INDUSTRY MATTERS: Eric Wind on an unpolished career
Forging a reputation based on absolute transparency and no little passion, Wind Vintage’s Eric Wind is one of, if not, the most trusted experts in vintage watches in the world. From an auction house and writing background, to running his own secondary market business and being on the advisory board of Universal Genève, very few can claim to have played such a varied and eclectic role in the watch universe. Wind spoke with Watch Insider’s Daniel Malins to give his view on all things vintage.
Watch Insider: How did you get into watches in the first place? What roads led to you doing what you do today?
Eric Wind: My journey with watches started in a more serious way. When I was in college, my grandparents passed and I inherited my grandfather’s Hamilton, which was a simple watch called the Neil that my grandmother gave to him for their wedding in 1947. It was very meaningful because it was tough to lose them in college and I was pretty sad because I didn’t really get to say goodbye. That was my first mechanical watch so I became interested in vintage watches. Of course, I never thought it would become a job or profession or anything like that, but I just loved it for what it was and the history it represented.
That was the beginning, then I began reading about watches. Very early on that summer, I came across a site called Hodinkee that had just started that year [2008] and I began reading. There wasn’t as much watch content 20 years ago online, that was really it. Particularly with vintage watches, there wasn’t a lot of information besides forums, which were very primitive.
By March 2010, I had been pestering [Hodinkee founder] Ben Clymer and asked if I could send him tips of interesting vintage watches online. He was about to start graduate school at Columbia in journalism and he said: “Hey, do you want to write up this watch?” It was a Universal Genève Polerouter. I wrote the story of the watch, and that was the beginning of my contributions, which were unpaid at that point. It was just a matter of passion and enjoyment. By May I had joined as a fully-fledged contributor, and the rest was history. I wrote for them for about five years, just as a side gig while I was doing other things. I went to Oxford for an MBA during that time — 2012 to 2013 — and got married and was still writing about watches and collecting watches in the evenings and on weekends.
In 2015, I had three job offers in the world of watches and decided to go with Christie’s. I joined the New York team as vice president, senior specialist of watches. I did that for a couple of years but then I realized it was more fun and lucrative on the other side of the table as a dealer and it was also nice to be your own boss! So, I decided to start Wind Vintage with my wife in 2017 and it’s been almost a decade since then.
Our primary job activity is finding watches and selling them. Originally, we were almost exclusively vintage watches, but in the last few years we’ve pivoted to do modern and vintage — probably a 50-50 split — and that’s helped us grow our revenue significantly. We sell a lot of independents, small and large, but we also remain a leader in the vintage watch market and that’s our main activity. We do some advisory work for auction houses for collectors as well, plus we’ve come out with a number of successful watch collaborations — some with Rowing Blazers, a clothing brand based in New York City, one with [sportswear specialist] Tracksmith, and then a number under the Wind Vintage label with companies like True North [Watch Co.]. That’s a nice fun activity and creative outlet as well, but our primary business activity is buying and selling watches, essentially all online.
WI: What was your main source of knowledge to become qualified to write for Hodinkee and to work for Christie’s? Or was it by working in those jobs that you became as knowledgeable as you are today?
EW: I had used the Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hour rule [that achieving world-class expertise requires 10,000 hours of practice]. I was spending every free moment reading about watches, getting watch books, everything else. That gets you maybe 80%–90% of the way there. I would go up to New York and look at the watches at pre-auction previews and things like that, which was an invaluable experience because you can only get so much from a two-dimensional photo in a book or online. Actually interacting with the watch, holding the watch, really gets you up to that 100% level of understanding.
I knew a lot about identifying authenticity, market values, those sorts of things, but evaluating true quality and condition came with time. I would say that a hallmark of our company is honest, accurate assessments of conditions, and collectors appreciate that. There’s so much more understanding now about condition than there was even five years ago, and I would like to say I’ve helped provide some of that knowledge and awareness to the collector community.
I feel like with modern Pateks, the quality isn’t where the vintage watches are, honestly, in terms of hand finishing and case production.”
WI: You have a reputation for dealing largely with unpolished pre-owned watches. Have your views on polished versus unpolished changed at all over the year?
