How did you get into watches, Mauricio?
There are 2 eras where I would say I got interested in watches. The first was as a kid admiring his older brother and trying to be like him. He had a nice collection of watches that I honestly had no real clue about. All I knew was that they were watches and looked very cool. I got a random piece at a local flea market that I cherished until I grew out of that “phase.” My current phase started several years ago when I watched a couple Alpha M videos and one of the points that he hammered through quite often was that a man needs a good watch. He hocked Vincero and MVMT as they were sponsors, so at the time that is all I knew (and of course Rolex as who wouldn’t know about them) and even purchased a MVMT, couple Timex pieces, and a Fossil smart watch. I quickly got to learn about the true luxury pieces and began to covet them. Coming from a humble background, anything above $500 bucks felt like it would be “waste of money”; however, I couldn’t escape the desire to have a luxury piece. During our first big family vacation with our then 3-year-old Ari, I figured “why the hell not?”. I purchased a $1.3k Tag Heur Formula 1 Gulf quartz piece as my first ever “luxury” piece. It was an important milestone for me as it was the first good gift I’ve gotten myself in YEARS and was something that was going to be a wonderful time capsule that captured our first family vacation…This is a piece that will never be sold.From there, I wanted more and wanted to find ways to be able to have these pieces without putting us in the poor house. I started to notice that people would buy, sell, and trade pieces all over FB so I thought this would be a great way to try different pieces and maybe even make a little money. I eventually bought an Omega SMP Blue Wave with the goal of making it my snowball.I absolutely loved that watch and immediately felt the difference between a TRUE luxury automatic to the likes of MVMT, Vincero, Timex, etc. After I sold it, I kept trading 1 piece at a time until we made the move from CA to TX and was able to use some of the money from our home sale to buy more watches.
From then on, I’ve been watching that snowball grow to the point where I had to create a real business out of it to keep the IRS at bay. One thing I noticed about many dealers is that this is purely transactional business for them. All that matters is the dollar in and the dollar out. I and others though do this for the passion of the watches themselves; money is important as well but for me it’s the ability to still have these watches near me and admiring the movements, the craftsmanship, the heritage, and more that pours out of them. The most important part for me though, is getting the reactions and reviews from my clients after they receive a piece from me. That same big goofy grin when I purchased that first Tag Heuer is what I strive to bring to my clients. These watches are more than just assets to park money in…for many they symbolize an important event in their lives such as a marriage, (heck or a divorce), a promotion, the birth of the first child, a birthday, a big vacation, etc. Every upgrade is another step on the ladder of one’s personal growth and often, being able to see that growth in every timepiece paints a wonderful picture of the culmination of all that hard work and dedication that helped secure that piece. When the time comes, perhaps those pieces would be left to a child, spouse, family member, or friend which would allow the memory of the wearer to live on and potentially help that new owner if there’s ever a need. This is what “Legacy Through Luxury” is all about and it warms my heart when clients choose me to help them build that legacy.
