What was your first watch? Do you still have it?

Mr Tom Chng: I became fascinated with the intricacies of mechanical watches, but started my horological journey with a steel Rolex Datejust from the early 2000s. Ironically, my first watch did not allow me to peer into the movement to satisfy that fascination. It served me well but has since left the collection.

Mr Silas Walton: The first watch I bought for myself was a stainless steel Cartier Tank. Sadly, I had to sell it when raising funds to start A Collected Man. My very first watch was a Casio. I remember distracting my school friends by using it to time how long we could hold our respective breaths for, instead of paying attention in class. It’s probably still sitting in a drawer somewhere, next to some Pokémon, gathering dust and crying out for a new battery.

Mr Mitch Greenblatt: My first watch was a 1980s Pac-Man LCD game watch by Nelsonic that is sadly long gone. I see they’re on eBay for up to $500 nowadays, but I’m not nostalgic for 1980s watches. Yet.

What’s your holy grail?

Walton: The mythical, double-signed Daniels and Smith wristwatch; British watchmaker George Daniels and his now famous apprentice Roger Smith are said to have produced at least one watch bearing both of their names, but it’s something of a chimera.

Chng: A mid-century AP Perpetual Calendar Chronograph will do it for me.

Greenblatt: My holy grail was an “achievement unlocked” moment when I found a pre-owned Urwerk from 2007, the purple TiALN (Titanium Aluminium Nitride) with rare angular crystal for the 103 series. One of only a handful made, this very rare colour and crystal design gives me a satisfaction like no other mechanical watch in my collection. I luckily acquired it before they announced the retirement of the 103 series and the prices skyrocketed.

What was the last watch you bought?

Greenblatt: An almost brutalist looking bracelet-watch by Tissot. A modernist sculpture in sterling silver that reminds me of the unobtainable one-of-a-kind watches of Andrew Grima, designer of avant-garde watch designs, most famously for Omega’s About Time collection in the early 1970s.

Chng: A 30-year-old Audemars Piguet Perpetual Calendar Chronograph Minute Repeater with teardrop lugs.

Walton: A Cartier Tank Asymétrique in platinum, from the mid-1990s. They only made 100 of them in that metal and it’s one of my favourite daily wears.

What’s the one watch you’d save from a fire, and why?

Chng: The Harry Winston x Vianney Halter Opus 3. It was such a monumental point of the industry, giving more power to independent creators to showcase their craft. The development costs and time sunk into the project for only 55 pieces was incredible – I think it needs to survive.

Walton: Very difficult question to answer, but it would have to be my Series 1 commission from Roger Smith. It just holds a tremendous amount of sentimental value.

Greenblatt: The Urwerk UR-103 that I mentioned above.

Do you have a “one that got away”? Or a watch you regret selling?

Greenblatt: I once owned a 1974 Heuer Monaco “Dark Lord” in black PVD. I was a struggling illustrator at the time and sold vintage watches to supplement my income. Sadly, back in 1999, I didn’t realise how rare they were (fewer than 200 were made) and sold it to a Japanese collector for an unspeakably low price. Last time I checked, one sold for 30 times what I sold it for.

Walton: I should have bought a Philippe Dufour Duality back when I had the chance. I always regret selling Kari Voutilainen’s first Observatoire, too.

Chng: I sold my Urwerk UR-202 to fund the Opus 3. I still miss it. It’s such a cool watch. Thankfully it’s with a mate now, so I still get to see it from time to time. Maybe one day it’ll come back.

Have you ever paid too much for a watch? What happened?

Walton: I bought an AP Royal Oak 15202BC on a summer impulse last year. Absolutely wonderful watch, but I paid top-of-the-market price for a preowned example. No regret paying that much, but I just couldn’t wear it because of the weight of the gold bracelet and the constant risk of scratch marks. Important lesson learnt: buy what you love, but be practical, too.

Chng: What else? The heart did all the thinking, as usual.