EW: Most vintage watches you see are polished, no question — upwards of 90%. So it’s extremely difficult to find an unpolished example. It’s also somewhat subjective and a matter of opinion. Now, like other things, you can have the herd mentality where it used to be that no-one wanted to buy any watches without boxes and papers, even vintage watches from the 1960s, 1970s. It’s very unlikely that the owner kept those and that they maintained through multiple moves of houses. At the time, these were just tools, and not really investment vehicles or passion investments where people thought they would ever have any value or be resold. So as a result, there were a lot of forgeries of papers and adding boxes. With the architecture of the case, as soon as you polish it, it gets a little bit softer, you lose metal and you lose the original form, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a great watch, of course. I think people should really understand what they’re doing rather than just latching on to something they hear. They should understand what speaks to them and what’s most important. An unpolished watch with an extremely ugly dial is still not that attractive, either, so just because it’s unpolished with an ugly dial doesn’t mean it’s a great watch.
WI: I guess on some level it gets to the heart of what you think a watch is. Is it the movement? Is it the case?
EW: Yeah, it’s like the Ship of Theseus, where every single wooden plank had been replaced on the ship over time. So, is it the same ship? The good thing with vintage watches is that straps or bracelets can change, but generally the movements and dials and cases remain the same. Unfortunately, values typically drop tremendously when you have a replacement dial or a replacement case. But at the end of the day, they are tools. If you send in a vintage that’s very valuable to Rolex they will still often suggest replacing the dial and hands, you don’t get the originals back. Patek [Philippe] will offer the same and encourage people to replace dials and hands.
It’s crazy because sometimes we’ll sell someone a watch and a year or two later it might need service, they send it off and we’ll get emails from people saying: “Should I replace the dial and hands on this watch?” and we say, “Oh no, please don’t do that.” As you grow your customer base you get more correspondence. It’s always a matter of education for people, and that’s a big deal because Rolex and Patek will charge thousands of dollars for dials and hands and they’re happy to sell it to the customer and make a profit on those things, but it will drastically affect the value to future owners of the watch.
People always say the watch market is a decade or more behind vintage cars and art markets, and all of these independent watchmakers are being treated like they’re living artists who are the next Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst.”
WI: What do you put Patek and Rolex’s dominance at both a primary level and on the secondary market down to? To what extent do you consider it irrational?
EW: Rolex makes a great product. When you look at the vintage watches, they’re essentially the only vintage watches from the 1950s and 60s you can still make water resistant, which is remarkable compared to every other brand. So they’ve been dedicated to making great products for a century. Patek was the best of the best in terms of brands for a long, long time. I feel like with modern Patek, the quality isn’t where the vintage watches are, honestly, in terms of hand finishing and case production, everything else. So I think they’re surviving a bit on the coattails of their history. They make some remarkable watches like the rare handcrafts, which are special dials and clocks that no one else really makes, but their average watches, I feel, are probably overpriced compared to other brands, and they’re surviving a bit on the coattails of their history and legacy.
But scarcity helps them because, at the end of the day, they make approximately 80,000 watches or so and there are just many more people that care about the brand than the amount of watches they produce. Same with Rolex. They have no real issue selling their watches, so that’s my analysis. Rolex is fortunate they’re a foundation because if they had sold to private equity many years ago, they would probably be making like 5–10 million watches per year and not be so vertically integrated, and that would have diluted the brand and who knows where it would be right now. They don’t really need to make a profit because they’re a non-profit corporation. Everyone that’s on the board is doing well but their motives are different than anyone else at LVMH or Richemont or Swatch Group, where they have investors to report to.
WI: If we were having this conversation in 25 years, do you suspect they would still be the number one and two?
EW: I think right now there is so much momentum with independent watchmakers. Rexhep was one of the biggest stories with the flyback chronograph out of Watches and Wonders, and he’s not even part of Watches and Wonders — he just released the chronograph right before. Obviously, his production is very small, but one just sold for almost $4 million at auction that previously retailed for maybe $100,000.
