Latest / What's on Your Riste? A Watch Podcast / S01E03: The Watches That Made Me: A Stolen Collection, a 1940s Zenith Pilot's Chronograph, and the Watch Community That Helped Rebuild It

Transcript

S01E03: The Watches That Made Me: A Stolen Collection, a 1940s Zenith Pilot's Chronograph, and the Watch Community That Helped Rebuild It · What's on Your Riste? A Watch Podcast

• 0:00
  Last week I told you we'd talk about the watch that started it
• 0:02
  for me. I want to be honest with you
• 0:04
  right up front. This episode is going to be
• 0:06
  different. It's going to be more personal
• 0:08
  than I planned. There's some things that I
• 0:10
  haven't really talked about publicly before, and I'm going
• 0:13
  to talk about them today because I don't think this story will
• 0:16
  work without them. I tried it, it didn't work.
• 0:18
  So take a breath, pour something this time.
• 0:21
  Let's settle in. This is the story of the watches
• 0:24
  that made me. I open
• 0:53
  that drawer and it opens me a silver scar Nebraska Key.
• 1:04
  The watch my brother gave me on my wedding day still counts.
• 1:12
  The welcome back to what's on your rest day.
• 1:14
  I'm Wachowski. If you're new, welcome.
• 1:16
  You've picked an interesting episode to start with.
• 1:18
  If you're coming back from episode 2.
• 1:20
  Thank you again. Genuinely, we're going to go
• 1:23
  somewhere different than the last two episodes.
• 1:25
  We're not really going to do a brand breakdown or are we?
• 1:29
  It's all going to be one story because every watch I'm going to
• 1:32
  mention today is connected. They're a chain.
• 1:34
  And if I'm going to do this show, honestly, I have to start
• 1:37
  with this chain. We're to call this first segment
• 1:40
  Segment 1, The Dial. First watching story isn't a
• 1:44
  watch, it's just a dial. I had a great late, great uncle.
• 1:47
  He was a watchmaker, old school, hands on kind of guy that could
• 1:51
  open up a movement, fix it on the kitchen table, and then
• 1:54
  headed back to you like it was running brand new.
• 1:56
  And he's gone now and he's been for a while and I miss him.
• 2:00
  And when I was younger, he gave me something special.
• 2:03
  He gave me a dial, just the dial from a 1940s Yugoslavian pilots
• 2:08
  watch. It was a chronograph.
• 2:10
  It was affiliated with reference one 43-6 and if you know that
• 2:14
  watch or if you don't know that watch, here's kind of a crash
• 2:17
  course or a short version of that.
• 2:18
  January 1954 Zenith and Excelsior Park produced a batch
• 2:23
  of about 2000 or so chronographs that were sent to Yugoslavia and
• 2:27
  then awarded by the Yugoslav National Army to the Air Force
• 2:31
  pilots. They were basically distributed
• 2:34
  and they had these Excelsior Park EP 4 calibers inside.
• 2:37
  They were hand round. They are by compacts and dual
• 2:40
  registers. What they call them are two
• 2:41
  register pump pusher and they had radium on the hands and I
• 2:45
  believe also on the dial radium. OK, just in case you're aware.
• 2:48
  Yes, radium, which we all know now is you know where I'm going
• 2:52
  with this, right? So deeply not great for you, but
• 2:55
  at the time the best loom technology that they had
• 2:57
  available. OK, the dial my great uncle gave
• 3:00
  me was from one of those pilots watches.
• 3:02
  And here's the thing, under plexiglass, the dial showed
• 3:05
  clear heat damage, burn marks, the kind of damage you'd get
• 3:09
  from a fire, from a cockpit, possibly from combat.
• 3:13
  This watch dial had seen something and you'll know these
• 3:17
  watches, if you know anything about them, you'll see the one I
• 3:19
  think for Tello had one on their side that they had picked up as
• 3:22
  well. There is something different
• 3:23
  between the watches that were inside of those cockpits because
• 3:26
  they were hot inside of those cockpits didn't have air
• 3:29
  conditioning, right? And the plexiglass that that
• 3:32
  heat that was inside of that cockpit transferred to the dial
• 3:35
  of those watches. And so you'll see kind of 2
• 3:37
  worlds of these Zenith pilot watches from the Yugoslavian
• 3:41
  army, specifically the pilots, you'll see the ones that had
• 3:44
  seen war and seen time in a plane.