Greenblatt: Yes, a 1970s Uranus Electronic LED Calculator watch. I had wanted one of these over 20 years of collecting. They’re just so rare and even rarer in working condition. This one was mint, fully functional and in the original box. I had to have it, but once I got it, it just didn’t do anything except stress me out due to its fragile antiquated electronics. So I sold it to relieve the pressure in my head.

Have you ever snapped up a total bargain? What was it, and how?

Walton: A good friend and I bought a vintage Jaeger-LeCoultre Rue de la Paix lamppost clock for about €50 at a flea market in France a few years ago. We cleaned it up and sold it at auction a few weeks later for more than €1,000.

Chng: Years ago, a good friend found me a really special Audemars Piguet Star Wheel just sitting in a charming little vintage store in Taiwan. It was too good to be true. My partner and I immediately flew there to see it in person, and it checked out. This was probably the first watch I took a plane just to acquire.

Greenblatt: A Russian vintage watch dealer, whom I met at the Chelsea Flea Market in NYC, would come by my Brooklyn apartment whenever he had some interesting pieces. One time, mixed in with an assortment of unmemorable watches was a flawless 1969 Hamilton Odyssee 2001 – a watch born from the collaboration of Hamilton and Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick had commissioned Hamilton and other brands to reimagine their products in the future and the watch and clock Hamilton produced were remarkable. Hamilton made two versions, including a more conventional, commercially viable watch released to coincide with the movie’s opening. This was the rarer model, and it was going for a song.

Have you ever acquired a watch in unusual circumstances, or a watch with an unusual story?

Walton: When I was in my teens, I inherited my great-great grandfather’s pocket watch. It has a silver case and I remember asking my grandfather about a strange mark on the caseback. He said his father had been working on the family farm, when the watch slipped out of a pocket and promptly got picked out of the mud by a pig. The scuff was left from the subsequent tussle to free the watch from the pig’s mouth. Nothing too glamorous, but it always makes me laugh when I turn it over and remember the story. I also love the fact that it’s been in multiple generations of my family.

Chng: I have a very special composite Hublot given to me by the godfather of the Singapore watch scene, Mr Wei Koh.

Greenblatt: The watches that got my watch collecting really going back in the late 1990s were the early 1970s Spaceman watches by André Le Marquand – a collection of space-inspired timepieces that looked like spaceships or space helmets. A bit of a novelty, but Swiss-made with automatic and manually winding movements. Needless to say, they were few and far between. I was able to contact André Le Marquand’s son, who told me about a secret stash of vintage “new-old-stock” Spaceman watches that had been in storage in Basel since they were new. A girlfriend of mine at the time was attending the Prêt-à-Porter shows in Paris, so I tagged along, took a train to Switzerland, returned that same day with my first wholesale acquisition and major vintage purchase. It’s the only reason I started selling vintage in the first place: finding this trove led me to create Watchismo in 1999.

Do you collect anything other than watches?

Walton: I collect vintage Scandinavian furniture. It’s beautiful to look at, made to last and incredibly comfortable. I also drive a 1970s 911T, although I’m not sure having something in a single example really counts as a collection.

Greenblatt: I like unusual vintage gadgets, especially anything time-related or old gizmos with meters or gauges. I have a few antique radiation detectors, hygrometers, barometers, some things I have no idea what they do and a lot of cool space-age clocks.

Chng: I like accessories from Supreme, and I have them all around the house. My other half puts up with it, so all is good.

If you could own any watch with legendary provenance, what would it be?

Greenblatt: I’m not too greedy, but I’d love the actual one-of-a-kind prop watch from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. Last I heard it’s in a museum, so that may be difficult.

Chng: I’d love the RM 001, the one that Richard Mille threw across the room back at the very beginning of it all. [The story goes that as a stunt to prove the remarkable shock-resistance of his watches, founder Mr Richard Mille would hurl his very first watch, a supposedly delicate, undeniably complex tourbillon, across the room onto a hard floor to demonstrate its resilience – Ed.]

Walton: JFK’s Omega Slimline. I once had the privilege of putting it on my wrist at the Omega Museum and I can still remember the goosebumps.