The King of the Watch-Spotters: @niccoloy

I caught up with Nick recently and I was fascinated to ask him how he first became interested in watches. “I’ve always liked mechanical objects, since I was a child, especially how all the small components are linked together to make something work. I first became interested in watches due to my mother’s Rolex Datejust. I liked putting the watch to my ear and hearing the sound of the watch ticking away and was fascinated by the magnifier over the date window,” he explains. It’s quite leap to dedicate so much time to scouring mixed media to try and decipher what watch is what. Was it always your plan to create a watch-spotting page? Says Nick: “At first I was just posting the occasional picture on my account, when I came across something interesting on someone’s wrist in the present day.” This soon became a key element of his Instagram account and he became the go-to guy for such detective work.

There is no denying that people love to read his posts and others like it. Why does he believe people enjoy these posts so much? “People particularly like the finds from the past, when watches didn’t have the “hype” attached to them. Notable people were wearing them at the time because they liked the watch purely for its aesthetics or function, such as a journalist wearing a Heuer Monaco or an actor wearing his own Patek Philippe Nautilus.”

His account is now, however, so much more than simple watch spotting. He is adept at researching brands and finding fascinating information on the different variations and models and some of their practical applications. Was researching the history of brands a natural progression? “Not necessarily, but I got curious in relation to a few things so decided to go down the rabbit hole!” One rabbit hole I’m grateful he went down was the Tudor Submariners issued to the US Navy, as specifically an extract from the 1973 US Navy Diving Manual, in which Tudor watches are listed within the approved suppliers list. Its small, but important information like this, that keeps him ticking.