Jesse Johnson & How To Make A Limited Edition Watch

Summary

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HODINKEE Podcast: Jesse Johnson & How To Make A Limited Edition Watch (December 23, 2019)

Episode Overview

This episode explores two interconnected worlds: the inside story of how HODINKEE develops its coveted limited edition watches, and an insightful conversation with musician and consummate collector Jesse Johnson (of Motion City Soundtrack). Hosted by Stephen Pulvirent with guests from the HODINKEE team (Kara and Russell), the episode pulls back the curtain on the creativity and logistics underpinning limited editions. It then shifts focus to Jesse Johnson's collecting journey—from watches to backgammon boards to keyboards—highlighting the universal passion for collecting, storytelling, and community.

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1. How a HODINKEE Limited Edition Comes to Life

Guests:

• Kara (Special Projects, HODINKEE)
• Russell (Chief Commercial Officer, HODINKEE)
• Host: Stephen Pulvirent

1.1. The Unique Challenges and Joys of Limited Editions

Time: 02:30 – 04:42

• HODINKEE’s limited editions—far from simple—demand cross-team effort, from ideation to customer fulfillment.
• Everyone, from engineers to editors, helps pack boxes during big launches (Ben, the founder, even joins in).
• The energy on launch days is a mix of excitement, exhaustion, and a bit of fear.
  • “It’s a high level of energy...a really big lift by the whole company.” — Kara [03:27]

1.2. The Design Process: From Community to Collaboration

Time: 05:02 – 09:24

• The process starts with community feedback and team brainstorming before any design work begins.
• Special attention is paid to both HODINKEE's and the partner brand’s design codes:
  • “We first look at feedback from the community…what’s a brand we’d like to do something with, what’s the watch they’re not making that we would like for them to make?” — Kara [06:54]
• In-house designers dive into brand history, collecting inspiration from old catalogues/books to shape the vision.
• Magic happens when editorial research transforms into a product vision.

1.3. Case Studies: Nomos, Swatch, and More

Time: 09:39 – 13:15

• Nomos Collaboration: Partnered with brand decision-makers early at SIHH, benefitting from Nomos’s flexibility as a smaller producer.
• Swatch Collaboration: Inspired by '80s catalogues—a highly accessible limited edition for the “whole community.”
  • “A 14-year-old can save up and buy, or a 25-year-old…” — Russell [10:41]
• Strategy is to offer fun, nostalgia (“first watch” memories), and options for all budgets and tastes.

1.4. Balancing the Portfolio: Indie Brands to Iconic Names

Time: 13:15 – 19:15

• HODINKEE intentionally varies price points, production volumes, and types of partnerships—Tag Heuer and Laurent Ferrier, Groeneveld and Oris, etc.
• Sometimes the schedule is dictated by unpredictable Swiss production timelines, resulting in themed launches like "Dive Month."
• Editorial and storytelling are central—even buyers of other watches can enjoy the story and knowledge.

1.5. Personal Favorites & Regrets

Time: 19:16 – 22:42

• Team shares favorites: the steel Vacheron Cornes de Vache, Laurent Ferrier blue dial, Oris diver, IWC, and the H10 Omega Speedy.
  • “It’s a pretty special watch.” — Kara on the H10 Speedy [20:45]
• Some lament missing out on the Heuer Skipper; others mention campaign highlights and photography inclusivity.

1.6. The Importance of Campaigns and Marketing Pages

Time: 22:42 – 26:01

• Marketing is a company-wide effort: custom-designed and -coded landing pages with brand “easter eggs,” narrative detail, and creative visuals.
• Example: the Blancpain page features an interactive depth gauge that switches units depending on your location.
  • “Each one tells a story, which is what it’s all about.” — Russell [25:59]

1.7. Looking Ahead: Strategy & Community Involvement

Time: 26:01 – 27:48

• Emphasis continues on an “organized calendar,” product diversity, and an inclusive, fun approach.
• The team pays close attention to community suggestions on Instagram and the site.
  • “We really are observing and taking in what people want.” — Russell [27:06]

Memorable Moment:

• “Make buying a great watch easy, fun, and a great experience for everyone.” — Kara [26:24]

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2. The Collector’s Journey: Jesse Johnson

Guests:

• Jesse Johnson (Motion City Soundtrack, collector)
• Stephen Pulvirent (host)
• Cole (HODINKEE)

2.1. Origins: From Music Scene to Watch Enthusiast

Time: 28:38 – 36:14

• Jesse and Cole met through Instagram over a shared fascination with '70s design.
• Jesse’s collecting bug did not come from family tradition:
  • “My father...he’s always hated watches...it wasn’t from him, which I know a lot of them are passed...” — Jesse [33:54]
• His journey began with an inexpensive Timberland watch at age 19-20 — saved up his GAP salary for it, and it felt “like the nicest watch” [34:22].
• The thirst grew with a $400 Citizen eco-drive, eventually leading to a U-Boat collaboration, which unlocked the addictive world of forums and watch research.

2.2. The Slippery Slope: Forums, Mods, and Seikos

Time: 36:14 – 41:29

• Jesse jokes about staying up until sunrise, lost in WatchUSeek and modding Seikos.
• He highlights the power of community and demystifies the “entry-level” joy of Seikos and G-Shocks, sharing stories of bar conversations and fixing “cursed” watches for others.

