settings are
10:19
turned on. That means that in some websites
10:21
when you post images, all of that data on the back end of
10:25
that image is able to be searched and located.
10:29
Now also just based on what's in the background, someone can
10:32
actually determine what. Again, we have enough software
10:34
now to go determine what's what city you're in.
10:37
Kind of a bummer, right? So again, you're on a list, you
10:41
are a target. Now, you may not be a high
10:42
priority target, maybe you're a low priority target, but you're
10:46
a target, you're on that list. And that list is going to get
10:48
worked. And that working is going to be
10:51
in order of attractiveness by the people who are working them.
10:54
So let me explain the math from the other side.
10:56
For someone who's going to be stealing watches for a living
10:58
and, and yeah, that is a profession.
11:01
It doesn't mean that they're going to be breaking into random
11:03
houses and hoping to find watches.
11:04
That's very inefficient. They're going to go to social
11:06
media, they're going to search hashtags, they're going to
11:08
search location tags. They're going to search by
11:10
cities. They're going to look for
11:12
meetups. They may not be actually going
11:14
to the meet up. They may just be sitting outside
11:16
the meet up and just watching who comes in and out and then
11:18
checking license plates and all that kind of stuff, right?
11:21
They're going to be seeing who's coming in, taking pictures of
11:23
folks. They're going to be doing
11:24
homework that way. Again, they're searching by
11:26
city, by neighborhood, by enthusiast groups, again by the
11:28
events, and they're going to find people who are visible in
11:32
this hobby. They're going to build a profile
11:34
on them. They're going to find out who
11:36
has the most accessible, the most valuable, the most
11:38
worthwhile collection, and they're going to go after their
11:41
highest yielding targets first. If you've ever posted a wrist
11:45
shot at a recognizable bar in your city and you say, man,
11:47
Friday night, every night, Friday night, we go to this,
11:50
they might be just coming for that one watch, right?
11:52
They know what city you're in. If you ever tagged to watch an
11:55
event that you've attended, they know that you were there and
11:58
they know probably that you have other people at that event.
12:01
So they're going to start to do homework on these other folks as
12:03
well. If you've ever shown your
12:04
collection in a video, even briefly, even in the background,
12:08
they have a partial inventory. If your social profile shows
12:11
your face, your job, your general life, they can find your
12:14
home address within a couple of hours of searching.
12:16
This is not Hollywood. This is just kind of the world
12:19
that we live in now. And here's the thing that you
12:21
should really kind of disturb you.
12:23
There's a particular kind of person in this hobby.
12:26
And I think we all know who they are, who in addition to their
12:29
real collection has a drawer of replicas, fakes, super clones or
12:34
homages with, you know, somebody else's logo on them.
12:36
And they wear them, they post them and they do the whole flex
12:39
thing. If that's you, I want you to
12:41
think about something. Or if you know people like this,
12:44
be aware, even if those watches are fakes, the photos are real.
12:48
The thieves do not know that they're fake.
12:51
They see Daytona, Submariner, Royal Oak, and to them you.
12:54
Now you are a high priority target on this list.
12:56
You may be a guy with just a couple $100 replica box
12:59
pretending to be a collector, but to the person watching,
13:03
you're the guy with $100,000 collection and you're bragging
13:06
about it. Posting fake watches online in
13:10
security terms is more dangerous than posting real ones, I would
13:14
argue, because you're getting all of the targeted downside and
13:19
none of the actual collateral. You don't even have the watches
13:22
to lose, you just have yourself or your family to lose.
13:26
And whether the watches are real or fake, the principles the
13:29
same. The more visible you make your
13:31
collection, the more attractive a target you become.
13:35
And in this hobby, attention is currency, but it has a hidden
13:39
cost, and that cost is your security.
13:42
So what do you do? You don't have to disappear.
13:45
You don't have to go silent, but you do have to think about what
13:48
you post and how, and here's a quick checklist for that.
13:51
So segment 4 we're going to talk about is going to be the 10 or I
13:55
would say my 10 rules for living with a collection.