Equally, everyone wants [F.P.] Journe, they are unbelievably hot. I was talking with Rexhep about this in Geneva and he said it’s very tempting for any watchmaker just getting out of watchmaking school to start their own watch brand, and they’ll get essentially CHF 1,000,000 wired into their account the first day by people hungry to invest in the next Rexhep or Journe. He thinks it’s not that healthy because these watchmakers haven’t gone to work for any other brands and haven’t experienced working for a Patek or a Vacheron [Constantin] or an AP [Audemars Piguet] or Longines etc., where they can work for a few years, get additional training, and work with other more experienced watchmakers. It’s tempting to go start your own brand but many will probably not survive. Many might not be able to deliver the product that they suggest they will deliver in a high quality fashion.
People always say the watch market is a decade or more behind vintage cars and art markets, and all of these independent watchmakers are being treated like they’re living artists who are the next Jeff Koons or Damien Hirst, so there’s just a huge gold rush with these independent watchmakers to try to buy something and secure a watch cheap that’ll be worth 20 times that after a few years when it hits the market.
Rexhep is still technically an independent, and that, if anything, is a foreseeable threat to Patek, although not really Rolex. If more and more people just want independence and not the main watch brands, that could be an interesting development in the watch market.
WI: Taking the top two or three watch brands out of the equation, if you were ranking all other watch brands and models, how strong is the correlation between the quality of the watch and its resale value? Or is it entirely trend and hype-driven?
EW: It’s very hard, I wish I had a crystal ball, but I’ve always felt like Journe would peak and then I figured it would come down, but then it just goes through another peak cycle and it just keeps going up. So there’s certainly a bunch of Journes I wish I had back in the day that are worth double what I sold them for even a year and a half ago. The base of buyers seems to be expanding but production stays low. They indicate they make about 900 mechanical watches per year — if that’s true or not, I don’t know. So, it always does seem to me like it’s a trend, not permanent, but I guess when it’s that small a production, it might just be permanent, which it has been for the last five or six years.
Most watch brands are owned by a group so they’re not really trying to flip it, but Breitling is private equity where their goal is to return a profit to their investors and sell it and move on.”
WI: What is the current state of the secondary market in your opinion? Since the post-Covid bubble burst, there’s no dramatic growth expected. But you hear that it’s probably bottomed out and back into gentle growth.
EW: I agree with your assessment. Certainly spring-summer 2020 through to spring 2022 seemed the peak of the general market when a steel Rolex Daytona was selling for over $50,000 on the secondary market and you had really wacky pricing on Nautiluses and Royal Oaks, and things like that.
For us, it was actually tough. It was not our best time in terms of business because everyone was holding on tight to their watches, and watches were going up 5%–10% per month, so why would you sell? No one was really hard up for cash or anything like that. The economy was chugging along, so it was hard for us to find inventory. Then you had a crash, so for us through 2023–2025 we’ve been growing each year at a pretty significant clip.
I would say my understanding talking with watch brands was that the end of 2025 was pretty good for them compared to the beginning of 2025, but it’s not like the past. They’re not having to worry about Covid, which is nice. Everything is operating normally. They’re coming out focused on both high end and ‘entry level’ watches. Obviously, certain brands have been more exposed to things happening in the Middle East, but it’s also a matter of what their ambitions are.
From what I’ve read, Breitling is having a tough time. Their valuation was essentially cut in half, and they made a big investment in expansion of retail boutiques and also the investment in developing Universal Genève. So they made a lot of capital outlays at a difficult time, and they’ve got to figure that out.
WI: What’s your view on the Breitling project: House of Brands? They have to answer to shareholders and investors, so is doing a long-term play the right thing to do, or will investors run out of patience and say they want a return on their money now?
EW: I’m on the Universal Genève advisory board and I’ve been in the Breitling world for several years. There are some things I might have done differently, but they launched an unbelievable array of watches last month, so I think that’s very exciting — way more than I would have ever expected even two years ago when we were first meeting.
Of course they weren’t going to see any return on investment with the amount of millions that go into developing movements and designs and staff and marketing — even the logo development, colors and all that. You’re starting from a blank sheet of paper with some heritage, but it’s cool to see the relaunch of a heritage brand from inside the tent.
I’m optimistic that their sales targets of a few thousand watches per year seem very achievable the first few years. They’re not trying to do 100,000 watches in the next two or three years or anything like that. It’s very realistic growth estimates and I think the quality of the watches is excellent, so I’m excited about that.