2.3. Experience over Ownership

Time: 42:48 – 45:26

• Philosophical reflection: the joy of “collecting experiences,” told through the story of a man who visits Japanese sword museums rather than owning swords.
  • “...you can experience all of these watches, and you get to see them, you get to talk to people about what it’s like to wear them...” — Stephen [43:22]
• Auction previews and watch meetups are a way to “handle” and learn from rare pieces without ever needing to own them.

2.4. Building the Collection: Tactics and Nostalgia

Time: 45:52 – 56:08

• Jesse’s method: obsessive ebay searches including deliberate misspellings for “sleeper” deals.
• Wide-ranging taste: early days with swatches and Timex, moving to indie brands and finally “leveling up” to pieces like the Tudor Black Bay (“my first big purchase when Motion City was doing well” [49:40]).
• Emotional attachment to family heirlooms, like his great-grandfather’s 1909 pocket watch.

2.5. Stories in Numbers: Numerology and Sentiment

Time: 52:26 – 55:53

• Jesse ascribes special meaning to dates and numbers in his watches: birth years, anniversaries, and other significant moments are linked to watch choices and even serial numbers.
  • “So I don’t know if there’s anything that really connects it all or if I’m just overanalyzing everything...” — Jesse [55:31]

2.6. Collecting Beyond Watches

Time: 62:27 – 65:59

• Jesse collects backgammon boards, playing cards, poker chips (entering wild “group buys” for casino chips), dice (“precision dice” with balanced weights), and vintage board games.
• “My biggest screw up in life is everything that I’m interested in, nobody else wants to talk about.” — Jesse [62:37]
• Hosts express fascination with these “niche” pursuits—community exists for every passion.

2.7. What Makes a Collector?

Time: 67:12 – 69:24

• Jesse distills the collector’s drive:
  • Research and learning (“I enjoy manuals...the process of being like, ‘okay, this was manufactured from this time…’” [67:42])
  • Search for heirloom objects; wanting to leave “daddy’s things” for the next generation.

2.8. Music, Persistence, and the Maker Mentality

Time: 69:39 – 77:24

• Jesse recounts stumbling into Motion City Soundtrack after being spotted playing punk and hardcore. Not a trained keyboardist, he learned by doing.
  • “They were like, ‘Can you play keyboards?’ …and I was like, ‘Absolutely not.’ …They go, ‘Cool, we’ll show you.’” — Jesse [70:01]
• Early “DIY” ethos: burning CDs, making handmade packaging from floppy disks.
• The grind: playing 320 shows a year, riding in a van with a loft built from plywood, hustling through tiny crowds (and sometimes zero audience), and eventually breaking through.

2.9. Collecting Stories via Modern Patina

Time: 78:27 – 80:13

• Jesse’s Instagram (@modernpatina) shares stories of watches and objects as personal heirlooms—focusing on the meaning and memories behind the items.
  • Example: Meeting a man who’d worn a single Rutgers University Seiko every day since 1976.

2.10. Final Reflections & Community

Time: 80:13 – end

• The hosts and Jesse agree on the fun of nerding out over “obscure” collections and how every collector’s journey is really about stories and connections.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “We read the comments, we read the Instagram posts. We really are observing and taking in what people want.” — Russell [27:06]
• “I remember buying a Timberland… watch… at the time, that was like, oh my God, I gotta save up my gap paycheck…when I got it…this is it.” — Jesse [35:10]
• “My biggest screw up in life is everything that I’m interested in, nobody else wants to talk about.” — Jesse [62:37]
• “I enjoy reading the instructions to put something together…I enjoy manuals…” — Jesse [67:42]
• “The idea is trying to find and tell the story of the relationship to the object.” — Jesse [78:32]
• “[On Modern Patina] I was gonna put it towards a Porsche. I got the watch. Next year I got the Porsche. Do you still have the Porsche? ‘No, I still have the watch.’” — Jesse [79:16]

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Key Segments & Timestamps

• [02:30] — Kicking off the limited edition watchmaking discussion
• [05:02] — The ideation and partnership process
• [09:39] — Examples: Nomos, Swatch, brand influence
• [13:15] — Balancing price and partnership variety
• [19:16] — Favorite and most-missed limited editions
• [22:42] — Marketing, design, and storytelling in limited edition releases
• [26:01] — 2020 and beyond: strategy, inclusivity, and community
• [28:38] — Introducing Jesse Johnson; music and collecting crossroads
• [33:54] — Jesse’s earliest watch memories
• [36:14] — The forums, Seiko modding, and community building
• [42:48] — The philosophy of collecting experiences, not just objects
• [52:26] — Objects as numerological and emotional touchstones
• [62:27] — Collecting outside watches: backgammon, chips, dice, and more
• [67:42] — Why collect? The joy of process and legacy
• [69:39] — How punk rock attitude led to indie music and Motion City Soundtrack
• [78:27] — "Modern Patina" and the art of collecting stories

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Final Takeaway

This episode is a celebration of creating—not just products, but community, narrative, and meaning. Whether it’s HODINKEE’s careful curation of limited edition watches or Jesse Johnson’s passionate, sometimes quirky collector’s heart, it’s clear that the best collections (and the best projects) are built from thoughtful collaboration, obsessive research, sincere inclusivity, and above all—a love for stories waiting to be told.