13:59
So here are the 10 rules. Some of them are about storage,
14:01
some of them are about online behavior, some are about
14:03
insurance. All of them are things that I
14:06
wish I had done or at least considered before 2023.
14:09
So write these down or at least kind of bookmark or note this
14:12
section and you can come back. One spread out the collection.
14:15
We've already covered this. Never in one place, never all
14:17
visible, never reachable, all in the same 5 minute route in your
14:21
home. If you're going to keep them in
14:22
your home, again, I don't, but you might.
14:26
Non obvious locations Two, skip the obvious safe place.
14:30
Master bedroom is the 1st place they're going to stop on your
14:32
boot burglary root. So closet, night stand, dresser
14:35
drawers all checked. They're all going to check all
14:37
that stuff. Don't put a watch in there and
14:39
not even as a decoy. Make the burglars do work.
14:43
Make them run out of 15 minutes right?
14:45
Make sure you have your home with an alarm that's monitored.
14:48
3 If you use a safe, treat it as one of the many layers, not just
14:52
the answer. A safe by itself is not
14:54
security. A safe that's bolted down to the
14:55
structure and a place that's not on your standard route, maybe
14:59
that nobody outside of your immediate household knows about.
15:01
That's one layer. One layer among several. 4 Be
15:05
careful with your location data. Don't tag your wrist shots at
15:08
home. Don't tag at your favorite local
15:11
spots so consistently that someone could map out your
15:14
entire neighborhood and know when you're home or not home.
15:16
Turn off your automatic location data on your photos before
15:19
posting. Look at your social presence.
15:22
The way that someone is trying to find you might look at it. 5
15:25
Don't post your collection shots.
15:28
Single watch wrist shots? Sure.
15:30
Whole collection box? Every piece visible.
15:33
That's an entire inventory that you just emailed to somebody
15:36
that was waiting for that six. Don't tell strangers what you
15:40
have. This is going to hurt.
15:41
OK at watch events with people you don't know.
15:45
Be friendly, be enthusiastic, be a good citizen of the hobby.
15:48
But don't tell someone you just met what's in your home
15:51
collection. And again, this is going to
15:54
sound paranoid. It is not paranoid.
15:56
It's just operational privacy. People who care about you don't
16:01
need to be told that. People who don't, they're going
16:04
to want to know everything they can about you. 7 If you're that
16:07
guy with replicas, quietly stop. Stop posting fakes.
16:12
Again, this is more dangerous than posting reels.
16:14
Just stop. Take down the photos.
16:16
The Flex is not worth what it actually costs.
16:19
And there's a whole other layer of complicated stuff that we can
16:22
talk about in regard to the replica world, but we're not
16:24
going to get into it here. But just know that it is a
16:27
dangerous, dangerous game. You're playing eight know what's
16:30
in your collection documented today.
16:32
We're going to come back to this kind of in the next segment,
16:36
segment, which I'm going to be calling the inventory.
16:38
But just know that it's important enough for not only
16:40
this moment, but basically for all of the future moments that
16:43
you're going to have. Every brand, every model, every
16:45
serial number, every reference, every approximate value,
16:48
photograph your watch front and back.
16:50
It should be in a list today, not someday. 9 Get insurance.
16:55
Real, real insurance, not your homeowner's policy.
16:57
Trust me. It does not cover your watches.
16:59
We're going to go into this a little bit deeper in another
17:01
segment as well, but your homeowner's policy will not
17:03
cover what you think it covers, even if you have the best
17:06
insurance possible. Trust me, if you don't have a
17:08
separate rider or you don't have separate insurance for specific
17:11
pieces, it's not going to cover what you think it's going to
17:13
cover. 10 if something happens, except the material things are
17:17
replaceable and people are not. This is the most important rule
17:20
out of all of them and the one I want you to carry away from this
17:24
episode. If you take away nothing else,
17:26
if you ever come home to a break in, your job is to not be there
17:30
if you're the one, if you're there during one, your job is to
17:34
be cooperative and uneventful. Get your family safely through
17:37
it. No watch is worth this
17:39
confrontation. No collection is worth a person.
