I am approaching 10 years of actively collecting watches and lately I've been brainstorming on different things related to this hobby which actually became a real passion in the meantime. People The most valuable part of this hobby over the last decade have been people. Met a lot of collectors, a lot of them are on the forums and, however sharing on the forums is nice, the best part of collecting - to me - is actually sharing with other peers and friends about the last finding on a specific watch, about the last eBay snag, about the pains with customs, about the facepalms with wannabe buyers, about the laughers with other friends. Sharing I realized that there's a lot to share with people about the constantly evolving collection when we happen to meet but it's really hard to have all the things such as photographs, extracts, papers, boxes, watches, certificates, tags, and other memorabilia and nerd stuff handy. Photographs My iPhone is exploding because of watches. I have 10+ years of Photos in my smartphone which equals about 25Go of data / 16'000 photographs out of which about 9000 are photographs of watches Obviously, when I am talking about a specific watch and want to show some photographs, there is no chance to find the right pics within seconds. Scrolling is a pain and is not contributing to a nice and fluid conversation. Archives My collection is now about 25 watches. It has always been very dynamic and had an always evolving target. You know the feeling. It's about the journey - not the destination - so when a personal grail is about to land I am already thinking about what's next. Some references were personal grails back in time and left the collection later to make place for new grails. Then eventually landed back in the collection because of an opportunity you can't miss or a part-trade where you're happy to see that watch on your wrist again. After ten years I realize I've owned several examples of same references in time and my excel archive has information about about one hundred watches I've owned or still own. Sometimes it's hard to find the details (serial, archive, photos) of one particular watch, quickly, within a nice and fluid conversation. Stories I believe we all love stories. Think of provenance, or that early morning flight to meet the seller followed by the flight back home that got cancelled, or that pawn shop guy who explained you that the orange hand is not correct to this reference so he can't ask a premium for this watch Each watch has a story but when you've had a lot of them, it's getting hard to remember all the details of each watch. And sometimes it's a pain not to be sure anymore about which story belongs to which watch. Aha! moment I've been thinking of all the things above and looking for a way to improve (a bit) on every pain point and came up with an idea. The Aha! moment happened during a dinner with friends, when my wife was telling our friends about our four weeks trip to Japan last year. She was trying to describe some places, food, things till she gives up, stands and picks up a photo album we made later the year with iFolor. That was the very moment I realized that might be exactly what I need when I want to talk about my collecting journey. The Project I decided to make it visual (photos) but also containing interesting / important information about each watch I happened to own. First step was to define a schema and work on a layout. I decided to include pictures of watches but also add as much information as possible, a bit like what we can usually find in auction catalogues. Some of those watches will have more text because of stories that are related to the acquisition, ownership or sale. Some others will deserve more photos of accessories / paperwork / whatever makes them special. Fortunately, I still have all the "technical" information such as references, calibres, accessories, years etc in my Excel sheet and I "only" have to match them with correct photographs from my archives. To catch up on my ten years of collecting will be a long project but at the end I expect to have a set of table books, per year of acquisition, reflecting my whole collecting journey. Something easy to store, easy to carry with to GTGs, perfect for conversations and/or to quickly find details or photographs of this or that watch. I started this project earlier in January and am now about to finalize the first album "2019" with 13 watches over 36 pages. I must admit, spending a lot of time at home now, due to covid-19, helps a lot . Hope to be ready with the first book for the next GTG after the epidemic is over.
Every book project must be a pleasure with such great watches captured in fantastic photos. Kind of extension of the joy of collecting. Hunting, catching, documenting
A yearbook of watches! “Class of 2019,” if you like. And so on. I take my hat off to passion like this.
I already told you that I really like your post and as usual you described your emotions like they were mine. You have got an outstanding talent for this. But I want to add: Keep a track of collecting your time... Life can be too short, sometimes. Stay well and I'm looking forward to any of your contributions.