WI: But who blinks first? Do they hold that position because otherwise they’re abandoning their brand DNA a bit, or do they cash in?
EW: They can’t abandon what they’re known for, but they need to expand a little bit. The focus is probably within the company because it’s not like they hired a whole new team for Universal Genève, they’re using the same people for both, and Breitling probably has suffered as a result. From what I saw, a lot of the focus of the last two years has been on Universal so it’s not a big surprise to me that Breitling hasn’t had as much innovation and development.
I’m very excited about Gallet — that’s one of my favorite vintage watch brands and might be the most profitable. It’s supposed to be within the House of Brands at the ‘entry level,’ and then you’ve got Breitling and UG at the top. If Gallet can make really cool watches in the sub $4,000–$5,000 price range, that might be where they can do the most, because they’re going to do more off-the-shelf movements and things like that. So it’s much less constrained on the production side and should be more profitable percentage-wise.
Breitling’s interesting because most watch brands are owned by a group so they’re not really trying to flip it, but Breitling is private equity where their goal is to return a profit to their investors and sell it and move on, so it has not really been done like that before.
WI: As you allude to, these investors are hungry, aren’t they? They want to move on to the next thing. So this long-term play I love from a personal perspective, but I’m surprised that they’ve been allowed to do something that isn’t going to return anything for some time.
EW: I forget the exact timeline of purchase, but it was something like CVC Bart Partners bought it for $950 million [they bought an 80% stake for approximately $870 million] around 2018 and then four or five years later they sold three quarters of the company at a $4 billion valuation, so it was incredible growth. They recruited Georges Kern and gave him equity and he is an unbelievable leader. It was really fun to see him working on Universal just to see the very difficult and intransigent individual, and it’s fun for me not having to answer to him as an employee or to see him boss around the staff. He really squeezed a lot out of his staff, they work really hard and it was incredible to watch, so I feel like he’s done an amazing job. But to get that massive four times growth for four or five years, the question is then: how can you get four or five times growth in the next four years? And I think that was the problem. They then expanded with a lot of things and it hasn’t been quite as strong for them.
WI: You have a penchant for pocket watches, so what’s your view on the AP x Swatch Royal Pop?
EW: I was shocked to hear it announced. It was not in my idea of the next 10 Swatch watches that would come out. I won’t be queuing, but I wouldn’t turn one down at retail. I think it’s a cool little thing. Does it make me crazy? No, it doesn’t. It’s cool, it’s based on historic Royal Oak pocket watches, which I now wish I had purchased in the past when I could have because there’s a lot of interest in reposts of the originals. It’s actually been remarkable the increase in interest for Royal Oaks that we’ve had since the pocket collection was announced. We had more inquiries in the few days after about Royal Oaks than we probably did in the last six months.
WI: Do you think those are speculative inquiries or people who just got reminded how much they love that watch?
EW: I think it was people being reminded and thinking: “Hey, I should think about buying a 5402,” which is the original. The prices are so low now it’s shocking. So it’s been really good for the brand with the pre-owned market, which has been tough. I think it’s actually probably going to prove to make the Royal Oak more relevant than it has been in the last year and it has generated some excitement, which is what they need.
WI: Has it been tough for AP because of a high base effect, because it has been so successful at various times over the years. Or is it genuinely just struggling?
EW: They would probably tell you they’re doing as good as they’ve ever done. The question is: are they preparing the company for a sale to a larger private equity group? Was that why they brought in [CEO] Ilaria Resta, who has a lot of corporate experience? That’s what everyone’s saying, that the board owns their equity at very low prices, and the question is whether enough board members want to exit their investments at this point. The company is worth maybe $8 billion plus.
They have been the most diligent in managing the secondary market and blacklisting clients who purchase their watches and then resell them, and I do think their cards are crappy because they don’t give a lot of information about purchase date or reference or things like that. It’s really poor. But there’s a little QR code, and I always joke with the staff: “Do not scan that QR code with your phone. If you do, we’re going to have a drone strike here in like five minutes!” One time we accidentally put up a caseback of a code 1159 without blurring the serial number, and the guy got blacklisted from buying another AP like immediately.
