Mitch Katz — The Inner Life of Collecting

Why watches become meaningful only when they become personal

In a watch world increasingly dominated by prices, waitlists, auction records, investment logic, and social media status, Mitch Katz offers a very different philosophy.

For him, collecting is not a scoreboard.

It is not a competition.
It is not a portfolio.
It is not a performance.

It is a lived experience.

As the author of Time on My Hands: A Collector’s Journey in the World of Watches, Mitch approaches horology through memory, friendship, emotion, and interpretation. He does not deny that watches can be valuable, rare, or historically significant. But he insists that these things are not enough. A watch becomes meaningful when it enters a life — when it carries a story, marks a moment, recalls a person, or opens the door to a friendship.

This conversation, then, is about the private side of collecting that often remains hidden behind public discussions of value. It is about why collectors collect, how taste forms over time, and why the most important part of a collection may not be the watches themselves, but the stories that attach to them.

Watches, Politics, and the Patronage of Time

Mitch begins by admitting that when he first heard the idea of Watches & Politics, he did not immediately understand the connection. But after engaging with the series, he began to see the relationship more clearly.

His answer turns the usual question around.

Instead of asking only how watches appear in politics, he suggests that politics itself has often advanced watchmaking.

Kings, courts, navies, militaries, and states all needed timekeeping. Their needs — for navigation, coordination, power, accuracy, and prestige — gave watchmakers the resources and incentives to innovate. John Harrison’s marine chronometers, Breguet’s patronage by powerful elites, and the development of tool watches for military and exploratory purposes all become examples of how political necessity pushed horology forward.

In Mitch’s view, watches and politics form a two-way relationship.

Watches express power.

But power also helped create watches.

Collecting as a Journey, Not a Checklist

Mitch’s own collecting story began with memory.

After his father passed away, he wanted a mechanical watch to memorialize him. That first watch opened the door to a much larger world — one of reading, learning, meeting people, and discovering how watches can carry emotional weight.

He compares this with earlier collecting forms such as stamps and baseball cards. Those collections often have checklists. You know what you have, what you need, and what completes the set.

Watches are different.

There is no final checklist.

There is no natural end point.

Instead, collecting becomes a path — shaped by taste, relationships, mistakes, discoveries, and changing desires. The watches matter, of course, but the journey around them matters just as much.

For Mitch, the moment of realization came when he tried to explain his collection to his sons. A spreadsheet of watches was not enough. The objects alone did not explain anything. What mattered were the stories behind them.

That insight became the seed for his book.

The Story Is the Collection

One of the central themes of the conversation is that collecting is inseparable from storytelling.

For Mitch, acquiring a watch through auction may be meaningful for some people, but it often lacks the personal story he seeks. He is drawn instead to the encounters, conversations, friendships, and circumstances that surround an acquisition.

The watch becomes a memory object.

It recalls a place.
A person.
A dinner.
A discovery.
A long conversation.
A friendship.

That is why selling watches becomes difficult. To sell a watch is not merely to sell an object. It can feel like selling a memory.

This is one of the most powerful ideas in the interview: collecting is not only about possession. It is about emotional continuity.

Taste Comes From Within

When asked what people misunderstand about taste, Mitch is direct.

Taste should come from within.

In today’s watch world, many collectors fear making the wrong choice. They rely heavily on experts, influencers, commentators, and market signals. They worry that a watch may not be approved by the right people or validated by the right communities.

Mitch rejects that logic.

He argues that he has never made a mistake buying a watch.

Not because he still owns every watch.

Not because every watch remained important forever.

But because at the moment of purchase, each watch was right for him.

Taste evolves. Collectors change. A watch that once gave joy may later no longer fit. But that does not make the original decision a mistake.

For Mitch, the question is not whether a watch is “correct” by external standards.

The question is whether it gives joy.

Online Communities, Authority, and the Problem of Expertise

The conversation then turns to the modern media ecosystem — forums, podcasts, Instagram, YouTube, chat groups, and the new world of self-declared expertise.

Mitch acknowledges that many people do excellent work and provide real education. But he is also cautious.

