The Fourth Wheel, Issue 53

Guarding watch knowledge for profit, fashion shoots and Patek flips

Hello and welcome back to The Fourth Wheel, the weekly watch newsletter that still cannot understand anyone who scratches off half the dial of a Patek Philippe to find out what it’s made from. I mean honestly, for the same money you could have a brand new one-off Audemars Piguet Spider-Man watch that’s not scratched at all! A no-brainer, surely.¹ More comment on the Emperor Puyi Calatrava 96QL at the end of the Issue…

But before we get to that, I am enormously pleased to announce our very first guest column, from Russell Sheldrake. Russell has spent the last three years as the editor for A Collected Man’s Journal, and under his oversight, ACM has become a hub of well-researched, in-depth articles of which any magazine would be proud. As chance would have it, Russell’s appearance in The Fourth Wheel coincides with the end of his time at ACM - nothing to do with me, I promise - and we will soon see him writing for a website with which we’re all familiar; one of the best and most highly-respected watch sites out there. I will let you guess.

Also: everyone who writes a guest column gets to set me a Watch Challenge - a fantasy gauntlet thrown down over which we shall, in a civilised fashion, compete. Russell challenged me to pick: The Best Watch To Wear To A Trade Fair. Read on to find out what we each chose.

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Guest column: “Knowledge is power” by Russell Sheldrake

They say knowledge is power. In fact, I believe in the watch world knowledge is everything. As a watch writer, I have very little knowledge in the grand scheme of things, but I have made my living speaking to those who know far more and leaning on their expertise.

It’s commonly said that we live in a wonderful era for watch collectors; that the internet in general and social media in particular has opened up vast troves of knowledge that were previously closed off. How many times have you read an interview with a passionate collector or brand heritage expert and heard words to the effect of “we now have the internet and everything you could ever want to know is online”?

However, I can tell you from my own experience that it is not always as simple as that. Not everyone is an open book and willing to share their insights for the greater good of collectors worldwide.