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Trophies You Didn’t Earn

A conversation with explorer David Concannon... on watches that work for a living, the bootleg Explorers Club Flag, and sitting alone with Apollo rocket engines!

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Ben Clymer, Hodinkee, and The Chairman Who Wasn't There

Jan 17, 2025 • kingflum

What Your Watch Is Actually Worth

Feb 13 • kingflum

Swiss Made or Swiss Charade?

Nov 13, 2024 • kingflum

A Personal Update

Jun 25, 2025 • kingflum

SDC Weekly

SDC Weekly 151; The Escapement; Chanel vs Breitling; Top of the K shape at Phillips New York

What is The Escapement? Why can Chanel fight Breitling over a name? How a $13.9m Journe at Phillips proves the K shape is real, Kierkegaard's regret…

Jun 14 • kingflum

SDC Weekly 150; A crazy motherfvcker; Ferrari says please don't buy it

The watch was the key, not the prize. Plus Ferrari's Luce begs you not to buy it, three years of SDC, and a home-time hand no parent can switch off.

Jun 8 • kingflum

SDC Weekly 149; What You Lose When Your Watch Gets a Ticker; Rolex Mirrored Latour's 25-year Escape Plan (Part 2); How Collecting Habits…

Kalshi brings prediction markets to fine art, on NYCwatchguy's bull case for watches, how Rolex copied a wine producer to skim off every resale, and…

Jun 1 • kingflum

SDC Weekly 148; Stern's McDonald's tell; Quality won, luxury lost; the 17th-century bundling tax on your Daytona

Patek's CEO compared themselves to McDonald's. Luxury lost 50m customers. And the Bordeaux wine trade figured out your Daytona waitlist in 1680.

May 25 • kingflum

Unpacking MB&F’s HM12

Complexity as theatre, succession planning, and the genius of a $384,000 action figure.

Jun 16 • kingflum

Where did the time go?

You spend so much time on watches and remember almost none of it. This is about how the decades disappear, what your brain keeps, and why watches can…

Jun 12 • kingflum

Thinking, Fast and Slow... Again.

Turns out your gut might be smarter than a spreadsheet. A new study suggests good collectors don't out-think their instincts, they just build better…

Jun 5 • kingflum

Invisible Forces Shaping the Watch Market

Q1 seems stable, auctions are breaking records, and gold is flying. But what is going on beneath all that noise? What has the consensus not priced in?

May 28 • kingflum

Why most of your watches are technically jewellery

If your Rolex had no movement, would it still be a Rolex? A reply to The Lost Spring Bar on dummy watches, jewellery, and what defines a watch.

May 24 • kingflum

Watch Collecting in the Anti-Social Century

Why watch collecting might still be one of the few antidotes to isolation in the anti-social century. On Derek Thompson, Nick Epley, and the dead space.

May 22 • kingflum

Royal Pop, Two Possibilities

Imagine you're in November 2027 and Royal Pop either saved or ruined Audemars Piguet. Two stories, plus some maths, trademark logic, and research.

May 14 • kingflum

20 Lots from the Geneva Auctions, Spring 2026

Hong Kong just banked an all-time Asian watch auction record. Now Geneva's four houses bring their catalogues, and we review 20 interesting watches.

May 8 • kingflum

AP's Royal Oak in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

AP appear to have done the cleanest possible deal - keep the silhouette but avoid the wrist. Hypothetically, a Royal Oak pocketwatch will protect the…

May 7 • kingflum

Wrist Laundromats

From Hezbollah to Hushpuppi to 1MDB, luxury watches keep showing up in major money laundering cases. Let's talk about watches and moving dirty money…

May 1 • kingflum

Self deception and Survival Instincts

Robert Trivers argued we lie to ourselves so we can better lie to others. Applied to watch collecting, the idea is disturbing - but rather liberating…

Apr 22 • kingflum

Oystersteel, Cerachrom, Everose… why Grand Feu?

The Daytona 126502 is beautiful and inventive - but technically it is not Grand Feu enamel. So why did Rolex, for once, borrow a word instead of…

Apr 16 • kingflum

Newsletters

SDC Weekly is a newsletter containing my thoughts on the world of watches, and any other interesting material I’ve consumed since the last edition. It will likely cover a wide range of subjects in addition to watches including, but not limited to technology, nature, geopolitics, energy economics, parenting and history.

Top posts

Ben Clymer, Hodinkee, and The Chairman Who Wasn't There

Jan 17, 2025 • kingflum

What Your Watch Is Actually Worth

Feb 13 • kingflum

Swiss Made or Swiss Charade?

Nov 13, 2024 • kingflum

A Personal Update

Jun 25, 2025 • kingflum

The Review I Said I'd Never Write

Mar 25 • kingflum

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This is a blog exploring why collectors of luxury items (mainly watches) believe and do what we do, why we pretend otherwise, and how we might do better.

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ScrewDownCrown

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