In December, a new watch from the mad scientists at MB&F was pitched directly as a piece “for Silicon Valley,” according to the brand’s press release. MB&F is exactly the type of outfit that strikes a chord in Silicon Valley. Its figurehead, Max Büsser, is a quirky, loveable founder who makes watches inspired by Star Wars and spent his teens coding on a Commodore 64. His special-edition LM Perpetual EVO—made in collaboration with Stephen Silver—is aimed right at the retailer’s tech-industry customers. It features the brand’s in-house perpetual calendar, a movement developed by the cult-hero watchmaker Stephen McDonnell. “It was created by a revolutionary mind who thinks outside the box,” Büsser said. “That really fits Silicon Valley.”
Brands like MB&F, Ressence, De Bethune, Urwerk, Greubel Forsey, and Bvlgari all hit especially hard with the tech-minded set. It hardly feels like a coincidence that most of those brands listed above are famed for watches that look an awful lot like spaceships. (Although Hitchcock had a slightly different perspective: Rolex has flagged in her mind but classics like Cartier, Patek Philippe, and Omega stand out as favorites among her clients.) Both Silver and Büsser have experienced firsthand Silicon Valley’s serious appreciation for these oddball pieces. Customers there don’t follow the typical taste map laid out for most collectors.
“What I’m noticing, which I’ve never seen elsewhere, is people whose first nice watch or first independent watch is a mind-blowing MB&F,” said Büsser. “We’re used to our customers going up the food chain: They’ve started with Tag Heuer and then went to Rolex, Omega, blah blah blah, and then they come to us.”
Silver once sold a customer who’d never worn a watch before a $400,000 sapphire version of MB&F’s HM6, better known as the Space Pirate. “He didn’t buy watches, didn’t care about watches, but he was blown away by the piece,” Silver said. I call this the Bear Grylls approach to watch collecting: Rather than working through the entry-level pieces before eventually finding their way to the wilderness of independents, Silver finds that these customers want to be dropped directly into the deep recesses of the hobby before working backwards toward the more conservative brands and models. “Tech collectors tend to go very deep on their collecting in a way that I don’t necessarily see being true categorically in other industries,” Rapkin added.
