JUN 28, 2026

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Hello, and welcome back to About Time.

This week we catch up with Geoff Hess, Global Head of Watches at Sotheby's. Plus Blancpain reminds us that less can be more.

Geoff Hess has one of the most influential jobs in the watch industry. As Sotheby’s Global Head of Watches, the former lawyer oversees the sale of some of the world's most valuable timepieces. Before joining Sotheby's in 2023, he spent nearly five years as an International Specialist at Philips Auction House, having previously served as CEO of New York-based pre-owned watch specialist Analog Shift.

A lifelong collector himself, he’s also the founder of New York’s Rolliefest, one of the hobby’s best-known enthusiast gatherings [we wrote about it here], and a member of the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève Academy.

Hess joined Sotheby's just as the auction world was becoming one of the most influential parts of modern watch collecting. As values climbed and increasingly significant collections came to market, the role of the auction specialist evolved from expert behind the scenes into one of the industry’s most visible figures.

Earlier this month, Sotheby’s New York watch sale attracted bidders from 60 countries and delivered a string of record-breaking results, underlining both the scale of today's market and the responsibility that comes with selling its rarest pieces.

This week I caught up with Hess to find out what it’s really like to source million-dollar watches, stage record-breaking auctions and persuade collectors to part with some of the world’s greatest timepieces.

Heuer Monaco worn by Steve McQueen on the set of Le Mans, sold at Sotheby's for $1.4 million [£1.04m] in December 2024

About Time: You started out as a lawyer. It strikes me there are quite a few lawyers in the watch world. Why is that? Is it the money, or do you have a natural affinity for tiny details?

Geoff Hess: To be honest with you, there wasn’t really a direct crossover. In 2016, I made a decision to reinvent myself. I’d always loved watches and I’d been collecting for years.

At the time I was the CEO of Ivanka Trump’s jewellery company [Ivanka Trump Fine Jewelry], and when her dad started running for president I began to see the writing on the wall. I'd had a great experience running that business, but I did the classic thing of saying: "Now I'm going to do what I'm most passionate about in life," and that's watches.

I joined Analog Shift as CEO and, because I was working with watches day to day for the first time, it was that famous expression: if you love what you do, you don't work a day in your life.

In truth, I think it’s less about the watches themselves than the people. That’s why I love putting Rolliefest together and spending time with clients. For the most part, people buy watches because they want to have fun. It’s a joy. What a pleasure it is to be selling joy.

What did your time at Ivanka Trump teach you that you've carried into the watch world?

Managing clients, for sure, and understanding what it takes to really get to know your customer. Learning how to deal with different kinds of clients and understanding their needs.

I also learned to play the long game. So often in business we try to score a touchdown immediately, but sometimes it takes years to build a relationship to the point where someone truly trusts you.

Then there were the management skills. We had marketing, production, administration and client relations. Learning to work across all those different functions translated very well to Sotheby’s, which in many ways is the same thing but on a much larger scale.

When people hear your title, Global Head of Watches at Sotheby’s, what do they think you do all day?

I think a lot of people imagine it’s easy and a lot of fun, just playing with expensive toys all day.

The reality is that I don’t think I’ve ever worked harder in my life. This is a business, and the business has changed because watches are far more valuable than they’ve ever been before. Consignors are entrusting us with assets worth a great deal of money. I have to be a custodian of those assets and make sure we’re delivering the very best service possible, which usually means achieving the highest possible price.

How important is track record? If I’m bringing you a Cartier, does it matter that you can show you’ve achieved great results with Cartier before?

It definitely does.

The wonderful thing about Sotheby’s is that our watch department is around 40 people, with specialists across every major brand. If you’re bringing in a Cartier, I know exactly who to go to. If it’s a Patek Philippe or a Rolex, it’s the same. In some ways it’s like a hospital. Different doctors specialise in different things, and we have world-leading expertise across every major brand.

Attendees at Rolliefest on the 102nd floor of the World Trade Centre on September 26, 2025 at the biennial gathering organised by Hess

What’s the greatest watch you’ve never managed to secure? One that slipped through your fingers?

That’s a great question. I'm not sure there is one. There isn’t any great trophy that I’ve lost. I feel pretty good about that.

How does it work when a significant watch comes on the market? Do you hear a rumour and immediately start making calls?

Yes. This is very much a relationship business. When you’ve spent enough time in it, you generally know where many of the treasures are. Not all of them, but a lot of them.