• 3:48
  And you'll see the ones that didn't because they are
• 3:50
  completely different looking 1, you know, typically they're
• 3:53
  black and they are, you know, they might have some patina and
• 3:56
  some aging, but the ones that saw time in a cockpit, they have
• 4:01
  seen a life and they are to me beautiful.
• 4:03
  But again, they're, they're very different than what you'd see,
• 4:06
  almost to the point where the paint itself, the lacquer that
• 4:09
  was on those dials is you can kind of see the brass coming
• 4:13
  through the bottom of it. So again, he gave me the dial,
• 4:15
  just the dial with the idea that someday when I grew up, I would
• 4:19
  track down the rest of the parts, the case, the movement,
• 4:22
  the hands, and I'd put it back together.
• 4:24
  It would be a project, a long one, kind of a horological
• 4:28
  scavenger hunt that connected me to him, to my family's history,
• 4:32
  to the country that my family came from, to a pilot that I
• 4:35
  never knew who'd worn this watch in a moment of his life that
• 4:39
  literally left a mark, mark on that dial.
• 4:42
  And that dial sat with me for years.
• 4:44
  And then in 2023, my home was broken into and it was one of
• 4:47
  the things that was stolen along with everything else.
• 4:50
  Let's go to segment 2. What was lost?
• 4:52
  I don't, I want to walk you through what was in that
• 4:54
  collection. Not all of it, but you know,
• 4:57
  the, the heavy hitters and stuff.
• 4:59
  That stuff didn't matter to me at the time.
• 5:00
  Not because I want a pity party. I, I don't, but because each of
• 5:04
  those watches was something. Each of them marked a moment.
• 5:08
  There was this Smith's Everest. It was a 36mm Smith's Expedition
• 5:12
  cream dial. Smith's, from the uninitiated,
• 5:15
  is a watch brand that it went up to Everest with Sir Edmund
• 5:19
  Hillary in 1953. The modern Smith's is a small
• 5:23
  operation run by two of the most genuinely good people in this
• 5:26
  hobby, Eddie and Dave. They're at time factors in
• 5:29
  England, and Eddie and Dave are interesting.
• 5:31
  Eddie specifically has gotten, I think in some circles gotten a
• 5:34
  bad rap. Now, if people get to know Eddie
• 5:36
  and they've kind of known what he's gone through, their tone
• 5:39
  can change. To me, Eddie and Dave are a
• 5:42
  class act. And two, I think just remarkable
• 5:45
  people in this space. This, that's Smith's Everest was
• 5:48
  the watch I was wearing when I held my son for the first time.
• 5:52
  When I cut the cord, there was a 37mm Grand Seiko SBGF 009.
• 5:57
  It's quartz. It's the AJ caliber.
• 5:59
  And we're going to get into why that watch was so special in a
• 6:02
  moment. But for now, that was a watch
• 6:04
  that I was wearing when I cut the cord and held my middle
• 6:07
  daughters, a middle daughter for the first time.
• 6:09
  That moment, you only get a few of those in your life.
• 6:12
  And that watch was the one that was on my wrist.
• 6:14
  For one of those moments. There was a watch that belonged
• 6:17
  to my brother. He passed away in 2009 in a car
• 6:19
  accident. He was my brother and that's all
• 6:23
  I'll say about that for now. But yeah, the So when I tell you
• 6:26
  my home was broken into in 2023, what I'm telling you is I lost
• 6:30
  the watch that I held my son with for the first time.
• 6:33
  I lost the watch that was on my wrist for my daughter's birth.
• 6:37
  I lost a piece of my brother and I lost 100 year old promise from
• 6:41
  my great uncle. That is not a collection.
• 6:44
  That is a chain of moments and someone took that whole chain.
• 6:48
  Segment 3. Let's get into the community
• 6:50
  now. I'm going to tell you something
• 6:52
  about this hobby that I think is the most important thing about
• 6:55
  it. The watch community is real.
