Photo Report: Visiting the Largest Independent Service Center in the U.S.

Why hundreds of watches pass through Dayton, Ohio every week.

Good afternoon. Free issue today. Before we get to my report from Ohio, a few podcasts you might enjoy during any holiday travel:

• 🎩 You might know the story of the secret inscription inside Abraham Lincoln’s pocket watch, but the Smithsonian’s podcast did an excellent retelling, sitting down with the museum curator and a descendant of the watchmaker who helped discover the famous inscription. Listen on Apple Podcasts.

• 🕰️ This podcast with a young antiquarian explaining why old stuff matters. I think it applies to vintage watches:

  “All of these objects are our common cultural patrimony and belong to us as humanity. My goal isn’t just for people to buy things, but to appreciate them and understand how it’s ours….The amazing craftsmanship, cultural tradition, and the stories embedded in these objects belong to us. One of our biggest mistakes is thinking that the past represents conservatism and the present represents something inherently progressive.”

  Find Middebrow Pod on Apple.

• ⚙️ The Best Watchmaking of 2025. Listen to last week’s Unpolished podcast with Jack Forster. Also find it on Spotify / Apple / RSS.

Read through last Friday’s Q&A—I’ll surface a few of the best for an end-of-year mailbag. You can also find the entire Unpolished archive online.

---

Subscribe to Unpolished for $99/year to get all the good stuff, plus 10% off in the Unpolished Store and $50 off any service at Watchcheck:

An even better deal: become a Founding Member ($199) to receive a free strap and the 2025 Unpolished Rewind Magazine. Shop straps in the Unpolished Store.

---

DAYTON, OHIO–

In October, I drove two hours from my parents’ house in Indianapolis to somewhere you wouldn’t expect to find 40+ trained watchmakers: Dayton, Ohio.

It’s the home of Stoll & Co., which might just be the largest independent service center in the U.S. In 1982, watchmaker Ron Stoll set up shop in Dayton, between his watchmaking school in Pennsylvania and the farm he grew up on in Indiana. He started working in the back of a local jewelry store and expanded as he picked up more retail clients. Throughout the 90s and 2000s, Stoll & Co. became a service center for large brands, while also working with a new generation of independent watchmakers.

Ron Stoll at his desk, wearing a Martin Braun EOS—Stoll & Co. has been an authorized service center for indies like Braun.

I met Ron at Stoll & Co.’s 8,000 square-foot office and service facility, a nondescript office building outside Dayton. Ron was wearing a Martin Braun EOS, one of those indies for which Stoll & Co. was an authorized service center. The EOS has a mechanical sunrise and sunset complication—the first of its kind in a wristwatch—which meant each watch had to be programmed to the owner’s latitude by filing and adjusting a set of cams and gears. As its U.S. service center, guess who had to do all that work by hand?

Today, Stoll & Co. has about 40 watchmakers and 60+ employees. In 2020, it began a partnership with eBay to provide the backend of its authentication program. Almost any watch sold in the U.S. over $2,000 is shipped to Stoll & Co. before being sent to the final buyer.

It was this watchmaker’s first day. On his wrist: The original Seiko Diver 62MAS.

Watchmakers take their shoes off and are issued white Crocs; tools of the trade.

Ron is extroverted and energetic, not at all what you’d expect from a watchmaker in his mid-60s who’s been doing this for 43 years. He’s tall, talkative, jovial, curses a lot, wakes up at 4 a.m. every day (“I’m a farmer,” he says), loves his job, and could run a half-marathon tomorrow. He told me he started doing his neighbors’ yardwork because he’s a perfectionist and couldn’t stand to watch them keep messing it up.

In 2012, Ron’s daughter Emily joined the business. Before joining Ron, she worked at Bucherer in Switzerland. Stoll & Co. had been the U.S. distributor for its house brand, Carl F. Bucherer (and Ron, its North American president), but Rolex shut down the brand after its acquisition in 2023.

One of the main watchmaking spaces.

Parts tucked in every corner.