Much of it is proactive. It’s calling collectors, knowing what’s in their collections and staying in touch. We also have a team that prepares proposals. Some watches are known quantities. I know where they are and who owns them, so I’ll actively pursue them. Then there are fresh-to-market watches that we've never seen before.

There are some wonderful stories about people simply walking into Sotheby’s with incredible treasures and having no idea what they own.

Last year, for example, a civil servant working for New York City walked in with a [Rolex] John Player Special Paul Newman Daytona and said, "This has been sitting in a flowerpot in my house for the last 15 years. What is it?"

We ended up selling it for three quarters of a million dollars.

Changing someone's life like that must be a good feeling. 

Absolutely. A woman came into my office a couple of months ago with her father’s watch. Her parents had both passed away. It was a vintage Patek Philippe with Tiffany & Co. stamped on the dial. Her mother had bought it from Tiffany in 1945 as a gift for her father.

She’d held on to it for years and had no idea what it was worth. We sold it in New York for a little over $300,000. She was sitting in the front row of the auction room in tears.

When the hammer fell, several of us were watching her. She had her phone out filming the moment. It was as though her father had left her a quarter of a million dollars and she’d had no idea.

Those are the aspects of my job that people don’t see. There is a real joy in being a custodian of family heirlooms.

What’s the longest you’ve spent pursuing a single watch or collection?

Oh, years. It takes a long time to earn someone’s trust. You can’t just show up and say, "Hello, I’m here. Give me your watch." It doesn’t work that way.

Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime from Sylvester Stallone that achieved $5.4 million [£4m] at Sotheby's NY in June 2024

When an auction starts, can you tell whether a watch is going to fly or struggle? 

In many cases, I know before. We don’t simply throw everything into the air on auction day and hope for the best. We’re marketing watches and speaking to collectors all over the world well in advance. We may not know exactly who’s going to buy a watch, but we’ve already generated significant interest before the sale begins.

How does an auctioneer know when to bring the hammer down?

There’s definitely a skill to it. Some auctioneers are better than others at drawing out that final bid. Remember, it’s incredibly global. Last week we had bidders from 60 countries. You’ve got people in the room, on telephones and bidding online from around the world. Managing that kind of audience takes real skill.

That sounds like a nightmare.

[Laughs] It’s actually very exciting. Auction day is my favourite day of the year. It’s the ultimate adrenaline rush.

If you’re on the phone bank you might have 50 or 100 bids to execute. Sometimes I have two telephones in front of me. I’ll ask one caller to hold while I take bids on another line, then switch back. It’s intense. There’s a lot of pressure, but it’s a tremendous rush.

Do you have a pre-show ritual?

I just try to stay calm. I make sure I have a phone charger, protein bars and water because the sales can last for hours and I can’t leave.

What do you do afterwards? In Britain everyone would go to the pub.

Oh yes, we definitely go out afterwards.

Our last Hong Kong sale lasted 13 hours. The final hammer fell after midnight. I was standing there in my socks because I’d taken my shoes off. People were laughing and I basically said, "Too bad. I’ve been standing for 13 hours."

How much of the job is psychology? Can you lose the room if you get the running order wrong?

Oh, for sure. There’s a science to what we call "lotting" a sale.

If we have 150 watches in an auction, they’re strategically placed in a particular order. We don’t just line them up randomly. There’s a deliberate plan around where the crescendo should occur. It really is like conducting an orchestra.

Where should the crescendo come? Three-quarters of the way through? Right at the end?

It depends on the watch. The global nature of auctions has changed everything because of time zones. If we start an auction at 10am in New York, that's 10pm in Hong Kong. It may not be a great idea to place the top lot three hours into the sale when it's 1am there.

At the same time, 10am in New York is 7am on the West Coast of the United States, so we have to think about that too. Europe is several hours ahead as well. There's a lot that goes into it.

So, maybe around midday New York time?

Typically, yes.

Hess welcoming the faithful to Rolliefest, the World Trade Centre, 2025

Have you ever watched someone get the bargain of a lifetime?

Real bargains are actually quite unusual. Last week we had 1,850 bidders from 60 countries. Our job is to make sure watches don’t fall through the cracks. If consignors regularly saw huge bargains, we wouldn’t be doing our jobs particularly well.

Okay, to flip the question, have you ever seen someone pay so much that you thought, "Good luck explaining that one when you get home"?