• 6:57
  When my house got hit, I didn't really know what to do.
• 7:00
  You file the police report, you call the insurance company, you
• 7:03
  go through emotions, you make sure your children are safe.
• 7:05
  But my the, the watches that were stolen weren't financial
• 7:08
  losses. They were those other losses.
• 7:11
  And there's no insurance form for that.
• 7:14
  So I did what watch people do. I started reaching out.
• 7:17
  I reached out to Eddie and Dave at time factors, the guys behind
• 7:20
  Smiths. I told him what happened.
• 7:21
  I told him about this Everest, about my son, and those two,
• 7:25
  those two absolute gentlemen, they helped me find a
• 7:28
  replacement. Same reference, same
• 7:30
  configuration. And listen, Eddie's been going
• 7:31
  through a lot of serious stuff, and we can continue to pray for
• 7:34
  him. If you're a Smith's owner or
• 7:36
  you've ever bought something from Time Factors, you know what
• 7:39
  I mean. That community sends Eddie their
• 7:41
  love on a regular basis, and I'm part of that.
• 7:43
  And Eddie, brother, you're in our hearts.
• 7:45
  When I tracked down a similar SBGF 9 Grand Seiko small dial
• 7:50
  from Japan Quartz, exactly the same kind of Unicorn for me that
• 7:55
  you can't just walk into a boutique and replace.
• 7:57
  That took some work, took some patience, but I got one.
• 8:00
  And then, and this is the part that still gets me, a kind man,
• 8:04
  a fellow collector, heard the story, heard about the
• 8:07
  Yugoslavian Zenith dial, heard what it meant to me, and he
• 8:10
  reached out. He had a period.
• 8:11
  Correct. Zenith 143-6, The full watch.
• 8:15
  Not just the dial, the case, the movement, the hands, all of it.
• 8:19
  The same reference my great uncle's dial came from.
• 8:22
  He bought it decades ago and he sold it to me for what he paid
• 8:25
  for it. Decades old prices because the,
• 8:28
  you know, he took, he took this loss because he understood what
• 8:32
  this watch meant to me. Now I don't know how to talk
• 8:35
  about that without getting emotional, so I won't pretend
• 8:39
  to. That's who this hobby is about.
• 8:41
  Underneath the wait lists and the hype, watches in the
• 8:44
  secondary market, drama and the social media noise.
• 8:48
  Beneath and underneath all of that, the real watch community
• 8:52
  is collectors who help each other when something terrible
• 8:56
  happens. The Paneristi, I'm looking at
• 8:58
  you. You are an inspiration to this
• 9:00
  entire group, this entire community.
• 9:02
  And so that man who sold me that Zenith, you know who you are.
• 9:06
  Thank you forever. Thank you.
• 9:08
  Segment 4, the 4th watch. OK, there's one more watch in
• 9:13
  this story I haven't mentioned yet.
• 9:14
  In 2024, my youngest daughter was born.
• 9:18
  I had a watch picked out for that day.
• 9:19
  Specific, considered, right. I'm going to try to sneak that
• 9:22
  word in every single time I can. Is specific and considered the
• 9:25
  kind of watch watch person makes in a decision months in advance.
• 9:30
  And she had other plans. She came earlier than expected
• 9:34
  and more aggressively than expected.
• 9:36
  And the watch that I had picked out for that moment, shall we
• 9:38
  say, was not on my wrist. Instead, what was on my wrist
• 9:42
  was a 36mm Laurier Laurier Falcon black dial.
• 9:45
  Simple Laurier. If you don't know them, small
• 9:48
  all American micro brand run by a couple, Lauren and Lorenzo
• 9:52
  Lorenzo and they make beautifully proportioned vintage
• 9:54
  inspired watches at an incredibly fair price.
• 9:57
  They're domed plexiglass crystals.
• 9:59
  They have this kind of kind of old school feel to them.
• 10:02
  They can have hand wound or automatic movements.
• 10:04
  Mine was automatic. And their size like real vintage
• 10:06
  watches, 3639 kind of the way that watches used to be.