The current watch world contains more information than ever before, but also more noise.

New brands appear constantly. New voices claim authority. New narratives develop at high speed. For newcomers, it can be overwhelming to distinguish serious knowledge from hype, journalism from promotion, and education from self-branding.

Mitch’s response is to stay close to people he trusts.

People with shared values.
People with similar aesthetic instincts.
People whose judgment has been tested over time.

In this sense, his collecting philosophy is deeply relational. Authority does not come from follower count. It comes from trust.

The Forgotten Innovators

One of the most important parts of the interview is Mitch’s discussion of overlooked makers.

He argues that some watchmakers become historically celebrated because the right storytellers carry their legacy forward. Others, equally important, remain less recognized because no one properly tells their story.

George Daniels remains central to modern horology partly because Roger Smith has helped preserve and communicate his legacy.

Derek Pratt, by contrast, remains underappreciated despite his brilliance and his role in solving important technical problems.

Mitch also mentions Thomas Prescher, Ulysse Nardin’s Freak, Stephen McDonnell, Andreas Strehler, Habring, and Marco Lang as examples of watchmakers, brands, or categories whose importance deserves deeper recognition.

His point is essential to Watches & Politics:

History does not write itself.

It needs narrators.

And when the right narrators are absent, important contributions can remain hidden.

What Makes a Collection Historically Meaningful?

For Mitch, historical significance is not primarily about price, rarity, or brand prestige.

It is about firsts.

The first to solve a problem.
The first to open a path.
The first to do something others later follow.

He compares watches to art. Rembrandt matters because of his use of light. Picasso matters because he changed visual language. Warhol matters because he helped define Pop Art.

In watches, similar importance attaches to those who pushed the boundaries of horology: early co-axial escapements, astronomical complications, pioneering independents, prototypes, experimental movements, and watches that mark a turning point in technical or cultural history.

A historically meaningful collection, then, is not necessarily the most expensive.

It is the one that preserves turning points.

Writing as Responsibility

Because Mitch is both collector and author, the conversation naturally turns to responsibility.

What happens when private passion becomes public narrative?

His answer is clear: transparency matters.

A writer must be honest about relationships, access, benefits, friendships, and personal bias. In a world where brands, media, and collectors often overlap, transparency becomes essential to trust.

Mitch does not pretend to be neutral in the cold, academic sense. He loves watches. He knows people. He has received kindness and hospitality from brands and makers.

But he insists that his collecting decisions come from personal meaning, not from favors or hidden arrangements.

That honesty is what gives his writing its credibility.

Better History or Faster Mythology?

The modern watch world produces stories constantly.

But Mitch is skeptical about whether all of those stories amount to better history.

He points out that mythology has always existed in horology: claims of total in-house production, revived brand names with unclear continuity, romanticized histories, and carefully curated narratives that leave out inconvenient gaps.

The industry can be opaque.

Suppliers are hidden.
Case makers are unnamed.
Dial makers disappear behind brand language.
Technical partners go uncredited.

For Mitch, better history requires more transparency.

The watch world does not need fewer stories.

It needs more honest ones.

“He Followed His Heart”

When asked what subtitle he would want for a future chapter called Mitch Katz and the Inner Life of Collecting, his answer is beautifully simple:

“He followed his heart and hoped his brain made sense out of it.”

That line captures the entire conversation.

Collecting is emotional first.
Intellectual second.
Market-driven last.

The heart finds the object.

The mind builds the explanation.

What Defines a Collector?

Near the end of the interview, Mitch offers one of the clearest collector definitions in the whole series.

He divides the watch world into three groups.

First are the flippers, who see watches primarily as commodities.

Second are the enthusiasts, who may know every technical detail but do not necessarily feel the need to own the objects.

Third are collectors.

Collectors are united by passion.

They are driven by joy, desire, memory, and emotional connection. They do not need a rigid theme or a single brand focus. For Mitch, the unifying principle of a collection is the collector.

A collection is meaningful because it reflects the person who built it.

The common thread is not size, brand, complication, or price.

The common thread is joy.