Sell Your Watches, Checklist Collecting, And When Heuer Was Hype (Jeff Stein, On the Dash)

Jeff Stein is a collector, researcher, scholar, retired lawyer from Atlanta, and the proprietor of On the Dash, the resource for all things Heuer. Since 2003, he’s meticulously documented nearly 600 watches there. In 2016, he was featured in a Talking Watches episode on Hodinkee.

Ten years later, he still owns slightly more than half of the 50 or 60 Heuers that were on his kitchen table while filming that episode. Jeff registered on eBay in 1998 and he’s been collecting watches ever since.

We talk about his “checklist era” of collecting and upgrading his collection; the personal Heuer grails he’s chasing that no one else is; why community grails like Chronomatics and Seafarers are strong while so many other vintage tool watches have gone soft; an assessment of Heuer collecting over the last few years; what he’d buy if he had $5,000 or $10,000; the TAG Heuer divers that kept the company alive; the $500 S/eL his daughter wears; the Breguet, Audemars Piguet, Piaget, Sinn, and other watches that Jeff also enjoys.

We close with some advice: Know when to sell your watches. “The only way I could have never sold a watch might be if I’d never made a mistake in buying a watch,” Jeff says.

Thanks to Jeff for joining the Unpolished Watches Podcast.

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Jeff’s kitchen table when he filmed Talking Watches in 2016. First two images courtesy of Jeff Stein.

Clockwise: A few of Jeff's Autavia's during his 'checklist era' of collecting; Jeff's gilt 2406; a pair of Heuer divers from the 1990s; three 'community grails,' A Skipperera, gold 1158CHN, and 2447SN

Show Notes

• OntheDash.com; Jeff on Instagram

• Jeff Stein’s Talking Watches from 2016

• Absolutely Everything About the Heuer Autavia “Viceroy” Chronograph, On the Dash

• Guide to TAG Heuer Dive Watches, On the Dash

• Berneron Mirage at LoupeThis

• New TAG Heuer Monza Flyback, On the Dash

• Sinn EZM1, Unpolished

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