Mr Lex Mak: My first mechanical watch was a 36mm NOMOS Club Dunkel. I was obsessed with the Bauhaus art movement, so I purchased the watch to celebrate the start of my career as a graduate architect. I have collected many other NOMOS watches over the years in celebration of career milestones, but this one still gets the most wrist time.

Mr Mark Cho: The first nice watch I ever owned was a gift from my parents when I graduated high school. It was a 36mm quartz Omega Seamaster.

Mr Nikolaus Hirsch: Hard to pinpoint what it really was, but I remember having a Swatch and a G-Shock while at school in Hong Kong back in the late 1990s. Unfortunately, I don’t have either of them any more. However, I do have a custom watch that my dad had made for me with my initials on it. It was also the watch that I made my first custom strap for.

Cho: I just bought a new-old-stock Ikepod Solaris, which is an interesting double-sided watch in a ceramic case with two quartz movements inside. It’s like a humorous take on a Reverso.

Hirsch: The last watch I bought was the new Rolex GMT-Master II Destro. I’m a lefty, so it made total sense to go for this watch.

Mak: A vintage Patek Philippe Golden Ellipse. This reference is one the brand’s best kept secrets, stripped of all ostentation and, in my view, the purest and most elegant expression of design from the brand. Many people are unaware that the Golden Ellipse is also a Gérald Genta design.

Cho: I’d like to own a Patek Repeater one day, but who knows? I’m many, many, many jackets sold away from that.

Mak: I don’t particularly prescribe to the term “holy grail”, given that our tastes for things are always evolving. However, if I had to pick, perhaps an F.P. Journe Tourbillon Souverain Jade. It’s a truly mesmerising timepiece with a vertical tourbillon, deadbeat seconds, platinum case and, of course, the precious jade stone dial. A Jaeger-LeCoultre x Hermès Atmos clock would also be in close contention.

Hirsch: Fortunately, I have the pleasure of experiencing tons of watches due to my work. During my latest trip to Sotheby’s in November 2022, I found my current grail: the Patek Philippe 5074R-001 perpetual calendar minute repeater. Not only is it beautiful and sounds great, but it is also slim enough to fit under the cuff of a shirt and a sweater. The whole aspect of engineering and craftsmanship is what fascinates me about watches.

Hirsch: It must be my grandfather’s two-tone Rolex GMT-Master 1675. He handed the watch down to me and sadly passed away last year. He was a great inspiration to me.

Cho: It’s hard to say. I have so many good memories with so many of them. The latest collaboration I did, the Lettercutter, between Naoya Hida & Co and The Armoury, is quite meaningful to me. I consider Hida-san a very close friend and it was great to work with him, his team and my colleague, Elliot Hammer, on this project. It was quite an involved design process and everyone brought their best ideas to the table. I was quite moved when I finally received the completed piece.

Mak: Technically not a watch, but I would probably save the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak retailer’s clock on my wall at home, given that these rarely end up in the homes of private enthusiasts. If you thought an AP Royal Oak Jumbo was hard to get, you’ve never tried getting your hands on one of these clocks.

Cho: I’ve never really felt I paid too much for a watch. I’ve bought expensive things, but to me they were worth it. As for bargains, I think there are some things on the secondary market that are quite cheap, considering what they are. Things such as small dress Pateks, APs and Vacherons, or even early Curvex case Franck Muellers with unusual complications like the Master Banker.

Hirsch: I’m always on the hunt for a bargain. I picked up my two-tone Audemars Piguet Royal Oak 25594 back in spring 2020 and it was just before the hype took off for the 36mm models. I was following @horoloupe at that time, as he got me into AP. I started researching the Royal Oak models and wanted to gift myself one for finishing university. So, after trying different models, I ended up finding a nice piece on Chrono24 at a really fair price – way lower than they are right now.

Mak: One day while hunting for a beaten-up vintage Jaeger travel clock on eBay, I stumbled across a very rare and fine gold-plated Jaeger-LeCoultre Memovox travel alarm clock from the late 1960s. Knowing it was something special, I snipe bid on it and ended up winning the auction for a great price. The clock was located only a few kilometres from where I grew up – talk about fate – and the proceeds of the sale were donated to charity. A nice result for everyone in the end.

Cho: In 2012, I was on a bit of a tear for F.P. Journes. I had a Chronomètre Souverain – I regret I sold it – and a Réserve de Marche, which I bought and sold quite quickly. I have always been interested in smaller watches and, at the time, the 36mm Octa Divine in particular, which was technically part of the ladies’ collection, and while I was in New York I found a dealer in California who had a second-hand one available.

About four years later, the date wheel of the Divine stopped advancing. I had a colleague drop it off at the boutique in New York to be looked at. A few days later, I got an alarming email from F.P. Journe saying the watch was stolen property. I was asked to produce all its paperwork so they could ascertain how I got hold of it. I was also told the watch would not be coming back to me. It was to be confiscated and returned to F.P. Journe’s insurer. The watch had, in fact, been stolen from its Paris boutique 10 years earlier. Good citizen that I am, as well as an avid keeper of emails, I provided all my communication with the dealer, as well as my wire transfer receipt. Because I had proved I had unwittingly bought stolen property, I was no longer a suspect, but I was still poorer by one watch and its purchase price.

On a side note, while all this was going on, the whole episode kickstarted a strong relationship with the brand, which resulted in my commissioning a limited series of watches from them in 2018. That was one great unexpected consequence.

As for the stolen watch that started the whole tale, I contacted the dealer, who refused to issue a refund and instead directed me to the original seller of the watch. I had to resort to legal action, after which I eventually recovered the price I paid for the watch, plus a portion of my legal fees.

With the help of its New York team, I also managed to buy the Octa Divine 36 from F.P. Journe’s insurer at a significant discount, because it was not interested in holding onto a watch that it had paid out for 10 years ago. The watch was already in Geneva, so I asked F.P. Journe to service it before returning it to me. A year and a half after it first broke, I finally got the watch back and it eventually cost much less than I had paid for it six years earlier, even with the legal bills and servicing.

Mak: One of the most valuable watches I have purchased was bought in a dimly lit, cigarette smoke-filled room, with characters of questionable vocational backgrounds. I didn’t carry cash for the fear of being extorted or worse, so we transported the watch – box, papers and all – in an unassuming grocery bag through the wet markets of Hong Kong to a nearby bank to settle the transaction in an orderly fashion. It couldn’t be any more like a scene from a classic Hong Kong film.

Cho: There are some old Seiko watches that were made with the Japanese imperial family’s crest on the dial. They are the only Seikos ever to have the Seiko logo moved to six o’clock in deference to the imperial crest at 12 o’clock. I would love to own one of those. The crest itself is quite beautiful.

Hirsch: I’m a big Star Wars fan, so whatever watch Obi-Wan Kenobi would wear. I imagine him wearing something classy, but under the radar. Maybe a yellow gold Patek Philippe 3970 would do him justice.

Mak: It would be Wei Koh’s Cartier Crash piece – unique with its handsome midnight blue fumé dial. Wei’s new special order Crash is an astute interpretation of one of the most mythical and beautiful case designs in history. It respects the pure and ornamental elegance of the original design from 1967 only to show its true unique character in the dark with its luminous features. Understated and disguised and evocative of the Cartier brand.

Cho: I collect some photography, mainly Japanese. My wife says I seem to be very attracted to melancholy or geometric things.

Hirsch: Because of my long hair, I’ve been collecting hats for the past couple of years.

Mak: As a design lover, I also collect vintage designer furniture, vitreous enamel number plates and rare and unique horology memorabilia.