17:42
Pieces are replaceable. You and your family are not
17:46
always, always, always choose your safety over the other
17:51
objects. Now, I say that as someone who
17:55
does very much care about my family's safety.
17:58
Segment 5, the inventory. Let me spend a minute here going
18:02
back to Rule 8, because I think a lot of people might skip that
18:06
and then kind of deeply regret it.
18:08
OK, now first a sincere note to those of you with small
18:12
collections. If you have 358 watches and you
18:15
keep it tight and you wear what you own, congratulations.
18:19
Genuinely, That is a kind of discipline I personally struggle
18:22
with, and the people who do it well are people that I quietly
18:27
envy. And now I'm publicly envying
18:29
you. For you, this exercise will be
18:31
very easy. Maybe 20 minutes of work and
18:33
you're done. For the rest of us, some of you
18:35
folks out there with 152040 80 watches or more, this exercise
18:41
is going to be hard. It will be painful.
18:44
It's also going to become even more important.
18:46
So here's the homework. You're going to make a list, a
18:48
real one, either in a spreadsheet or in one of the
18:51
watch specific tracking apps for your watches that exist Now.
18:55
There's a bunch of them that are good and you list every single
18:59
watch you own. Brand model, reference number,
19:01
serial number, approximate value today, approximate insured
19:05
value, date of purchase, source of purchase, service history, if
19:10
you've got it, box papers, photos, front and back the
19:12
sides, the serial number obviously visible.
19:14
Now it's a mod watches, they hide the serial number behind,
19:17
so that's going to be more difficult.
19:18
But you take a picture of the card with the serial number on
19:20
it. I don't know.
19:22
This is a project, a genuine project for someone with a
19:25
monster collection. I get it.
19:28
There's three reasons that you're going to do this.
19:29
One, when you sell, if you ever sell, eventually, if you do
19:34
sell, buyers will ask for this documentation.
19:36
Now you're going to have it, hopefully quickly, to be able to
19:39
close a deal faster, hopefully with better prices, hopefully
19:42
with less back and forth and list this.
19:45
This whole list is going to help you kind of the first time you
19:47
really list a watch. OK, Two, if anything happens,
19:50
God forbid anything happens. But if it does, and I'm speaking
19:53
here from experience, when my home was broken into in 2023,
19:56
the difference between the watches I could prove I had
19:58
owned and the watches I had to scramble to substantiate some
20:01
paperwork was was huge. Insurance companies, they need
20:04
documentation. Police reports need
20:06
documentation. Recovery, if it ever happens,
20:09
depends on documentation. So make the list now before you
20:12
need it, and because once you need it, it's, it's already too
20:15
late. 3 This is kind of a fun reason.
20:19
Once you have the list, you can actually use it.
20:21
You can drop it into an AI tool, for example.
20:23
You can tell it about your week. You can have it.
20:26
Go on tell, you can tell it what's going to be happening and
20:29
then all of a sudden and all of a sudden you can have it.
20:31
Feel free to give your rotation selection and, and sometimes
20:35
I've done this as well. Now again, I get the the idea of
20:37
AI monitoring us and all that kind of stuff.
20:39
So you can do this in more generalized terms, but you know,
20:42
you can say like my specific Diver 1, Diver 2, whatever, but
20:45
you can throw these kinds of things into software and it can
20:48
give you a rotation. So as you're going to your
20:50
vaults or you're going to off site storage or whatever it is,
20:53
when you're bringing watches back to your home or whatever it
20:55
is, you can have something that's going to be giving you
20:57
some suggestions for rotations. And I do this and sometimes it
21:00
can be delightful, sometimes it's frustrating.
21:02
It surfaces watches though, in your collection that you forget
21:05
sometimes that you owned. My collection used to be
21:07
monstrous and now it's kind of slowly pared back and it
21:09
continues to kind of whittle away.
21:11
But it catches things that you might have been wearing.
21:13
Maybe you're wearing the same piece for like two or three
21:15
months and that reminds you these other eight other that
21:18
you've been ignoring and it treats your collection more as
21:20
like a living thing and that's kind of a fun bonus.
21:22
I think there's this life after all of this stuff as well.