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Transcript

[Jesse Johnson]

My biggest screw up in life is everything that I'm interested in, nobody else wants to talk about.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Okay.

[Jesse Johnson]

Do you want to talk about Bakelite backgammon, checkers? Do you want to talk about the different Italian producers or manufacturers of playing cards? Do you want to talk about limited numbered, oversized, handmade cribbage boards out of different types of wood? Because I've got those.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Hey, everybody. I'm your host, Stephen Pulverin, and this is Hodinkee Radio. We're gonna kick this week's episode off with something a little bit different, covering a topic that we don't talk about too much. And that's how our limited edition watches come to be. So I've got Kara, who manages special projects, and I've got Russell, who. Who's our chief commercial officer, and they give us some really great insight into what it means to create a limited edition here at Hodinkee. It's a lot more complicated than you might expect. We're working with a lot of complex ideas, trying to distill them down, balance out our brand, the brands we're working with. It's a really fascinating look at how something that might seem simple when you see it on the site is actually the result of a lot of hard work and a lot of complicated ideas. After that, we've got a conversation between Cole, myself, and Jesse Johnson, who is one of the members of the band Motion City Soundtrack. In addition to being a longtime working musician, Jesse is also a consummate collector. He, of course, collects watches, but he also collects a ton of other things, and we really get into the underpinnings of why he enjoys collecting. It's a really interesting thing to think about and the way that collecting can often be about research, it can be about community building and. And it can also just be about cool products. He brought some cocktails. He tells an amazing story. I have a funny feeling you're going to be hearing more from Jesse in the future. So without further ado, let's get into it. This week's episode is presented by Leica Camera. Stay tuned later in the show to learn about the new Summilux M90mm lens. For more, visit leicacamera.com. I think this is the first time, Russell, we've had you on the show.

[Jesse Johnson]

Yeah, it's true.

[Kara]

I mean, I've been here almost a year. I've been waiting for the invitation.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

My bad. My bad.

[Cole]

How rude.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah, like I said, my bad. Mea culpa. CB You're a vet already.

[Russell]

I don't Know if I'm a vet, but, yeah, I've been on here once or twice.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah, a couple times.

[Russell]

Old pro. I know how to count for the mic test.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Sweet. Perfect.

[Russell]

I got that down.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Perfect. Good. Yeah. So I wanted to have you guys on the show because I know it's a very busy time of year for you both, so I appreciate you taking the time. We're recording this the day between launching our latest Nomos limited edition and launching our collaboration with Laika. Busy week for the shop team.

[Jesse Johnson]

Yes, to say the least.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

I wish people could see the looks on both your faces. It's like a combination of optimism and excitement and also just complete exhaustion and

[Russell]

fear and a little fear.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Fear. All right.

[Kara]

I mean, it's always extremely fun to launch these things. There's a high level of energy happening on the commercial floor, on the shop floor, when we're launching and fulfilling and doing everything surrounding these launches. But as you can imagine, it's a lot of work. We're still a small team, no matter how big we may seem, and we touch everything ourselves. And so it's a really big lift by the whole company. You can see Ben comes up and packs boxes. We have engineers packing boxes. We have customer service. We have myself. Everybody chips in to make these things happen.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

So it's great. It's kind of a fun thing. As somebody who's not involved in that process day to day, it's fun when we do have these launches to get to go upstairs and see all of it in motion and how excited everybody is. It's a really fun moment for the whole company. The reason I wanted to have you both on is you guys are the sort of king and queen of our limited edition process. You're the ones who make these things happen. From the early ideation phase to actually putting them in boxes and shipping them off to customers. I thought it might be nice to give people some insight into what that process is like, since I think it might seem a little bit opaque from the outside, but it's actually a really fun, cool, Interesting process.

[Russell]

Yeah, no, it's great. I mean, I guess I started working on these a year and a half or two years ago, and then Russell joined a year ago as our Chief Commercial officer. So he runs everything on the shop side, and I kind of do our special projects, which includes limitations. So it is a really fun process. From ideation to fulfillment.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Maybe let's talk about Nomos since. Since we just dropped it. Like, what? That's a good example. We did a project with Nomos I guess, what, like two years ago?

[Russell]

Two or three years ago.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Two or three years ago. But this go around. What was the process like? When did this project come about? This is one that I really vaguely heard about in the background, but I don't think I saw the final watch. The final watch until two days before launch. So I'm kind of in the dark here too. I'd love to hear about how it came about.

[Russell]

Yeah, I mean, first of all, before Sihh Rabazel, we like to go with designs in hand to talk to certain brands that we really want to work with or in some cases brands approach us and they say they want to work with us also. So we kind of have meetings there because that's where everybody. Yeah, everybody, everybody meets in the watch world. So this year we went prepared with some suggestions, but sat down with Merlin and Russell and I chatted with him. And Merlin's the head of the U.S. yeah.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

For nomos.

