Ponzi watch collector watches his collection disappear

Infamous South Florida ponzi schemer Scott Rothstein apparently had exquisite taste in jewelry. He currently resides in the federal penitentiary system, but many of his beloved fine watches have found themselves new homes as of this past Wednesday. 

His white gold Audemars Piaget sold for $77,500, and later in the afternoon a new auction high was set on his limited edition Concord – garnering $100,000 in revenue to be used towards the reimbursement of those he swindled. 

There were some outstanding examples of horological craftsmanship on display at the auction including pieces by Franck Muller, Patek Phillipe, and Roger Dubuis. Word has it that a few of inmate Rothstein's prized timepieces will find their way to the Gray and Sons Bal Harbour showroom very soon. 

Buying Diamonds Online

PICKING A DIAMOND
The first step anyone should take when buying diamonds is educating themselves on diamonds. Knowing about diamonds and what to look for will make it easier for you to pick out the best diamond for your taste and your budget. Take a look at our Diamond Education page to get a crash course in diamonds.

Decide what type of diamond you want: the carat size, cut, color, and clarity. You might also want to think about shape.

WHY BUY DIAMONDS FROM ESTATE JEWELERS
There are many advantages when buying from estate jewelers. Normally, diamond buyers have to buy rough diamonds from places like Africa. They have to spend money getting the diamonds cut, polished, possibly certifying them. They end up selling their end product high above cost.

Estate jewelers operate differently. We buy diamonds from the public, mounted and loose, already cut and polished. Estate jewelers, like Gray & Sons, take the diamonds and jewelry and fix any problems in-house with our own jewelers and gemologist. If they need to be certified, we send them out to GIA. There is no middle man involved. This makes it possible for us to sell our jewelry and diamonds at a much lower costs than other retailers do.

BUYING DIAMONDS FROM GRAY & SONS
You can shop online and through the phone with the peace of mind that Gray & Sons provides! We’ve been in business for 30 years and are accredited by the Better Business Bureau with an A+ rating. All our diamonds are certified. We have a 10 day, no questions asked, return policy so you can be absolutely sure it’s the PERFECT diamond for you.

ALL the diamonds we own are in-stock and ready for pick-up or delivery. We examine ALL our diamonds by our in-house gemologist, and we offer our diamonds to you as we would to our own family!

CARING FOR YOUR DIAMOND & DIAMOND JEWELRY
You should also be aware of how to care for your diamonds after your purchase. You should always make sure that your jewelry is separated. Not only can your diamond be scratched by another diamond, but your diamond can scratch other stones and metals. You should have your diamond professionally cleaned a couple times a year, but in between these you can clean your diamond with mild detergent and water, rinse off with fresh water, and dry it with your complimentary Gray & Sons polishing cloth provided with every purchase. Never clean around the sink, but if you must, make sure the plug is in!

Patek Philippe's Polish history

Thinking of buying a new watch for a family member?  Well, everyone knows that the best watches are Swiss watches, particularly a Patek Philippe.  However, the question remains: just how Swiss are these watches?  The truth is that Switzerland's watchmaking fame is largely due to the work of Polish patriots that were forced to emigrate from Russian-occupied Poland after the failed November Uprising of 1830-1.  The most prominent of these émigrés was Antoni Patek who distinguished himself in the rebellion and received the Virtuti Militari Golden Cross (highest Polish military honor).  Afterwards, he settled in Switzerland and started his watchmaking business with Franciszek Czapek, establishing Patek, Czapek & Co. in 1839.  In 1861, the company name changed to the world famous Patek Philippe Company.  The Poles revolutionized watchmaking by combining beauty with precision and expanding their business on an international scale.  At the same time, loyal to their homeland, Patek and the other Poles made sure that people knew that these were Polish watches by decorating them with images from Polish history as well as portraits of Polish national heroes such as Tadeusz Kosciuszko and Prince Jozef Poniatowski.  In 1867, the company presented the first wristwatch.  From the very beginning to this day, Patek Philippe watches have been considered the best in the world.  Thus the pride of Switzerland should more fittingly be the pride of Poles.

Luxury watches winding down their production as sales slow

With so many cooperations feeling the pinch of the recession this year fewer top executives are receiving their typical large end of year bonuses.  Without the bonuses, these executives have less disposable income to spend on high end timepieces.


