Then comes the refining phase (“That Patek chronograph. Not for me. I don’t wear it. I’ll sell it’”). And finally, end game. “Which is, ‘I’ve owned these watches all my life. I’ve ticked that box. I’m no longer a watch fanatic. I’m now interested in wine or cars or art,’ or whatever. And they liquidate.”

Outside of their immediate family, a watch collection can be the most cherished and personal thing in some men’s lives. But motivations for parting with it are surprisingly wide-ranging. There is the investment director who traded in a dozen timepieces to buy his grail watch, an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Jumbo. The chauffeur who began his collecting journey with a £140 Rotary and, together with his wife, traded his way up to six Patek Philippes that he never wears and that never leave his safe. It’s their retirement plan. This summer, one collector consigned 11 of the same Rolex Submariner to Bonhams, the reference 116610LV, or Hulk, so called because of its all-green profile and marginally thicker case, selling simply because the timing was right.

In November, Mr Mark Cho, co-founder of the menswear brand The Armoury and the co-owner of Drake’s, was preparing to sell two-thirds of the 90-watch collection that he had spent 16 years amassing, partly because the rest of the world had caught up with his good taste. And it was now working against him. “I love the [Patek Philippe] Nautilus [ref. 3800] I’m selling” he says. “But these days, Nautiluses attract quite a lot of negative attention, unfortunately, so it’s time to move on.”

Cho also has a more specific reason to sell his watches. He wants to buy a bigger premises for The Armoury. “I don’t think I’ll miss these things,” he says of a personal collection that includes several one-offs made for him by watch brands. “I’m happy that I got to enjoy them and they’re going towards something that’s more important in my life. You can’t have everything, right? You’ve got to make some trade-offs.”

To prove his commitment to both potential buyers and to himself, Cho is making sure he includes his “most significant” watches – such as one of the first models produced by the Japanese microbrand Naoya Hida & Co, the founder being a good friend – in the sale and not just the stuff he hasn’t worn for years. Indeed, a theme with the collectors I spoke to was just how at peace they were with letting their watches go.

“Seller’s remorse?” Marks says. “We never see it.” The process between consigning a collection to an auction house and printing the catalogue typically takes six months. “By which time they’ve totally disconnected,” he says. “We never strong-arm anyone. And we would never have an issue with a client who suddenly woke up and said, ‘Look, I can’t part with this.’”

Marks points out that sentimentality plays less of a role than ever. “The emotion has changed from how it was 20 years ago, when the notion of owning more than one watch was really quite alien. The days of, ‘I can’t sell that, my dad gave it to me for my 21st,’ or, ‘It’s the watch I got when I graduated from university,’ are finished.”

In 2010, the Austrian collector and consultant Mr Arno Haslinger auctioned off 81 TAG Heuers from the golden era of Formula One. They had all featured in his book Heuer Chronographs: Fascination Of Time Keepers And Motorsports, 1960s/1970. It had been produced with the cooperation of then-chairman Mr Jack Heuer, it was the brand’s 150th anniversary year and Haslinger was a consultant for Bonhams, an auction house with close links to motor racing. The stars had aligned.

“My background is in marketing,” Haslinger says, via Zoom from Austria. His daughter’s dog, Cookie, yaps in the background and an image of a Porsche 917 signed by Mr Steve McQueen is on the wall behind him. “And I thought, ‘I can’t not choose this opportunity’. I have absolutely no regrets, it was one of the best things I ever did.”

There are some people, of course, who sell their collections because they do need the money. “It was financial catastrophe that forced me to sell,” says Mr Ken Kessler, the watch collector and journalist who has written for decades about watches for titles ranging from Playboy to The Wall Street Journal. “I was just wallowing in debt.”

As well as collecting watches, Kessler owns 400 bottles of wine, 10,000 books and 12,000 LPs – somehow 800 of them by The Beatles – plus a load of model Bugatti cars. So it is not hard to understand why his finances might have tipped into the red.

In 2017, he sent 14 of his prized watches to Bonhams, including military-issued models by Omega, Timor and Smiths. “I just pulled out the ones I thought that would sell,” Kessler says.

Today, he regards the experience with “mixed emotions”. While two of his watches set records, at £6,000 and £8,000, one went for below the reserve price, something that still rankles. Another issue is that two of the lots have subsequently become highly sought after. “But you have to let go and you have to be a realist,” Kessler says. “If you live long enough, you will see something sell for more than you sold it for. If you sold a Jaguar E-Type in the 1980s for £8,000 and now it’s worth £100,000, you can’t kick yourself because of the appreciation.”

And anyway, collecting has changed completely over recent years. “You’re not going to do what I did, when I started out – go into an Oxfam shop and find a Hamilton Vietnam watch for £10,” Kessler says. “There are no ‘finds’ anymore. The Antiques Roadshow, eBay, the internet auction houses… Everyone knows everything these days.”

It perhaps goes some way to explaining the rise of single-brand auctions. Someone who was once “the Breguet guy” and has grown bored can now become “the Franck Muller guy” without expending a lifetime’s energy hunting down the watches. It’s like swapping one completed Panini sticker album for another. Some might say that is a sorry state of affairs – what’s the point in collecting in the first place? Others would say that since everyone lost faith in the banks after the 2008 financial crash, watches have become more attractive as a tangible way of storing and/or transporting wealth. “Effectively, they have become an asset class,” says Marks. “And, as with all asset classes, it’s always value up, emotion down.”

Either way, Kessler will not be buying any more watches. “At some point, if you’ve got an emotional attachment to anything, you’ve got to put your foot down and say, ‘It’s time’. You can’t look back. It’s like quitting smoking.”

Others have simply got back on the horse. Haslinger has now amassed enough vintage TAG Heuers for a second book. Or a second auction. So, how about it? Everyone loves a sequel. “I think it would be boring,” he says. “It was perfect as it was. It was linked to a certain period in my life. And it made me very happy.”