Inevitably, the brands that are most coveted by collectors are also robbers’ favorites. “Once you put that shiny, bright Franck Muller, Breitling, Rolex - whatever it is that’s on your wrist - you’re going to attract attention,” said Stephen Helliwell, director of operations at Aldermans Security Consultants, a British company that works primarily with celebrities and high net worth individuals. This time of year - the season of short-sleeved shirts and sleeveless dresses (at least in the Northern Hemisphere) - watches are essentially on show. Recently, he said, he has been wearing an Apple Watch because it makes him “feel better and more relaxed.” “I’m not wearing a watch that’s worth more than $5,000.”Īnd Timm Golueke, a Munich-based dermatologist and founder of Royal Fern Skincare, said tales about friends’ watches being stolen had made him decide that he would never bring any of the valuable watches in his collection, like a Rolex Explorer, along on his frequent travels. “That’s the only watch I’m comfortable wearing,” he said. He decided to buy a dark green Cartier Tank watch late last year, around the time he moved to New York City. The police reported there had been 67 watch thefts in central London between May 31 and June 27, an increase of roughly 60 percent in the previous four weeks’ total - and described incidents like a midmorning robbery in the Chelsea area in which a machete-wielding thief on a mo-ped forced a couple to surrender their watches, an Audemars Piguet and a Patek Philippe.Ī few years ago Ashkan Baghestani, an art dealer, was chased by a man with a knife in Chelsea, and that was only about a week, he said, after a friend’s Rolex had been stolen in the area, too. Many watch owners insure their precious timepieces, but there’s also anxiety, in addition to loss, about potentially becoming the victim of a violent robbery.īut recently, as pandemic restrictions have eased in many areas of the world and travel has resumed, police departments are reporting a rise in this kind of crime.Īccording to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, there were 112 thefts involving at least one watch valued at $5,000 or more in the first six months of 2022, an increase of nearly 50 percent from the 75 thefts recorded in the same period in 2021.Īnd in London, the Metropolitan Police appealed to the public last month for help in catching watch thieves. “Everybody who’s paying attention has some degree of concern about that,” Mr. The thieves, often armed, frequently speed away on mo-peds or scooters with the stolen goods. It exemplifies what he called “a sweet spot” that he said many collectors are looking for at the moment: a timepiece that is well designed, but, as he put it, is “less noticeable, less risky in certain environments, less ostentatious.”įor years, stories about street robberies in the affluent neighborhoods of cities like London and New York - as well as ritzy holiday destinations, like Ibiza and the South of France - have circulated among watch collectors. Barmore, the communications manager for the RedBar Group, a watch collectors’ organization, usually wears one of his less expensive timepieces, like a stainless steel Brew Watch Co.
“I outright stopped wearing it on the subway,” he said, “not because of any specific incident per se, just because of a general feeling of, ‘I don’t want to draw attention to myself in that way.’”
For the last six months, Troy Barmore has left a precious keepsake at home in Brooklyn when he rides the subway into Manhattan - a stainless steel Rolex Submariner watch that once belonged to his father and was passed along to him as a college graduation gift.
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