Swiss watchmakers had hoped recession-weary holiday shoppers would regain some of their taste for self-indulgence, giving the luxury-watch business its first spark of life since the financial crisis set in. But it may take the return of big bank bonuses, possibly early next year, to produce any significant uptick in sales of Rolexes, Patek Philippes and Piagets.


In recent years, the banking industry's bonus payments to top employees helped fuel a global splurge on luxury goods, including handcrafted watches priced at thousands of dollars.

But those payouts, which can total hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars—fell substantially over the past year as banks struggled with soured investments and tight credit conditions, leaving Swiss watches among
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"Tag Heuer" brand unaffected by Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods sponsors are still rethinking their long term association with the golfing great, but the reeling golf great’s mug still looms large in Boston, where the luxury Swiss watches he’s touting remain big sellers. In fact, Tag Heuer watches may even be getting more attention from the extra publicity.

A massive, thoughtful Tiger Woods sporting a pricey Tag Heuer watch is splashed across a Clear Channel billboard along Interstate 93 just south of the Hub. The ad asks “What are you made of?”

Despite the tales of his personal life that have tarnished the once-squeaky clean “Athlete of the Decade,” Toodies owner Howie Jacobs said the billboard has been a boon for
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Auctions work well for premium timepieces in a down economy

It's not just eBay that attempts to sell luxury items to the highest bidder.  Many other auction houses still run auctions the old fashioned way.  In fact, were any of the watches in your personal collection acquired through an auction like the one mentioned below?

Following recently successful auctions of fine and rare watches in Dubai, Geneva and Hong Kong, Christie’s New York will present a selection of over 380 fine and rare timepieces for auction on Tuesday, December 15. Vintage and modern wristwatches from major manufacturers as well as pocket watches, fine ladies watches, and rare signed clocks will be highlighted. Prices for the timepieces begin at $700 and range upwards to $350,000 for the most important signed timepieces.

The total sale is expected to achieve in excess of $4 million. Sam Hines, Head of Watches at Christie’s New York comments, “As our recent sales have demonstrated, demand for high quality timepieces continues to expand globally, as we welcome new collectors into this field.”


Among the top lots of the sale is a selection of Patek Philippe minute repeating wristwatches – a highly covered complication among devoted collectors of fine wristwatches.

The watches include a platinum minute repeating tourbillion wristwatch estimated to be from $350,000 to 550,000, a signed 18k gold minute repeating watch estimated to be between $280,000 to 350,000 and a signed platinum minute repeating watch with a handsome enamel dial coming at a price between $250,000 to $350,000. Also featured is the Cartier retailed Audemars Piguet wristwatch estimated to be between $120,000to 180,000.

Leading the broad selection of over 200 modern signed watches from top houses is a sleek platinum Girard-Perregaux, a fine and rare oversized tourbillion hour striking watch with a pink golden bridge visible though the aperture approximately priced between $100,000 to 150,000; a curved tonneau-shaped Richard Mille, a 18k pink gold tourbillion watch with a skeletonized dial estimated to be between $80,000 to $120,000; a very rare Franck Muller, the “Consquistador” model in 18K white gold and estimated to be between $80,000 to 120,000: and a Patek Phillipe with the rare and highly sought after black dial and white gold baton numerals costing between $80,000 and $120,000.

Havee you ever participated in a live auction for one of your timepieces?  What was the best part of the experience?  What could have been better?

Why are luxury watches so expensive?

I was reading an article over at Forbes the other day and wanted to share some of the information they wrote up.  It delas with the difference between a a watch that costs a couple hundrend dollars vs a watch that costs tens of thousands of dollars.

Most of the price of these watches deals with the hand finishing.

An appreciation of finishing is an insider passion even today. But a basic understanding of it can give the nonfanatic a new perspective on the price-value relationship of timepieces. Here are key points to remember.


Robotics have lowered the cost significantly for all luxury watches - A modern CNC cutter or spark- erosion machine can turn out parts that without further finishing can be assembled into high-precision micromachines. The 'bots make possible entry-level mechanical watches from Swatch, Seiko, Citizen, Orient, and Timex of a precision that would have been impossible at such a price point (often less than $500) a few decades ago.

Your watch is not more accurate from more finishing - Top-grade hand-finishing is really the connoisseur's delight--beauty in the eye of the beholder who knows how to recognize it.

