JM: And so you were buying multiple watches ten years ago when people were saying, Oh, why would you buy this many watches?
DD: Oh, I always hear people, you know, "That amount of money for a watch? You're out of your mind."
JM: You don't hear it so much anymore though, right?
DD: No no no no. Not that and guitars. I mean what a lot of people don't— I've said this over and over: I'm not rich. I have no money. But I have good skills of eventually flipping—I call them parachutes—so I can keep doing art. So early on I was buying blackface Deluxes and Super Reverbs and pawn shops in the 90s when I was on the road. And I was selling those things at Hollywood Guitar Center for ten times the money to keep going. To not work a job. Combing Craigslist. All kinds of shit.
JM: That overlaps with what I have a serious addiction to which is like Googling specs.
DD: Oh, once I like something, I know everything about it.
JM: And what's funny is if you told me when I was in middle school. If I was in a library in Middle School and you said, "You see that card catalog over there? You are gonna flip your shit for that card catalog in 30 years." And I'd be like, What are you talking? "No you're just gonna love looking things up. And you know the Dewey Decimal System, you're gonna love it. It's gonna be for watches and you're gonna learn every reference number."
What could be theoretically more boring than a reference number for a watch, and yet for us they're like visual numbers. I say 5513 you know what I mean.
DD: Yeah. 1016.
JM: See it. Explorer One.
You start saying these things. Who would have ever thought that I would be interested in this sort of mathematics? Are you like me where you will buy something, and you were pretty well-informed the day you bought it, but once it's in hand then you Google everything about it so that it—
DD: Oh, I do that out of paranoia.
JM: Oh, to make sure you got the correct one
DD:
JM: Oh, that's interesting.
DD: So I get it and I realize I know pretty much 99% on it and then I'll see something I'll go, I don't think that's right. Then I grab books and then I find out, Oh this one particular year they change these two screws. I got the right one!
JM: Okay so there is one that has a closed nine on the date wheel. So look at it sort of like glass half-empty, I look at it like, I know the thing I have is real, but I want to get my money's worth. The only way you can get your money's worth, especially when things are kind of like gross in terms of how much they cost. Cause my parents were educators, so I still have that as a point of reference. I have my parents annual salary as a point of reference that keeps me grounded.
So when there's something I know would have made my parents sick to their stomach to see the number on, it's like I feel like I don't get the most out of the item unless I Google it to the very last spec both on the spec sheet on the manufacturer's website, and then I go into forums. And then I go into Instagram hashtags. I want to see everyone wear it, what does it look like. I will keep looking and looking and looking and that's what a lot of Rolex collectors have done.
DD: You ever get burned?
JM: I've gotten burned.
DD: I got burned recently selling a watch to a guy. A supposed friend. I sold it to him, he goes, I'll pay you the rest later and just said, No I'm not paying you. And I'll fill you in on that person later.
JM: It's funny because he was an instrument dealer, music instrument dealer, and he asked me—and I bought stuff from him before. And he asked me did I have anything that I wanted to let go of because he had a bunch of buyers. And I think he did for a time. And I started looking through what I had and I went, Well maybe it's time to start selling stuff off.
I gave him a Dumble Overdrive Reverb.
DD: Because you didn't like that one? We'll get into the Dumbles, you got a bunch.
JM: I thought, You know it's not the one I've fallen in love with the most, and I really worked hard to track it down and it involved a relationship and somebody trusting me and seeing that I was gonna be the guy to own it.
And I remember driving off this guy's out of this guy's driveway with a Overdrive Reverb and a 410 EV cab. The thing was so preserved they took the road case lid off and the foam crumbled out. It decomposed. The thing was absolutely perfect.
And okay well I hadn't fallen in love with that one, and so I'm gonna weed and seed, make some room. A little more money back and just sort of start doing what most normal people do which is to don't own everything. And a couple of other things—and they were important things—and took them and ran.
Kept saying he would pay me, kept saying he would pay me. Filed for bankruptcy. Had to go to court, had to do all this stuff. And I think every musician at some point has to know that there's stuff out there that they got ripped off on.
Keith Urban came across the Dumble Overdrive Reverb and I think he bought it.
DD: Oh shit.
JM: And so it's not his fault. Enjoy the amp. You bought it fair and square. You didn't get screwed.
DD: Is it considered stolen?
JM: That's a really good question. It's not considered stolen. The money that was owed to me is considered stolen. The item itself—this is where it just gets unfun right?
DD: That's brutal, man.
JM: It's really weird. So here's the game of watches or here's what it was up until the sort "brand new" game came into town, which is like, buy it brand new and you can flip it the next day for three.
This also goes to sort of the dawn of using the Internet to create information. Like using the Internet to spawn new information. Somebody called the green Submariner the "Hulk." One guy. And it stuck and it gave him he got his jollies. And it's probably good for that watch because people now go I want the "Hulk." So if you own four of them good for you. You're up thousands of dollars.
And this is the war out there now—and it has been this way for ten years—is like, stare at the watch you already own, see if there's anything different about it, and name it. If you can name it like a rail dial. Somebody just realized that superlative chronometer officially certified lines up a certain way. Rolex didn't care. But it means you don't have to go out and buy another watch you can just say, Oh there's a new spec in town.
It's almost like astronomy, like discovering a new star in the sky and getting to name it. Like the Batman was originally called the "Bruiser." Batman stuck. Steve McQueen, 1655 Explorer II. You never wore that watch. Somebody managed to follow suit with the Paul Newman naming and went, Ah it's Steve McQueen, and it worked!
So it's this game of like manipulating the information which I'm not into doing. I'm not even into people flipping things for 3x. I think it's bad for everybody. We didn't buy these watches brand new because we wanted to flip. We wanted to wear 'em.
DD: And the big bummer to me John is, if I get on the list for a 5711. Now if I got it, I really couldn't even wear it. Because it's worth like $70,000.
JM: I think that you should wear it like you just bought it, and you can get it again anywhere. The only way to really be a true watch guy is to just rip it out of the packaging and just start banging it up. That's the only way to prove your loyalty to the watch gods is to just start wearing it and forget about the secondary market thing, which is so dirty.
For people who've been doing this for a decade and longer, there's kind of just a grossness to it. A steel nautilus is an entry-level Patek Phillipe that should be fun to buy. You should throw it on and you should beat the hell out of it. And I don't think they look good until you beat the hell out of it.
You just should beat it up. Those watches are not supposed to be babied. It's why they made them out of steel. I have a 5164 and it's so beat up. First of all those bezels are made to be chewed up. Anything that has a flush bezel to me, you're just asking for it.
So it's just weird to like see this spike in enthusiasm for a thing that you and I had been enthusiastic about in our own way. I'm wearing a Piece Unique Aquanaut that I bought ten years ago for fun off [of] a guy. He goes, "Yeah this person ordered one of each color. Blue, white, maroon, and green." I've got the green one. I went, Yeah I want the green one. It's cool! I don't know what it's worth now to have a Piece Unique Aquanaut that's green and has a red second set. I don't care!
DD: It's insane. Isn't that from Dubai? Did they make that for India or Dubai, that color the green one?
JM: It depends. I think it could have been Asia. But they do a lot of stuff for the Arab market with emeralds. But isn't it fun? I've had it for ten years and I just pulled it out the other day and I went, Oh that's a fun little thing now that everybody's wearing the green.