[Russell]

For Nomos and you just kind of have a back and forth and you kind of talk about what's possible. Can you do this? Can you do that? Can you change this dial color? Can you change the dial texture? Can you do a bracelet? Can you not do a. You know, you kind of go back and forth and figure out what the brand is willing to do. Some brands are more flexible than other brands. For example, Nomos is a smaller production, so they're able to kind of be a little bit more nimble. They happen to have the tangent to sport case of know, a few hundred left and we were able to use those for this particular limited edition, which was exciting because it's a retired model and it's a great size, so we move with that. But if you, you know, work with someone like Tag, for example, they're just such a. They're a different thing. So it's harder for them to shrink cases down or kind of meet those needs that we are requesting. So you have to kind of find other ways to. To make it work for both sides. Yeah, I don't know if you want to.

[Kara]

Yeah, I think, I think it's important too, to just take a step back before we even put those designs on paper, before we really start to look at what the watch would look like. We, we first look at, you know, feedback from the community. We look at, you know, comments on the side, we look at what we like and what everyone in the company likes and we really take, we really take into account, you know, what's a brand that we would like to do something with. What's the watch that they're not creating that we would like for them to create. What do we think would resonate with the community and everybody that would come in contact with this piece. And then also what's respectful to our design aesthetic. What's respectful to the brand's design aesthetic. And then we work with our in house designers and Ian or Nick and put some ideas down and really come up with something that we feel really good about. And I think when we put that much thought and effort into it and care into embracing not only our own brand, but our partner brands and then we go to them, we present it to them, they're really. It's not easy. I wouldn't say it's easy.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah, right.

[Kara]

But at least you're coming from a place that has perspective and has a point of view. And they typically really, it's really sometimes an aha moment for the brands when they're like, oh, wow, that's really, that's great. And you know, and you work from there and you work with them to bring things to life that might align with other initiatives that they have coming out later in the year. But more importantly are really true to the aesthetic that we put down on paper based on the community feedback.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah, I always get excited when I see Nick or Ian get up and start walking around the office pulling books off of shelves because I know something is happening. So, you know, I've seen in the past where like they'll walk around and go get, if we're working with a certain brand, they'll go, go pull every book we have that kind of features watches from that brand's history and start kind of building a library of fonts, of numerals, of dial colors, of shapes. And it's so cool to see them take that stuff which we use on the editorial side in a certain way. And they're taking the same kind of source material and using it to do something totally different. We're kind of focused on putting that information in perspective and recontextualizing it and telling stories around it, whereas they're taking that information and building new products around it. And it's really fascinating to see the kind of like same source material turn into two very, very different types of products.

[Kara]

Yeah, absolutely. Sometimes it's really based in history and it's a historical reference that we're, that we're bringing back to life. Or other times it's taking a historical brand and bringing modernity to it, you know, like, like, you know, punching it up a little bit.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Russell]

Fun So I think Swatch is a good example of that. Like the one we just released was pulled from a watch that was made in 1986. And like, Ian kind of was flipping through catalogs from like the 80s with swatch and that's where he got his inspiration for. For that.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Russell]

So it's cool and it's fun to see them come to life. And also like little Easter eggs of things that kind of like only watch, you know, watch nerds know about, which are really fun.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

So the Swatch project is one that I, I personally really like and you know, I was involved in the, in the first one a little bit and it's just, it's nice to see. It's the third year in a row we've done a watch with them. Swatches is like, it's so elemental to the watch industry. It's a foundation of the modern watch industry. Some would argue the modern watch industry wouldn't exist without Swatch. And at the same time, it's a product that most people can afford, even if you need to save a little bit for it. It's under $200 shipped everything. And it's like you can have a piece of this and a nice little thing without having to spend 50 grand, 60 grand.

[Russell]

Yeah, no, I agree. I think that that's one of the benefits of the Swatch, is it? I think that is one of the community builders of all the limited editions because it really does open to everybody and everybody likes, you know, they want. It's an easy kind of takeaway and it's something that, yeah, you know, a 14 year old can save up and buy or 25 year old can save up and buy or you know, and just. It fits everybody. It's exciting for everybody and it is kind of joins people. If you see someone else wearing it, you're like, oh, they've got like the Hodinkee Swatch on like, you know, that person likes to read about watch and like, I think that that is what is so cool about limited editions in general. But specifically this watch.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah. And it's the only, it's the only product as far as I know, the only watch product we've done that's produced in that kind of volume. So you can actually like, you see them out in the wild and it's not people. You already know, it's not people at our events. Like I've been to bars and restaurants and just like seen people wearing them in the wild in New York and California kind of everywhere. And it's a cool Thing, I mean, it's really, there's something nice about seeing out in the wild, like this little thing that we help make out there.

[Russell]

It's done.

[Kara]

People are super nostalgic about Swatch. I mean, I know myself growing up in the 80s and 90s and even before the 80s, don't want to divulge too much. But you know, when Swatch was in its heyday and really like, that was one of my first watches, you know, and it was the first, it was the first kind of like, you know, watch that I obsessed about. And it was the first brand that I obsessed about. And so being able to now bring that full circle and help bring that nostalgia back to life for people that are, you know, my age or older or younger or first time watch buyers. It's really, it's really a fun process and I think it pays, it plays into, you know, kind of how we determine our limited edition strategy for the year, which is bringing different price points to life in the Hodinkee shop so that we can reach different people and make things really accessible, make things for the extreme connoisseur as well as first time watch buyers really important to us

[Russell]

and to make it fun too. I mean, this watch is fun. That's a fun project for everybody. And like, you know, same for me. I learned how to tell time on a flic flac. I had one with bacon and eggs on it. I think we should bring that, bring

[Stephen Pulvirent]

that back for 2020.