Quality of finish and price tag don't always match - If a particular model becomes a collectors' darling (like the stainless steel Rolex Daytona chronograph), or if a brand is just plain hot, price follows suit, even if the watch has little or no hand-finishing.

Precious metals and gemstones (like diamonds) can quickly up the price - A machine-finished watch with one or both can cost more than one that is hand-finished. Rarity and peculiarities can make a watch expensive regardless of finishing.

Absent those factors, higher price means more finishing. A $12,000 watch, as a rule, has more hand-finishing than a $8,000 one.

At the high end, it's the finisseur. His painstaking work & skill bestows a pedigree price. A $1,000 chronograph with industrial finishing becomes a $25,000 one with hand-finishing.

Above that, complication comes into play. At the very high end, it drives price as much as finishing.

Finally, finishing is a three-tiered cake: basic (robot), machine, and hand.

1. Basic Finish - Mechanical watches that sell for less than $1,000 compose the base. They have little or no finish beyond that produced by the robots that manufacture the movement.
2. Machine Finish - ($1,000–$12,000) are mechanical models with varying degrees of machine-executed decorative finish: attractive beveling, blued-finish screws, gleaming countersinks, and engraving. Watches at the upper end of this layer also have some hand-finishing.
3. Hand Finishing ($12,000 and up) in the top tier starts to predominate. North of $20,000, you're getting the full-on haute treatment, horology's equivalent of haute couture. A premium-grade movement like Vacheron's caliber 1400, the caliber 215 from Patek, or the caliber 3120 automatic from Audemars Piguet, is a singular object: The hand-finishing means no two are exactly alike.

One of the top watch finisseurs in the world is Maik Pfeiffer, the gentleman who finishes Lange watches.  He actually used modified dentals tools to hand finish watches at Lange.  See a picture of him below at work.

We understand why people ask,  "Why is a top-notch timepiece so expensive". But when you multiply the number of hours it takes to hand-finish just one part--more than half a day in some cases--by the number of components in the movement (easily 115 pieces in a Rolex watch) and then by the number of years it takes to learn how to finish a piece of metal the size of a fly antenna, it's easier to see how the price starts to add up. It's the hundreds of hours of niche expert human labor concentrated in a small universe on your wrist.

Read the original article here at Forbes.

Octavia Garcia, the artistic genuis behind Audemars Piguet

The making of a legend.  Where did this guy come from?

Educated in Switzerland, where he attended a school specializing in industrial design, Octavio Garcia familiarized himself with the craft principles and discovered the watch industry. Graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Industrial Design, his intuitiveness led him fiirst to Omega, and he designed the entire collection--including the Constellation, Speed Master, and Sea Master. Additionally, Garcia worked for Swatch and its subsidiaries. Such opportunities afforded Garcia with important positions at the world's finest watchmakers.

The beginning of this artistic craftsmanship began with an architectural muse in the early urban industrial architecture of Chicago. Octavio became more interested in architecture and began his course in the arts. During his studies, Garcia met his wife, a citizen of Switzerland, and visited the country he now resides in.

Octavio Garcia, the design director of Audemars Piguet, is now a pillar in the luxury watch design industry. In a less than a year, Octavio Garcia has become one of two designers developing contemporary, neo-industrial concepts for Audemars Piguet, the only family-operated, watch-making manufacturer that prides itself on tradition. Of the company, Garcia states, "It is the only high-end company that experiments with new ideas." Involved with the design of the entire Piguet collection, Garcia focuses on the creation of the watch head, dial, and bracelet.. Upon taking over the creative mantle at Audemars Piguet, his first acts were to:

• contemporize the brand’s classic collection, evinced by his updated Jules Audemars Equation of Time watch
• unveil sleekly menacing, relentlessly modern watches

This first happened with the Juan Pablo Montoya Royal Oak Offshore watch that would come to define a large part of Audemars Piguet's contemporary brand equity as well as the prevailing creative substance of this era. The Royal Oak watch was named after a trio of warships christened Royal Oak, after the legendary Royal Oak (a hollowed out tree which offered King Charles II a safe hiding place from his pursuers) lent their distinctive name in 1972 to the luxury sports watch, Royal Oak. When examining the simple, yet refined stainless steel case, the face accented with dark blue, black, or silver, and a robber or Velcro fastening, the design elements incorporated by Garcia into this classically fashioned timepiece is indisputable. "It is a landmark. Essentially, we elevated the design. A soft re-style with a reflection of us with contemporary proportions. This was done to keep the soul of this landmark piece."