21:25
So the homework for you is to make the list even if you only
21:28
get through 1/4 of it this week. Please try.
21:31
Segment 6 is insurance. And this is going to be dry.
21:34
I'm sorry, but I'll do my best. The last kind of big topic that
21:37
we've got is insurance. Now, most watch collectors
21:39
believe that their homeowners or renters insurance is going to
21:42
cover their watches. It does not.
21:44
Not really the typical homeowners policy it'll cover
21:48
theft of personal property up to a very limited sub limit amount,
21:52
meaning sub limits for jewelry. And they're going to put jewelry
21:55
as an entire category. So somewhere between $1500 to
21:59
$2500 for an entire jewelry collection.
22:02
Some of them might even go up to $5000 for jewelry or $10,000.
22:06
But that's everything. That's all of your jewelry,
22:08
right? In our scenario, my wife's, all
22:11
of her jewelry, all of her watches, all of her purses, all
22:14
of her bags, watches, rings, anything that's considered
22:18
jewelry is combined in that amount.
22:19
So your watch collection, if your wife's ring gets stolen,
22:23
for example, or a necklace, it's over your budget for your
22:27
insurance is blown out. If your collection again is
22:29
worth more than that. And if you're listening to this
22:31
podcast, it probably is. You need additional insurance
22:35
and you need additional coverage, either a scheduled
22:38
rider that's on your existing homeowners policy or you list
22:42
each watch as a separately insured item with a documented
22:45
value or standalone collector's insurance policy from like a
22:48
specialty insurer. The standalone policies tend to
22:51
be better. They cover broader scenarios,
22:54
not just theft, but loss, accidental damage and then some
22:57
mechanical issues they will cover like travel coverage when
23:01
your when your watches are moving internationally.
23:04
They don't raise your homeowner's premium when you
23:06
file a claim, and they're set up by people who are actually
23:08
understand watches. Now, the going rate for a
23:11
collection for watch insurance is roughly 1 to 2% of your
23:16
insured value per year. And that can get you can you can
23:19
see how quickly this can add up in regard to cost and price.
23:23
So a watch worth $10,000, for example, will cost you somewhere
23:28
between 100 and $200 a year to insure.
23:32
A $50,000 collection cost somewhere between 500 and $1000
23:36
a year to insure. That number sounds like a lot
23:39
until you think about not having it and then it sounds like
23:43
nothing. You're going to need an
23:45
appraisal. You're going to need documented
23:46
valuation of each watch by a specific and qualified
23:50
appraiser. The watch is of a certain value.
23:53
The insurance companies will have specific appraisers they
23:56
like. I would encourage you to use
23:58
them. Update your appraisals every two
24:00
to three years and when your watches move, you need to update
24:04
that insurance information. Again.
24:05
We talked about sometimes me not caring about valuations of
24:08
watches going up or down. But if a watch has come down
24:10
depreciated a lot, I want my insurance company to know not
24:13
that I want to covered for less insurance money, but I want to
24:17
payless on the insurance side if the watch is worth less.
24:20
I also want it to go up if my watch has gone up in value.
24:23
Why? Because I want I need to be able
24:25
to replace that watch if it is stolen.
24:26
OK, you don't want an underpaid claim.
24:29
Now again, we've talked about this.
24:30
So the goal here is just to stay current and I'm not going, I'm
24:33
going to recommend a specific carrier on this episode.
24:36
I'm not going to plug insurance companies because the insurance
24:40
landscape changes so frequently. And I don't know when you're
24:42
going to be listening to this. I'm hoping that this this
24:45
podcast, the way that it's designed and written and
24:47
delivered is sort of timeless in a way that that the themes and
24:51
the models and the ideas last on.
24:53
They're not current events, for example.
24:54
But if you Google watch collector watch insurance or
24:58
jewelry insurance or fine articles insurance, you'll find
25:01
the major players. Talk to two or three of them,
25:02
compare, pick the one that you're the most comfortable
25:05
with. And then, and this is the part
25:07
that most people skip, actually file the documentation properly.
25:10
Photos, serial numbers, appraisals, receipts all in one
25:13
place. The insurance is only as good as
25:16
your records and your ability to back all that stuff up.