[Russell]

Is the bacon.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

The CB breakfast special.

[Russell]

CB breakfast special.

[Kara]

Swatch. I love it. I love it.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

You heard it here first.

[Russell]

Yeah, I could find that on ebay. I didn't find it.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

I end up giving the swatches as gifts to people, which is really fun. Like so much of what we do here is it's like not necessarily a price point where I'm like gifting it to a friend, but still good friends, but not gifting people $5,000 watches. But it's nice that I can like, I can give them to people as gifts. I can give one to my. I can give one of my buddies. And it's a fun way to kind of involve everybody. But you mentioned the diversity of the products that we do, Russell. And I think that's something that's always really struck me is we go from a brand like Tag Heuer, that's huge to a brand like Bronfeld that's making a handful of watches a year. Laurent Ferrier is a similar situation. How do you try to balance that out?

[Kara]

Yeah, I mean, it's always Interesting and fun to come up with the limited edition calendar. And I'm sure, you know, car, you probably have more perspective on that than I do having this my first full year here. But really looking at how we can not only have different price points, different quantities within price points, as well as support the independent watchmakers out there. And I think, you know, the Groenefeld is a perfect example where we were able to create a relatively small limited edition at a very high price. But we really did everything from the ground up. And so you can really affect how the movement design plays into the case and how the dial design and the functions on the dial come to life. And what's great about that is like for a Groeneveld, we're instantly their number one dealer after doing a ten piece limited edition. And it's great to be able to support that side of watchmaking because those guys are really pushing things forward in a really traditional way. But then at the same time, we want to do something that's, that's really accessible and fun, like a Swatch or like an Aorus or like a Nomos for every aesthetic appeal that's out there, as well as price points and categories.

[Russell]

Yeah. Well, I hate to tell you this, Russell, but the first year of limited editions, we were not as organized as we were this year. So. Not sure what calendar you're talking about, but. No, but it's true. And I think like a good example is the. From this year were the Blancpain and the Oris and like how those were back to back and they were both diver dive watches. That was a tricky one because there, you know, it was kind of. You had to make sure that they, they went out in the right way. And we went with the Aorus first and like, that was really exciting for everybody. And then the Blanc pen immediately after, which was also really exciting about exciting for everyone. And I don't know if anyone noticed, but we had dive month on the site.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

We did have dive month. We did have dive month. It kind of spanned two months, but

[Russell]

caught on, however span two months.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

It was like half of June, first half of July.

[Russell]

Yeah. So that was like, you know, a little experiment to see how we could kind of create moments around things like that.

[Kara]

The calendar that we put together around Ellie's is the ideal and perfect scenario. Right. And we know that this, we know that the Swiss watch industry, sometimes things are spot on time in terms of production, and sometimes there are delays that happen. You know, movement development, dial suppliers, hand suppliers, case manufacturers, you know, they like to take vacation. And as a result, Switzerland in the summer, man, sometimes things don't come in when they're supposed to.

[Russell]

They're also watches. So they need to like, if you're buying a $10,000 watch, like, it better be perfect. So it's kind of like you really need, you know, sometimes there are production slowdowns just cause like you want to

[Stephen Pulvirent]

make sure everything is, everything is the

[Russell]

way that it needs to be. So sometimes that alters our perfect calendar.

[Kara]

And so what starts as, you know, spaced out by watch type, by price point and by quantity turns into dive month and dive month, dive month is how we could justify dive two dive watches back to back. And it actually worked out really, really well because you had a real connoisseurs dive watch at a higher price point, at a low quantity, a relatively low quantity. And then the Oris, that was a higher quantity and a more approachable price. And so they balanced each other really well.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah, yeah. I also like the way that they together, I mean, maybe I'm coming at this from an editorial point of view, but the way that those two watches kind of told a nice story about dive watches as a category, right. Like they gave some insight into the sort of vintage enthusiast, hard wearing beater kind of dive watch that like fades and ages really nicely over time. And then with the Blancpain, we were able to tell some like, really interesting technical dive history. You know, really the, the generation of the, the military dive watch. And those two stories kind of balance each other out and I think give people perspective. So whether you bought either watch or not, I think you could still kind of read the, the materials that we created for those watches and still get something out of them, which, which is nice. And they, they kind of played off one another that way.

[Kara]

Yeah, absolutely. And it's a, you know, it's a great honor to work with, you know, brands like Blancpain who are, you know, one of the oldest watch manufacturers in the world making super high end timepieces to be able to do something like the 50 fathoms, the bathyscaph or Hodinkee. That was a smaller case, no date. We really touched every part of that watch to bring that to life as well as the Oris. I mean, you can't say enough about everything that we did to that. We made a slimmed down case, manual wind movement. I mean, everything on that watch was, was special for us in a sense. And so those are, you know, two examples of how we really worked hard to make sure that we Were bringing the purest form of what we envisioned for those watches to life.