Garcia’s Montoya was the first timepiece to take functional elements from F-1 cars and introduce them as aesthetic flourishes in his watch. While this has become de rigueur today, at the time, it was verging on Dadaist subversion. It was at Audemars Piguet — the manufacture famously associated with audacity — that Garcia flourished and distilled his singular brand of design magic. In 2006, he completely recreated the once-staid Millenary case into a palace of three-dimensional architecture. Together with his key collaborator Philippe Vaptzarof, he’s overseen some of the modern era’s most sought-after watches, including the Rubens Barrichello Offshore, the Maserati MC-12 inspired Millenary MC-12 Tourbillon Chronograph, the forged carbon fiber Alinghi Team, 2007’s drop dead gorgeous Millenary watch with deadbeat seconds, and much more.

Who do you think is the greatest living watch designer in the world?

Criminal found his niche by only stealing Rolex watches

This local story caight my attention. It seems that this Miami, FL thief was so proud of how he made a "living" that he even tatooed the Rolex logo on his forearm.  Even after spending nearly 2 decades in prison for stealing these luxury watches, he returned to his trade as soon as he was released from prison.

A Florida thief with a peculiar penchant for Rolex watches faces up to 25 years in prison.  Leonardo Perez has pleaded guilty to charges he stole eight gold Rolex Presidential edition watches, each worth $50,000, over four months in 2007. The crime spree began just after Perez finished a 17-year sentence for stealing Rolexes in South Florida.

The 36-year-old Miami native is so loyal he even has the Rolex logo tattooed on a forearm. He used his eagle eyesight to assist with his crimes.  Investigators say he's been able to glimpse and follow drivers wearing the watch from the other side of the road. He primarily found victims out shopping, followed them home and robbed them at gunpoint.


He is still awaiting trial.  Of course, having a 5 point crown tattoo is not a good idea to have tattooed on you anyway, especially in jail.  Their is a gang called "People Nation" that also uses the 5 point crown to symbolize their affiliation.

In closing, our advice for all those wearing Rolex watches is to make sure nobody follows you down your driveway at your home. Of course, we always should be aware of our surroundings anywere we go when we have a $50,000 watch on your wrist.  What do you do to prevent your luxury watch from being stolen when traveling?

A Rolex watch that doubles as a cellphone, mp3 & movie player

OK, I don't think that Rolex or Omega would ever come out with a watch that can double as a cellphone (except in a James Bond movie) but LG has and it looks to up the stakes again.

Most watch enthusiasts remember when the LG GD910 watch cellphone was first seen at the January Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in 2009. We expected great things and were overall impressed with the phone's specs. Of course once we had the phone, it didn't quite live up to it's hype. The new rumour is that LG is coming out with an update of the phone for the beginning of 2010 and should add some bold new colors and fix some of the problems customers have compained about:

- 80MB storage is really small
- backlight goes to low power mode when not in use so you can't read the watch in daylight
- No Internet Browser
- No live preview of what you are taking a photo of

Here's a quick rundown of what the watch has currently:

A VGA camera with 640 x 480 resolution (pretty much equal to a $10 Chinese digital camera). But it does provide the ability to make and receive video calls

The watch phone comes with a 1.4 inch TFT display touch screen which displays 256,000 colours at a pixel size of 128 x 160 pixels. The screen doubles up as the watch face as well as the display screen for all the enclosed functionality, which is accessed by using the flash user interface provided.

This is big for a watch face but really small for a video screen. If you want to pull having nice video with a watch you need a built in LCD projector or an adaptor to your video projection sunglasses for the 2012 model ;-).

It also provides text to speech capabilites (easier for texting than trying to ype on this thing) and an mp3 player.

This phone will likely not appeal to your typical luxury watch enthusiast. It lacks the style and distinction we look for in a watch. This is more suited for the ultra techno geek than a man wearing his Armani Suit and his custom Italian leather shoes.

I don't see Rolex ever coming out with a cellphone watch, ever. But what technological improvements could Rolex, Cartier, or Bvlgari make that would make you want one more? Any?

Herre's a great video faeturing the cellphone watch.