I’ve received some PMs on this topic asking me what I bought, and I guess I should have predicted that given that I wasn’t more open in my original post. I have tried to explain this before, but not sure how clear I’ve been, so let me try and explain more fully why I don’t just openly reveal my watch collection. I’m sorry if this is boring, feel free to stop reading now and put it down to eccentricity. I haven’t yet decided whether to tell you more about this piece, and likely won’t until it arrives.
For those of you still reading, I guess that it’s obvious that I have a love of watches, and I enjoy sharing what little knowledge that I might have. I’ve been flattered by some of the responses to my posts recently on some of the aspects of watch making – I very much appreciate the kind words. However, I have also received some PMs telling me that they don’t know why I bother and that no one’s interested. My ego can handle that just fine, but it doesn’t inspire me to make an extra effort. Additionally, as BreitlingSource has grown (a good thing) there seem to be ever increasing expectations – I am truly happy to assist, but the 2% of people that diminish the fun are becoming a larger number and sometimes make it harder to put in the extra effort.
I see some people provide a list of the pieces they own and then have the topic brought up by others over and over again. I’ve lost count of the number of irrelevant posts I’ve read saying “I want to see <insert name of member>’s collection”, just because they happened to list their collection. Well maybe they don’t want to share it – there’s no automatic sense of entitlement.
I also see people try and claim connection to me – in this thread someone claiming to know what piece I’ve bought, and I very much doubt that’s true. I have given people contact details for Canadian ADs and some of the people who have contacted them have been more interested in questioning my ADs about the contents of my collection. I can’t pretend to understand what it is about me that’s so fascinating!
Just because you ‘know’ me through these forums, doesn’t give you a right to see every aspect of my life, just what I choose to share, and when the small minority think that I don’t share enough it makes me pull back further – I personally think I do give enough. As I have said before, there isn’t much of my life that’s private. I run my own business, my website has a lot of information about me and it’s easy to access from my profile. I write for publication and those articles also link to my website. I do speaking engagements and am always exchanging business cards with strangers after that. I teach, and always provide my students with a way to contact me. A lot of my life is accessible to strangers, and to me that makes it even more important to keep some of my life private – after all, it is my life.
Additionally, as I look to expand my collection, I have to be aware that (whether I like it or not) people will follow my lead. I get a lot of PMs and e-mails from people asking about vintage pieces, and I’m happy to provide advice, but if I openly say something like ‘wow, look at this amazing piece, I’m thinking of buying it’ then all I’m doing is attracting more attention to the piece and pushing the price up. It doesn’t hurt that not everyone knows what I am looking to buy at any given time – not just pieces, but even whole parts of the market. If I were buying to sell then it might be different, but I’m not.
I do enjoy sharing my knowledge, and I am tempted to share this latest piece because it is somewhat unique – as was noted above, if it makes me excited then it has to be slightly unusual (although part of the excitement was the deal). That said, it will reveal an aspect of my collection that no one on here knows that I have and will undoubtedly lead to more questions about what I own.
Maybe this post has been a little self indulgent, and maybe I’m revealing a little more of myself than I should, but I’m just a watch fan. I’m not anything special, and I don’t want people to have this misguided impression that I am, or that my collection is something truly spectacular – trust me Antiquorum aren’t going to be selling ‘The collection of a Canadian gentleman’ when I start pushing up daisies!
I just choose not to share everything because I don’t want to, and I would ask the 2% to respect that the same way that the other 98% do.
Apologies for the long and selfish post.
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