They are more vigilant than anyone about monitoring serial numbers online. I heard one story of a client who sold a watch to another friend and then the guy re-registered the QR code and he immediately got a call from AP asking why he sold his watch. He basically had to rewind the deal so he could get the watch back and then show to AP that he had it and was like: “Oh, I was just lending it to my friend and his wife accidentally scanned it.”
WI: Do you AP would look at the Rolex CPO rollout and think that they should replicate it?
EW: Yeah, they’ve talked for a long time about doing certified pre-owned and I think it’s smart. Obviously F.P. Journe does that — they play a little bit of a strongman because if you go to them telling them you want to sell your watch, they’ll offer you a good profit on it and then they’re going to mark it up and make more. But they say if you sell it to someone else, you get blacklisted. So if you want to keep getting Journes, you have to sell it back to them. AP could probably do that, but they probably don’t have the supply of watchmakers to then overhaul and service the watch before they resell it, which is the expectation. So I’m sure it’s on the ‘would like to do’ list, but right now they have so much demand still for the hyped modern watches that they’re at capacity with just continuing to produce swiftly.
WI: If you fast forward to the next chapter of your business, do you have an expansion plan in your head?
EW: I definitely have plans for expansion and growth, but I believe in incremental growth. Just adding 200% more employees doesn’t necessarily yield a great outcome, as I’ve seen with many businesses over time. We have basically three employees and then [wife] Christine and I, we’re all operating at 110% capacity each day with what we’re doing. For us, we’re always looking to add more employees, but they have to be the right fit and the right culture of getting things done, no complaining. That’s our number one rule and our company philosophy: just keep going and don’t worry about it — keep calm and carry on.
My hope is to continue with watches for decades. I love watches, so I’m not trying to just exit. We’re growing. It has been almost 50% year-on-year growth the last couple of years. Part of that is us focusing on higher value watches and not getting stuck in the mire of sub-$15,000 watches. The more six-figure watches, the better. In many cases, it’s easier to sell a six-figure watch than a $9,000 watch, I would say, so that’s also part of the secret sauce.
WI: How do you cope with the cash flow implications of a big purchase?
EW: Yeah we will buy watches and we also will take on consignment, which allows us to flex up our inventory in a big way without taking a lot of risk. I know of one dealer, who, in that 2022 period, lost about $40 million in his inventory of Royal Oaks, Nautiluses, Aquanauts, and all these watches that went down 50%. I thankfully was able to avoid that. One of the undoings of Hodinkee’s Crown & Caliber was just that they had way too much inventory; they were buying Daytonas for $50,000+ in April 2022, when the market was already shifting down.
You have to be nimble with inventory. You can lose a lot of money really quickly if the market shifts one way or another. I have no problem writing checks and sending wires for high quality vintage watches. It’s a smaller market of buyers, but I know them. I’m okay owning the watches myself at the values I think are appropriate and conservative, but modern is a different animal because the companies continue to produce. You don’t really have clear insight on production numbers and how many are coming out and it’s a risky business in my view owning modern watches at high prices. I’ve seen it burn too many people.
WI: What percentage roughly would you say of your business comes from people who stumble across the website, versus the close-knit community of collectors that you’ve no doubt cultivated over the years?
EW: It’s really word of mouth. We don’t do any SEO or anything like that, and we really have no marketing department. It’s organic growth and its reputation. The other thing I guess to mention is if you’re consigning to auction it’s such a long lead time between when you can sign it, to when the auction happens, to when you’re paid. It can be seven months plus from when you hand the watch over to when you’re paid.
For us, we recently sold the Drake GMT Master that was worn on the cover of Take Care. That turned around with a payment to the owner in just a few weeks and it sold at the ask of $500,000. So it was very effective, that was our best case result. In some cases, we’re turning watches around in a week or two for six figures. It’s just much faster and much less commission than with an auction house where the buyer is paying 27% buyer’s premium and often the seller has to pay a commission. So you can have a 30% plus spread between what the buyer is paying and what the seller is paying. Our standard commission is 10%. So it’s just a better, more nimble business approach, I would say.
This article first appeared in the June 2026 edition of Watch Insider.