• 10:10
  They're indie, they're approachable and I think that
• 10:12
  they've got real soul. And that 36mm Falcon was the
• 10:15
  watch that I had on my wrist when my young biggest daughter
• 10:18
  was born. So sorry, Falcon, you weren't
• 10:20
  the plan, but you were there and now you're the watch.
• 10:23
  So that's how it works. That, by the way, is something I
• 10:26
  want every person listening to. Internalize the watch you plan
• 10:30
  to wear for a moment that doesn't end up being the watch
• 10:33
  that's there and the watch that ends up being the watch that
• 10:37
  mattered. That's the lesson.
• 10:38
  Watches don't choose moments. Moments choose watches.
• 10:42
  Segment 5. Let's talk about the SBGF 9A
• 10:45
  love letter to quartz. I'm going to get a little nerdy
• 10:47
  here to keep myself from falling apart.
• 10:50
  OK, so let me back up and properly nerd out about the
• 10:53
  grand Seiko SBGF 009 just for a moment because I think it
• 10:56
  deserves it. And I think this this whole era
• 10:59
  of watches is is is slowly coming back.
• 11:01
  The SBGF 9, which is the the light white dial.
• 11:05
  There's also an SBGF 01/1, which is the black dial.
• 11:09
  It's a 37mm grand Seiko quartz. It has an 8 J8 is in the number
• 11:14
  J as in Jack caliber inside. And I want to tell you why that
• 11:17
  watch is so much cooler than it sounds.
• 11:19
  When people hear quartz watch, they think of a $5 drugstore
• 11:22
  watch. Disposable, boring, soulless.
• 11:24
  That's because most quartz watches are.
• 11:26
  But Grand Seagos high end quartz movements are something
• 11:30
  completely different. They're some of the most over
• 11:32
  engineered, lovingly designed pieces of horology that no one
• 11:35
  talks about. The AJ caliber to me is the IS.
• 11:39
  It's beyond just accuracy, although it's extremely accurate
• 11:42
  ±10 seconds per year, not per month, per year.
• 11:46
  Mechanical watches, even the great ones, are accurate to a
• 11:49
  few seconds per day. So a Grand Seiko quartz like
• 11:52
  this is roughly 100 times more accurate than a chronometer
• 11:57
  grade mechanical movement. It is just a different category
• 12:01
  of time keeping and the way they achieve this is wild.
• 12:04
  They aged the quartz crystals individually for months before
• 12:09
  installing them to make sure that each one had stabilized.
• 12:12
  The movements are hand finished, the hands are diamond cut and
• 12:16
  polished by Craftsman using techniques that you'd associate
• 12:19
  with mechanical hot horology. The dials.
• 12:21
  Grand Seiko dials are an entirely different conversation,
• 12:25
  but the short version is that level of finishing on a Grand
• 12:28
  Seiko dial. And this price range is
• 12:30
  genuinely unmatched in the industry.
• 12:32
  So if you've got this 37mm watch on your wrist, it looks like a
• 12:37
  beautifully restrained dress watch.
• 12:38
  And inside is a movement that is by some measures, more
• 12:41
  technically extraordinary than things that cost 10 times as
• 12:44
  much. So that's the SBGF 009, why it's
• 12:47
  special and why when I lost mine, replacing it wasn't
• 12:50
  optional. It was the thing I had to do
• 12:52
  kind of horological correction to the universe that was going
• 12:55
  on for me. Let's talk about Segment 6 in
• 12:57
  the daily. Where does this all leave me
• 12:59
  right now? Well, right now, today that
• 13:02
  Yugoslavian zenith, the 1A stranger sold me at decades old
• 13:06
  prices. The one that lives in a vault
• 13:09
  always because of the radium hands, because it's
• 13:11
  irreplaceable, because some watches you just don't wear some
• 13:14
  watches, you know were there and that's enough.
• 13:16
  And I say that and sometimes I still wear that watch, just
• 13:19
  usually not around my kids. But the watch that opened the
• 13:21
  door for me specifically, it opened the door to Zenith, the
• 13:23
  brand modern Zenith. And the watch that's on my wrist
• 13:26
  most days now is a Zenith Pilot. Specifically.