[Russell]

Yeah.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

So I gotta ask, do either of you have a favorite limited edition? It's like, I know that's a tough

[Kara]

political question of all time.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah. What's your favorite one? And it doesn't have to be one you own. It can be one you own. But what's your favorite watch that we've done?

[Kara]

Wow, that's really hard.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

I know, it's tough.

[Kara]

They're all really, really nice. I mean, the Vacheron's pretty amazing.

[Russell]

Yeah, that was a garage.

[Kara]

When you. When you see that corn de vache in steel, beautiful gray dial. It's. It's a striking, striking watch. The first Laurent Ferrier we did blue dial.

[Russell]

That was good.

[Kara]

Pretty amazing.

[Russell]

Yeah.

[Kara]

I wear my Oris all the time. Yeah, I think that's a great one. The iwc. I wear that all the time. It's one of the. I would say it's one of the watches that got the most wear for me this year was my IWC from this year.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

I think my IWC might be the watch I wore most. Yeah, I love that watch.

[Russell]

Are you putting that on in the article?

[Stephen Pulvirent]

I'm not. I'm actually going to put the Grand Seiko that I have on my wrist. Spoiler. Spoiler alert, everybody. But it's because I basically haven't taken the Grand Seiko off since I bought it.

[Russell]

Don't be a party pooper.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Sorry. There you go.

[Jesse Johnson]

Party pooper.

[Kara]

I mean, but at the same time, how could you not say something about the H10 Speedy? The Omega?

[Russell]

Oh, yeah, that one is.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Kara]

I think we all have that watch. And there's not a day that goes by in the office where we see a few of those on the wrist.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah, it's true.

[Kara]

It's a pretty special watch.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

It's true. It's also nice because when you see people with that watch, the people who bought that are mostly die hards. The people who bought that watch. And I don't know how it worked out that way, but the people who bought that watch are almost all people who've been reading the site for five to 10 years. They come to events. I have seen a startling number of them in person just because they went to people who are around and kind of in our orbit. And it's nice to see the people who have really supported us over the years have a nice little token of that.

[Kara]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Russell]

The one I'm saddest about that got away was the Skipper.

[Kara]

I was just gonna Say the Skipper.

[Russell]

I thought about getting it and then I was like, it's a little big for me. I'm bummed. That was a good one.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Regrets?

[Russell]

Yeah.

[Kara]

I remember from the outside looking in, working for a brand, you know, I was on the brand side for, you know, almost 20 years and just dying over the Skipper. It's like I can't buy that I'll never wear it because I work for a brand and it's, it's not Tag Heuer.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

So one might say a direct competitor of TAG Heuer.

[Russell]

Yeah.

[Kara]

But it's like unbelievable, that one.

[Russell]

Yeah, that was a good one.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

So, yeah, that I think is the one that people might have the strongest feelings about.

[Russell]

Like the people are sad that they

[Stephen Pulvirent]

missed out on the Skipper. Yeah.

[Kara]

Yeah, that's a great one.

[Russell]

I also really did like the nomos. We just did.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

It's true.

[Russell]

But I also think I like it because we did a. I keep tooting this horn, but the lady in the campaign was my. I feel like that was a good one. That like made me happy.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

I mean it's as a lady that made me happy.

[Kara]

Well, absolutely. As a guy. As a guy it makes me happy.

[Jesse Johnson]

Agreed.

[Kara]

I think we're trying really hard in the shop to be super inclusive of everyone and in our photography standards that we're putting, putting in place up there to, to be able to shoot every watch we offer in the shop on, on different wrists. And the nomos was the first real execution. Big execution of that.

[Russell]

Yeah.

[Kara]

And I think it just, I mean it looked phenomenal. I mean if you wrap everybody in Cuccinelli, it's gonna look pretty good.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

That's true. Yeah, cashmere helps. Yeah, cashmere helps.

[Kara]

It was beautifully shot in a great location. The Whitney Museum, the Bar Flora and I think just such a cool, such a cool part. We don't talk about that enough. You know, we talk about the watches.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

We don't.

[Russell]

We were talking about the campaigns.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Campaigns are launching. Amazing. The campaigns are awesome.

[Russell]

Those are my fate. That's. That's kind of my favorite part.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

And that's where it really becomes also like a company wide thing. I mean, you guys are working really hard on the product. But then the guys who obviously are a big part of the design of the products then have to design a way to market these things and a way to put them out into the world. And the editorial team gets involved and we end up bringing photographers in and we really like, we get to kind of flex all of our muscles at once. It's product, it's storytelling. It's visuals, it's engineering. All of those pages, if people don't know, are custom designed and coded specially to present each watch in house.

[Kara]

Yeah.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

With people I can actually see from where I'm sitting right now, it's a big flex. It's a cool thing.

[Kara]

It really is. And we try to take. We pay special attention in each one of those pages to bring to life little bits and pieces of the brand or the product through the design of the marketing page. And I think that that's. That's really super fun because we can tell a visual narrative and a written narrative about the watch or the brand itself. But then like on the Blancpain page, the little depth gauge, as you scroll

[Stephen Pulvirent]

down, that might be my favorite one. Yeah.

[Kara]

You see the depth gauge and it actually went from zero to a thousand. I think a thousand, which is the.

[Russell]

And then if you were in Europe, it was in meters.

[Kara]

It was in meters out there.