25:18
All right, bring it together. Segment #7 I want to land this
25:21
episode kind of the same way that I started it.
25:23
This is not a fun episode. This is not a rabbit hole
25:26
episode. This isn't one of those ones
25:27
where you grow up and you're like, oh man, I was so excited
25:29
to listen to that episode. It's like this is the one that
25:31
you have to kind of survive. This is the grown up episode.
25:35
This is you and me sitting down and having a real friend
25:38
conversation, the ugly conversation that real friends
25:41
have, right? And I know going into this that
25:43
some of you were going to tune out.
25:44
The fact that you're still listening to this means that we
25:46
are on the same page. Some of you again, have probably
25:49
already tuned out. And that's OK.
25:51
You know, I'll see you in the next episode.
25:53
But for those of you that are still here, I want you to know
25:57
that everything I shared today, I share because I had to learn
25:59
it the hard way. The breaking in 2023 changed how
26:02
I think about everything in this hobby.
26:05
Not whether I love it, I love it, and I love this hobby more
26:08
than I can ever tell you, but how I practice it, how I store,
26:12
how I share, and unfortunately, even what watches I pick up
26:15
anymore. I don't pick up hype watches.
26:17
I don't pick up watches that are typically easy to flip anymore.
26:20
I don't. That's not my world anymore
26:21
yeah. Did it change the way that I
26:22
collect? Absolutely.
26:24
Should it have No, but it but it did I my collection.
26:28
If somebody were to pick it up now, it's going to be a lot
26:30
harder to move watches with single digit a serial numbers, a
26:34
little bit more difficult to move around.
26:36
And especially from the Indies and stuff.
26:37
They're a little bit they're not as they're not as hypey, they're
26:40
not considered a commodity. And so again, how I talk about
26:43
my pieces, how I move through the world as someone who owns
26:46
watches and this hobby is bigger than just the watches.
26:49
I think it's really about the people that are in it and the
26:51
conversations in the community and these stories.
26:53
Those are not stealable. Those aren't insurable, but
26:57
they're also not at risk. Those parts of the hobby are
27:01
yours forever and they're mine forever.
27:03
No matter what the pieces. You're going to hate me saying
27:06
this. Those are loners.
27:08
You wear them, you enjoy them, you might even pass them on.
27:12
Guess what? You're going to pass them on
27:14
whether you sell them or someone takes them from you or you die
27:18
and someone gets them anyways. So just remember those watches,
27:21
they're loners. As I said, sometimes you pass
27:25
them on by giving them to your kids, and sometimes, just
27:29
sometimes, they get taken from you and the universe rearranges
27:32
in a way that you didn't plan for.
27:33
So make the list, get the insurance, spread the
27:35
collection, be smart about what you post, and remember, the only
27:39
thing in this hobby that's genuinely irreplaceable is you.
27:43
Everything else can get rebuilt. Segment 8, what's next?
27:46
All right, so I'm going to tease episode 8 because I needed to
27:49
change up some stuff. I needed to get episode 7 out.
27:52
I could not sleep at night knowing that I couldn't.
27:56
As much as I want to make this a fun podcast, I needed to get
27:58
that episode in the 1st 10 or else I was going to have an
28:01
issue. Because I feel like I'm doing
28:02
you a disservice now based on a lot of audience feedback, which
28:07
is insane that I actually have listeners and feedback already.
28:11
But over the last few episodes, we're going to be mixing in some
28:14
deeper dives into single brands, and I'm still kind of working on
28:17
what it's going to be called before.
28:18
Right now, we're going to be calling it Watch Stories, and
28:21
it's going to be a less broad survey and a really more focused
28:25
exploration of 1 brand at a time, their history, their
28:28
models, the way they iterate, what makes them different and
28:32
why they matter. So based on some suggestions
28:35
from from listeners already, the first one I want to do, and this
28:38
is one of my favorite brands in the entire industry is Chopic.
28:42
Now we're going to hear choek, CZAEK and you're going to hear
28:47
it ronounced Choek and you're going to hear Choek.