• 13:30
  It's a 40mm Pilot automatic. It's a boutique edition and
• 13:33
  there's this long reference number, but it's the blue
• 13:35
  version of the Zenith Pilot. It has this blue new corrugated
• 13:40
  dial, has an El Primero 3620SC inside it beats at 5 Hertz.
• 13:44
  So it's a pretty smooth sweep. 36,000 vibrations per hour, 60
• 13:48
  hours of power. It's stainless steel.
• 13:49
  Again, it's a boutique exclusive.
• 13:51
  You can get it from basically only from Zenith boutiques.
• 13:54
  Occasionally they they show up on green markets and that kind
• 13:56
  of stuff. Now full confession, the modern
• 13:58
  Zenith pilot pilot's watch is not a watch that the watch
• 14:02
  Internet loves. There is a lot of not
• 14:04
  insignificant contingent of enthusiasts who think the
• 14:08
  pilots, it's too modern, it's too clean.
• 14:11
  They don't like the, the little the pill, they call it a right
• 14:13
  above the date at the six O clock.
• 14:14
  I, I think all of these things are charming to me.
• 14:17
  And so they think that it's lost some of that kind of rugged
• 14:19
  pilot type 20 type stuff and the arguments I, I get it, I really
• 14:23
  do. But this watch for me is
• 14:25
  perfect. The 40mm size is correct.
• 14:28
  The blue dial to me again is gorgeous.
• 14:31
  Zenith calls it inspired by the night sky and, and I can see
• 14:34
  why. And the corrugated horizontal
• 14:36
  grooves on the dial, again, to me are this beautiful, subtle
• 14:40
  texture. The El Primero 3620 that's in
• 14:43
  there. It's a 3 hander.
• 14:45
  It's got obviously a date at six.
• 14:46
  It's one of the most legendary movements in this family's
• 14:50
  history. The El Primero powered the Rolex
• 14:53
  Daytona for decades. That's how good these movements
• 14:55
  are. And this one, the one that sits
• 14:57
  on my wrist most of the days, beats at 5 Hertz, which means
• 15:00
  that the second hand sweeps incredibly smooth.
• 15:02
  So pick one up if you can find one, put on the wrist watch the
• 15:05
  second hand, and you'll see what I mean.
• 15:07
  But the reason I love this watch, the reason that I reach
• 15:10
  for it a lot, is because every time I look down at my wrist, I
• 15:13
  think about the other Zenith. I think about the 1940s one.
• 15:16
  The one with the burn marks, the one that is in a vault, The one
• 15:21
  that's off site basically from my home.
• 15:23
  The one connecting me to my great uncle, to a pilot that I
• 15:27
  never met, to my family's history, to a chain of moments
• 15:30
  that someone tried to break in 2023 and that somehow the watch
• 15:36
  community put back together for me.
• 15:38
  The modern Zenith Pilot is not a hype watch.
• 15:41
  It is not an obvious choice. Other people in this hobby will
• 15:44
  tell me I should be wearing something else, and I hear him
• 15:47
  and I respect him, but I don't. I wear the Zenith, but I'm going
• 15:50
  to keep wearing this one because to me it means something that no
• 15:55
  review on YouTube will ever capture.
• 15:57
  That's the whole thing. The whole hobby.
• 16:00
  The entire thing is about that. The watches don't just keep
• 16:04
  time. To me.
• 16:05
  They hold time. They hold moments, they hold
• 16:08
  people, and they hold promises. OK, so let's talk about what's
• 16:11
  going to happen next. So that's my chain, right?
• 16:14
  The dial my great uncle gave me, the collection that was stolen,
• 16:18
  the friends in the community who helped me rebuild.
• 16:21
  The Yugoslavian zenith in the vault, the modern zenith on my
• 16:26
  wrist, the Smith from Eddie, The Smiths from Eddie and Dave, the
• 16:29
  replacement Grand Seiko, the Laurier Falcon, that was an
• 16:32
  accident and ended up being a memory.
• 16:35
  My brother's watch, which I'm still working on.
• 16:38
  There's a longer story for that one day.