[Russell]

If you guys have not seen that, go to the Blancpain limited edition.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

I didn't know it was in meters in Europe.

[Kara]

Geotargets.

[Russell]

So it changes to meters and there's little Easter eggs in there. And now that this will have launched after tomorrow's product, we can talk about the Leica page that's coming out tomorrow, which is going to be really, really incredible. So lots of Easter eggs in there. And so, yeah, I think that's, for me, professionally, has been. One of the most rewarding things, is seeing the team kind of evolve from just doing, like, random product drops on Shopify like we used to, to creating these really incredible pages. And if you look back at, like, Hermes, when we first started doing it this time last year to where we are now, it just. It just makes me really proud to, like, work with the people I work

[Stephen Pulvirent]

with, because they're really. You guys do a great job. I take. I take zero credit. But you guys, you guys do an amazing job.

[Russell]

I mean, I don't do. I just. I just make sure the brands are happy.

[Kara]

I think, to your point, when you're talking about everything that's kind of hidden, the little treats and hidden experiences in the marketing pages, you know, I would invite everyone to. Even after you rush to put the Le in your shopping cart, so you make sure you got it. And we know that's a challenge, but go back and spend some time on the marketing pages because there's a lot of really cool features in there. There's a lot of great information about the brands and about the. About the product. But then the design of the pages is super, super cool.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah, yeah.

[Russell]

Each one tells a story.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

True. Very true.

[Russell]

Which is what it's all about.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

So I know we can't give any, like, actual spoilers about watches that are coming next year, but what would you say? Kind of like whether it's strategically or kind of at a. At a high level, what are you guys looking forward to in the next year for limited editions?

[Russell]

I think a continued organized calendar.

[Kara]

Yeah, yeah, the calendar.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

I like that process. I like that.

[Kara]

I mean, I think really, again, it's continuing to make this fun and inclusive. I think those are the two things that we always strive towards. I think what's been so great about Hodinkee since the beginning is creating an approachable tone of voice around something that can be really intimidating and bringing that into the product and bringing that to life through different price points or different brands, different quantities or different quantities so that we can continue to make. To make buying a great watch, easy, fun, and a great experience for everyone. I think that's what I'm most excited about, is product diversity.

[Russell]

Yeah, I know, and I completely agree, but I think it's also. We read the comments, we read the Instagram posts. We really are observing and taking in what people want and really trying to apply that to next year. On that note, we really encourage you guys to leave comments below on what you want to see for 2020. We're still in planning, so it's not too late. And, yeah, no, it should be a good year.

[Kara]

And to be fair, we are organized, so it might fall in 2021.

[Russell]

Oh, thank you. Yes. Sorry, I didn't mean to make it sound, like, really disorganized, but, you know, it was just. It was just a little different in 2018.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Awesome. Well, thank you, guys. This is great. And I can let you guys go because I know we have a big launch tomorrow morning. I'm super excited about it. It's going to be killer. If you're listening to this and you haven't seen the Laika landing page yet, go check it out right now. We will link it up in the show notes for this episode, too. It's one of the coolest things we've ever made here.

[Russell]

Make sure you click on all the. All the things.

[Kara]

Click on everything.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Click on everything.

[Kara]

There's something really cool everywhere you look. That's great.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Awesome. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Next up, a conversation with musician Jesse Johnson. It's good to finally meet you, man.

[Jesse Johnson]

Thanks for having me. Really. Never thought I would end up sitting here, honestly.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

And we've also got Cole here.

[Cole]

Hey, guys.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

And you two guys have actually met before, right?

[Cole]

We have, yeah. I've been hanging out with Jesse for a long time now.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

A long time now. At least since.

[Cole]

Well, actually, no, to be honest, the first time I saw Jesse was when I was in college. I went to this thing called College Day on the parkway in Philly. I didn't go to school in Philly, but I was there, and I saw a Motion City soundtrack.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Amazing.

[Cole]

And then, yeah, literally, like a decade later, we connected, and the rest is history. And now he's sitting right in front of me with some serious wrist candy on the table and some Rosaritas Rositas.

[Jesse Johnson]

Rositas.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

I love a guess who comes with cocktails. That's the move for all future Hodinkee radio guests out there. If you bring a growler of cocktails, that's a good way to start an interview.

[Cole]

Oh, yeah. Even better way to end it.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah, true. So, Jesse, we have talked on Instagram before, which is how you guys met, too, right? Through this weird little Instagram watch community.

[Jesse Johnson]

Cole posted, because I follow the editors of Hodinkee, obviously, and Cole posted something about, like, 70s design, kind of.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Okay.

[Jesse Johnson]

Which I follow a couple on Instagram, and I DM them. I was like, oh, you should check out Daughter of the seventies. That was it.

[Cole]

Shout out to Daughter of. Yeah, great account. Follow it.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

And that was it. Just, hey, check this out. And I don't post on my personal account anything about watches. It's like, me and my daughter, my wife, the fun stuff that we do. And he messaged me back. He was like, hey, Motion City soundtrack. Is that. That's you?

[Cole]

Yeah, the same one.

[Jesse Johnson]

He's like, I'm a fan. And I was like, awesome. Guess what?

[Cole]

Guess what?