Absolutely. Everyone in the auction business has seen that.

But it can mean several things. When someone buys from a major auction house such as Sotheby’s, there’s a stamp of approval that comes with it. It’s a bit like the Good Housekeeping seal of approval.

People are often willing to pay a premium for that, particularly in a world where authenticity and counterfeiting are such important concerns. They know we’re going to stand behind everything we sell.

What’s the tensest moment you’ve experienced on the auction floor?

It might have been selling Sylvester Stallone’s Grandmaster Chime, his $5 million Patek Philippe. [The storied watch achieved $5.4 million [£4m] at Sotheby's NY in June 2024.]

Sly had put his trust in me and I wanted to deliver a great result. The watch attracted enormous global attention because of who the consignor was.

We’d filmed a YouTube video with him and, the last time I checked, it had around two and a half million views [it's currently on 2.7m].

We’re also constantly communicating with the media, just as we’re doing today, and that creates pressure too.

That’s relatively new, isn’t it? Being so front-facing. 

Very much so. The watch world has become far more mainstream. It used to be that watch coverage was largely confined to specialist publications. Now you see stories in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the Financial Times, Esquire, Forbes and Robb Report.

That’s a very different landscape from the one that existed seven or eight years ago.

Part of that is celebrities, isn’t it? Is selling a celebrity’s watch different from selling an ordinary person’s watch?

We try to deliver the same level of care to everyone.

There is more pressure when a watch attracts global attention. It’s no different from a lawyer arguing a case before the Supreme Court versus appearing in local traffic court. Some watches generate enormous worldwide interest and, with that, comes greater responsibility, higher expectations and additional pressure.

It’s quite a lot, isn’t it?

Yeah. Look, when I was growing up, the dream job was managing the New York Yankees. I think, at 57, I have the equivalent job. I have the dream job. But at the same time, I don’t think I’ve ever worked harder in my life.

President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt’s 1963 Rolex Day-Date, which sold for $840,000 [£622,000] at Sotheby's NY in December 2024

Has working at Sotheby’s changed the way you collect watches yourself?

It’s made me focus on the things that are most important.

There’s a lot of herd mentality in watch collecting and social media has amplified that. I’m constantly reminded to buy what I genuinely love rather than simply buying what I see on social media or what everyone else is chasing.

We’re all human beings. It’s difficult to buy only what you love regardless of popularity, but I think that’s important.

What’s trendy at the moment? Smaller watches? Cartier? Stone dials?

Smaller watches are definitely growing in popularity. Modern independent brands such as F.P. Journe continue to gain momentum.

One thing this job has given me is the opportunity to discover brands I might not otherwise have collected. A lot of my friends know that I love Hermès watches, for example. That's not a brand we'd typically see throughout an auction catalogue.

I discovered the incredible craftsmanship behind those watches, particularly the dials. The level of artistry is extraordinary.

I now own a watch with two balloons and a bird on the dial. I’d never have owned something like that before this job.

Is there any brand you've handled so many times that you've almost lost your enthusiasm for it? You must have seen quite a lot of Rolexes, for example.

No, definitely not. I love all watches, I really do.

Like anything else, it's a bit like ice cream. There are some flavours you prefer more than others, but most of them are great. There's really nothing I look at and think, "I don't like that."

Is there still great stuff out there waiting to be discovered?

I say it every year: they’re still out there.

More safe deposit boxes are being opened. The thrill of the hunt has never been more exciting.

As watches become more valuable, people become more aware of what they might have tucked away. Someone thinks, "I’ve got a watch in a safe deposit box," or, "I think my father’s watch is in the attic. I should go and take a look."

We’re seeing a lot of that now, and it’s incredibly exciting.

BLANCPAIN VILLERET ULTRAPLATE 38MM

Blancpain looks to be on something of a roll. After we spoke to collector and historian Jeffrey Kingston about the brand's neo-vintage revival in last month's newsletter, it has now unveiled a new 38mm version of its elegant Villeret Ultraplate, finally giving one of its best dress watches proportions that feel true to its heritage. At just 8.35mm thick, the new Villeret is slim, classy and powered by Blancpain's excellent 100-hour calibre 1150. Of the four new models, my pick is the salmon-dial steel version, whose warm coppery tones might be the dictionary definition of understated elegance. 

Meanwhile, on Esquire.co.uk...

Images: Sotheby's

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