• 16:40
  Now. The next episode, we're going to
• 16:42
  lighten things up. We're going to go into a kind of
• 16:45
  a deep dive. Again, not too deep, but I don't
• 16:47
  want these to be too long. But three brands that I think
• 16:50
  are interesting in the watch industry right now.
• 16:52
  And there again, brands that most people I don't think know
• 16:56
  about or give enough credit to. We're going to talk about Yama
• 16:59
  YEMA, French brand with an absolutely incredible heritage
• 17:03
  in the dive watch space and military pieces.
• 17:05
  And they're currently producing some of the best value per
• 17:08
  dollar watches in the whole watch industry.
• 17:11
  We're going to talk about Horage or Orange ORAGE.
• 17:16
  It's how it ends and it starts with the letter HHORAG to swish
• 17:20
  Swiss boutique manufacturer making genuinely advanced in
• 17:24
  house movements that at that price in the rest of the
• 17:28
  industry, they look like they're kind of just getting away with
• 17:30
  something. And again, so Yama's making in
• 17:32
  house stuff as well. So is Horaj, and you might hear
• 17:35
  them pronounced orage or like, porridge, but I've heard both
• 17:38
  ways. And I'm going with Horaj.
• 17:40
  And we're going to talk about H Moser and C, the most quietly
• 17:44
  subversive brand, and hot Horology, the brand that makes
• 17:47
  minimalism look like a magic trick.
• 17:49
  The brand whose CEO once made a watch out of cheese.
• 17:52
  Yeah. Yeah, really.
• 17:53
  They made it out of cheese. We're going to get into that.
• 17:55
  So three brands, 3 completely different ends of the spectrum,
• 17:58
  all worth knowing about. So that's episode 3 of What's on
• 18:01
  Your Rest Day. I want to thank you again for
• 18:03
  sitting through this one. I know it was a little heavier
• 18:05
  at the beginning, especially than the last two episodes, but
• 18:08
  I also wanted you to know me like the real me before the show
• 18:12
  goes any further because every recommendation I'm ever going to
• 18:15
  make on this podcast comes from somewhere.
• 18:17
  Every brand I love, I love for a reason.
• 18:19
  And now you know some of those reasons.
• 18:21
  If anything in this episode resonated.
• 18:24
  If you have a watch of the story, a watch from a person
• 18:26
  you've lost, a watch that was on your wrist for a moment that
• 18:29
  mattered, find me, tell me. I want to hear it truly.
• 18:32
  To the kind man who sold me the zenith, you know who you are.
• 18:35
  Thank you again forever To Eddie and Dave, we love you brothers.
• 18:39
  Eddie, we're praying for you. To my great uncle, I made it
• 18:42
  whole again. Different, but whole.
• 18:44
  And I think you'd be proud. I'm Wachovsky.
• 18:46
  Take care of yourselves and wear something good.
• 19:16
  I open that drawer and it opens me a silver scar.
• 19:26
  The Braskin key, the watch my brother gave me on my wedding
• 19:33
  day still counts. The hours I can't take away.
• 19:43
  Some hands gone, some faces, Some pieces vanish, some don't
• 19:54
  fade. Side pieces are memories.
• 19:58
  The chemist side pieces are memories that time couldn't
• 20:18
  take. My father's watch with the
• 20:23
  cracked watch. And my worst mistakes, my late
• 20:33
  great uncle's pilot watch from the war in 45.
• 20:38
  I hit propeller when when I close my eyes, some hands are
• 20:48
  gone, some names remain, some gifts get worn.
• 20:55
  Then Warner time pieces are memories clipped to my wrist.
• 21:05
  Time pieces are memories I still can.
• 21:09
  This time pieces are memories that time couldn't take.
• 21:24
  And the watches I wore when I held my children come on one way
• 21:33
  in my shaking arms. One got stolen, one got
• 21:41
  replaced, but the seconds came back with my son's face.
• 22:05
  Time pieces, all memories clip to my wrist.
• 22:11
  Time pieces, all memories I still can't miss.
• 22:16
  So my. Story.
• 22:21
  So I say time pieces. All memories that time couldn't
• 22:28
  take time.