Watch Of The Week: The Supreme Collector On The Timex He’d Never Sell
In Watch of the Week, we invite HODINKEE staffers and friends to explain why they love a certain watch. This week’s columnist is an expert in collectible culture, focusing on streetwear and social media.
I’ll just say this up front: I’m not a lifelong watch enthusiast. I’m a collectibles guy. I’m an especially big fan of the brand Supreme, interested in streetwear and sneaker culture and all of that. I create content around Supreme, streetwear, sneakers, collectibles, and more on social.
That said, I’ve always appreciated watches – I have my eye on a few different Rolex, and I own a commemorative watch that has some sentimental value from when my college team won the NCAA Division III Men’s Soccer National Championship. But it wasn’t until Supreme collaborated with Timex that I really felt like I had to have one.
I got into Supreme when I was in high school, around 2012. I liked a couple of pieces. Thought they were fun. Thought they were cool. And it ultimately got to a point where I realized, hey, this company’s actually doing something really innovative as it relates to supply and demand. I was always an entrepreneurial kid, so that was the kind of stuff that caught my eye. Supreme isn’t just some company that got really lucky and fell into success. They were really strategic about everything they were doing, and were really an innovator in the space of intentionally undersupplying. As every HODINKEE reader knows, the watch industry was paying attention. And soon followed suit.
A lot of watch people hate the whole flipping aspect of the culture. But hating it isn’t going to make it go away, so it’s better to understand it, work within it, and appreciate it from a business point of view. Because like it or not, flipping is part of watch collecting now and that’s not changing any time soon. In case you’re not into streetwear, here’s how it typically worked during Supreme’s heyday.
Collectors would go wait in line at the New York store on Lafayette Street every Thursday at 11 a.m., which is when Supreme would do their weekly release. An average customer might wait in line for a couple …read more