Stoll & Co.’s facility is organized into a few separate spaces. One portion of the building is dedicated to intake and outbound for its eBay authentication—they can’t disclose volumes, but I’d bet at least a few hundred watches go through the program each week.

Right in the middle, there’s a room for eight watchmakers, which is where some of Stoll & Co.’s longest-tenured employees have their benches.

This is also where I met a watchmaker on his first day. He joined after a few years working at Richemont’s service facility in Miami. Ron has spoken before about the difficulty of recruiting watchmakers, and I’ve also covered the talent shortage. Stoll’s pitch to leave a large brand—especially when it means leaving Miami for Dayton—isn’t easy, but Ron says the promise of working on something different every day instead of doing the same old thing for a brand wins over ambitious watchmakers. The low cost of living in Dayton doesn’t hurt either.

The new hire assembling a Ladies Datejust.

After his orientation and filling out his I-9, the first watch the new watchmaker was given: a Rolex Ladies’ Datejust.

This is also where I chatted with Seth, a vintage specialist who lives on a farm. He had a handful of Omega caliber 321 movements at his bench, which he called his favorite movement. As I’ll discuss below, he’s also the guy who worked on the Movado M95 I sent in for service via Watchcheck.

Seth working on an Omega caliber 321.

Beyond this room, there are a few other fluorescent-lit bullpens for watchmakers. One row is dedicated to Cartier, another to Baume & Mercier. I saw watchmakers working on everything from TAG Heuers (Stoll & Co. is an authorized service center) and Cartiers to old pocket watches.

Cartier after-sales service.

Why I visited Dayton

I wanted to visit Stoll & Co. because its name has been popping up more frequently the past few years, thanks to a few new partnerships. Also, I’ve spent most of my life in the Midwest (I was actually born in Dayton), and was fascinated by a service center in Dayton, Ohio, of all places. About those partnerships:

eBay Authentication. Stoll & Co.’s biggest partnership is with eBay’s Authenticity Guarantee Program. Anecdotally, it’s helped clean up the world’s largest marketplace for watches, especially when it comes to watches made in the last ~25 years. It’s probably not perfect, but it’s a helpful layer of additional protection, particularly for more casual buyers. And eBay sells a ton of watches. If you’re looking at an expensive vintage watch, you likely wouldn’t rely solely on eBay, but I’d suggest that you shouldn’t rely on any single person’s opinion.

Timepiece Grading Specialists. This year, Fred Savage launched a watch grading service, Timepiece Grading Specialists, with Stoll & Co. as its watchmaking partner. Fred’s in Dayton most weeks, and I tried out the authentication service after visiting Stoll & Co., so I’ll talk about TGS and certification in a future newsletter.

Testing Out Watchcheck

'DO NOT REFINISH'

Before visiting Dayton, I tried out Watchcheck, which also uses Stoll & Co., but has built out its own sleek website and online experience. I sent them a Movado M95, which can be a difficult and quirky old chronograph. Read more about my experience in this October newsletter.

I was impressed by my experience and wanted to find a way to partner with Watchcheck, especially since easily the most common question I get is: Where can I have my watch serviced?

Now, all annual subscribers get $50 off any service from Watchcheck. Watchcheck launched about a year ago, and co-founder Linden Lazarus told me it’s servicing “hundreds” of watches each month.

Below, a few more photos from Stoll & Co. Tap the heart or let me know if you enjoyed this dispatch. If you need a watch serviced, why not upgrade to a paid subscription while you’re at it?

A separate room has multiple polishing machines. They’re loud, and polishing or re-polishing cases means manipulating the cases by hand.

For more intense restorations, there’s also a laser welding machine (in blue).

Ron diagnosing an old minute repeater pocket watch.

Intake.

I’ve visited several manufacturers in Europe, but this is the first watchmaking and service center I’ve visited in the U.S. Stoll & Co. has an impressive collection of watchmakers, and the tools and equipment to do cool sh*t. I was surprised how much it looked like some of the facilities I’ve seen in Switzerland. For more, visit Stoll & Co. online.