28:51
The proper pronunciation is Cho, like is in CHAP, and then a
28:56
dash, and then Eck chop Eck. We're going to be talking about
29:00
the brand's history, this spectacular feud with Patek that
29:05
almost nobody knows about, and that's coming.
29:07
We're going to talk about the modern revival in 2015 and how
29:10
this small team in Geneva, we resurrected a name that had been
29:15
dormant for over 100 years. We're going to walk through the
29:20
entire, well, the current collection, we're going to talk
29:24
about their limited editions and some brand collaborations.
29:27
We're going to include this Oscar and Tartique.
29:29
That's Oscar the the jeweler, this gorgeous Lanikai pieces
29:34
that that they did with a collective horology named after
29:37
a Hawaiian beach. And this is the part that I'm
29:40
most excited about. We're going to talk about
29:42
something my 6 year old did, but a wild idea for a chopic diver,
29:47
a tool crown design with internal rotating bezel.
29:50
We mocked it up on paper. We took a photo, we we did a
29:53
digital rendering of it and we actually emailed the chopic as a
29:56
joke basically. And they wrote back and they
29:59
engaged with us and they actually had a conversation
30:02
about a six year old design idea.
30:05
And that right there, that little moment, that human
30:10
response is the difference between an independent brand and
30:13
a conglomerate. And we're going to spend a whole
30:15
episode on why Chopic is one of the best examples of why that
30:20
difference matters. So that's coming up next.
30:22
So that's episode 7 of what's on your restatement.
30:25
I hope that this episode helped you think about something that
30:27
you hadn't considered. And even one thing that's going
30:30
to be enough, I think. So make the list.
30:32
Talk to an insurance broker, look at where your collection
30:35
lives and the work to do this week before you need it is kind
30:39
of the difference between a future you're happy with and a
30:42
future that you're at least at a minimum, prepared for.
30:45
Now, if you've been through what I've been through, find me.
30:47
We can talk. There are more of us in this
30:50
hobby than people realize, and most of us don't talk about it,
30:52
and maybe we should. So I'm Wachovsky, take care of
30:55
yourselves, take care of your family, and wear something good.
30:59
I'll see you in Episode 8. What's your ice ski?
31:11
What's on your wrist at professional calendar 3 hander.
31:20
Stainless steel on my skin. I want a daily driver, not a
31:25
shrine. I can't fit in Casio on Monday
31:29
mornings. Ella's got me saying stop Topper
31:33
Friday in the group chat and my buddy just got dropped.
31:37
I can't afford that Still I stare at it aid you can suck it.
31:40
I'm in love with a habit. Laurence group shack gonna make
31:44
me broke One more shot swap and I swear it's all a joke.
31:48
What's on your wrist Say what's on your wristy What's on your
32:00
wrist a what's on your wrist a I just can't resist.
32:03
Wash up. Wash up, popped out crown on the
32:07
wrist. First swap for the day.
32:09
Yeah, I know, I know. Brown on leather, steel on
32:11
steel. Then I change it for the show.
32:13
Got on my wish list, but I'm not acting rich.
32:15
Ready Bros? Gonna fry as if I call this one
32:18
a grill and switch. I can't afford that, so I stare
32:21
at it a Can suck it. I didn't mean that.
32:23
I'm in love with a habit shot back in the comments Got me
32:27
losing sleep. But I laugh it off because we
32:30
don't take it too deep. What's on your wrist A.
32:33
What's on your wrist D Daily dreams the driver baby What's on
32:40
your wrist day What's on your wrist day.
32:45
I just can't reset. What's up What's up on the crap
32:50
wrist perpetual calendar free hander and a dream stainless
32:57
steel a scratch or two still the king of the scene.
33:02
Sell us new drop stop that I click and then I flinch Then I
33:08
post just browsing and I buy it in a pinch.
33:11
What's on your wrist say What's on your wrist say daily driver
33:20
baby why? What's on your wrist say I just
33:29
can't resist. What's up?
33:30
What's up on the crap? What's on your wrist?
33:32
What's on your wrist? What's on your wrist?
33:38
What's on your wrist?