Eric Wind was turning up everywhere.
There he was in this summer’s WatchPro Hot 100, the trade magazine’s annual list of the watch industry’s most significant names. “Eric follows his own advice and tends to steer clear of hype watches in favour of vintage pieces in excellent condition and interesting provenance,” it noted of the Florida-based dealer.
On OT: The Podcast, Wind came on to explain how he received the call to kit out America’s top basketball players with hard-to-find Rolex Datejusts, in time for the NBA draft.
Over on YouTube, his unstuffy lectures for the Horological Society of New York (founded: 1866) were drawing record audiences. “There’s so much in the world of collecting vintage watches,” Wind said, standing at the lectern wearing a varsity blazer and a big grin. “The first talk already has over 72,000 views. My favourite comment is that someone uses it to put their infant to sleep.”
Then there he was again in The Hollywood Reporter, explaining how he worked with actors and singers to source a Patek Philippe reference 3940 in platinum, or a Rolex Explorer 1016 with a tropical dial.
I found myself developing some weird kind of watchy man-crush on the guy, scrolling through the drool-inducing Heuers and Omegas up for sale on Wind Vintage, every one a bobby-dazzler, and devouring each new episode of Wind’s own podcast, Significant Watches, the day it came out. But still I needed more. At our weekly stand-up in The Big Watch Book offices on the fourth floor of Hearst Magazines UK, I asked the features team if they’d ever come across Wind. Chris Hall, the Substack supremo, was first to mention that he’d spoken to Wind during his forensic reporting for Alpha and Omega (p128), this issue’s rattling account of the most interesting brand in the business. Then Tim Barber, who worked shoulder-to-shoulder with Chris on The 50 Most Important Watches Ever (p58), our hard-fought and definitive countdown, admit