[Jesse Johnson]

I'm a fan of Hodinkee and watches. And he was like, what? And. And just started DMing and all this stuff. And I had a couple shows that I was going to by other bands, and I found out that he was fans of, like, the fan of the same style of music. And we went to. We went to go see Saves the Day, Shout Out.

[Cole]

It's a great show.

[Jesse Johnson]

Yeah. Good friends of mine, we did some tours together. We went to go see Jimmy World again, I guess just to take it back, I released Jimmy World's second 7 inch in 1995.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Okay.

[Jesse Johnson]

And when they did their quote unquote record release tour for Static Prevails, I was the only other person in the van.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Oh, wow.

[Jesse Johnson]

I was the like, hey, Go. Go carry that stuff over there and go sell those CDs. And that was that guy. Or go. Go ask the, you know, 25 people in the room if we can sleep on their floor.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Sweet.

[Jesse Johnson]

Kind of. So, yeah, we ended up having some very similar things in life that we like and. And really have kind of become friends.

[Cole]

Yeah.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Nice.

[Cole]

Now we're here.

[Jesse Johnson]

Yeah.

[Cole]

And also while we're on that, though, you should say that in an alternate universe or whatever, you could have been a Jimmy World guy.

[Jesse Johnson]

I could have been in Jimmy World.

[Cole]

Yeah.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Which is crazy.

[Jesse Johnson]

This is like. So I was having this conversation with. I'm a bartender also, where he could have basically bought stock in Google, like, in the. At the beginning, and he didn't, and he's kicking himself. And his friend put 200 grand and now has like, 5 billion. Sweet. But, yeah, I was in bands in high school in Los Angeles, where I grew up, and I also interned at Capitol Records, where Jimmy Orwald was signed at the time. Shout out to Lauren Israel, who I worked with, and Craig Aronson and their original bass player. I'm hoping the story's correct. Their original bass player had to go on a mission, like a religion, a religious thing. And he told his parents, but, no, we just got signed to a major label in my band. And they were like, well, do you want to get disowned? And he was like, okay, I got it.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah. Wow.

[Jesse Johnson]

And this is back when we had answering machines and Jim from Jimmy World had called me and he was like, hey, come out to Arizona. We're having this house party or whatever. And they kind of, like, gave me the offer, like, we need a bass player. Because that's what I played in all my other bands. And I was like, well, I'm in two bands in Los Angeles. I don't think I have time to be in Jimmy Eat World. Yeah, but not.

[Cole]

It turned out all right for you.

[Jesse Johnson]

I've lived an awesome life, you know, it would have been totally different. And, like, the places I've been, the people I've met, the things I've done have been completely amazing. And I'm still friends with the Jim Eat World. Like, we used to do a fantasy football league and.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Nice. Playing fantasy football with Jimmy Eat World would be pretty fun. Especially, like, as a guy who grew up in, like, the late 90s, early 2000s. Like, that's, like, weird, like, headspace stuff for me.

[Cole]

It is. It's crazy.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

So do you know Matt Scannel?

[Jesse Johnson]

Who's that?

[Stephen Pulvirent]

From Vertical Horizon?

[Jesse Johnson]

I don't But I've listened to the pod or talking watch as one of the two.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

I feel like you and Matt need to meet.

[Cole]

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Lots of overlap, I would imagine, in your worlds. So how. I want to talk about music for sure. But first, while we have these watches in front of us. How did you end up a watch guy?

[Jesse Johnson]

I've tried to figure this out. So my father doesn't. He's always hated watches. Not the idea of watches, but the idea of wearing something on his wrist. So it wasn't from him, which I know a lot of them are past, like, oh, my grandfather, whatever. I distinctly. There's two moments that I remember. One, I lived in St. Louis, worked at the St. Louis Galleria at the Gap.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Very nice.

[Jesse Johnson]

You probably know exactly where it is.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

I know exactly where that is. I bought lots of stuff there.

[Jesse Johnson]

Yeah, I was a stockroom manager, so I wasn't even on the floor. I was in the back all the time just unboxing clothes basically. And directly across the way was like the typical mall watch boutique, you know, not, not in like, you know, not the Rolex kind of league, but the like, maybe citizen was kind of like the solar powered citizens eco drives or whatever were kind of at the top of their range. Okay. And I remember like lusting after this. It's so weird to say a Timberland, like the boot company watch. And I remember it was blue and I was just like, I gotta get that watch. And I don't know, $100, I don't know, $75, $100, 150, whatever. And at the time, that was like, oh, my God, I gotta save up my gap, you know, paycheck, you know, I didn't live at home. I, you know, I had to pay rent. And I remember when I got it

[Stephen Pulvirent]

and I was just like, this is it.

[Jesse Johnson]

And then I totally cracked it and it broke. So that's the one. That was when I was like, really remember buying a watch. Like my first real one.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

And how old were you?

[Jesse Johnson]

19, 20.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Okay.

[Jesse Johnson]

I did own a lot of pop swatches and swatches as, as a like early teenager, like late 80s, early 90s. Okay, time. And then I remember when I finally bought a. A solar powered citizen that I think was like $350, $400. And that was like. I was like, oh, my God, this is the nicest watch I've ever seen. And honestly, it was, it was nice. There's nothing wrong with it. And sadly, I think you actually know the answer to this. The watch that got me into watch collecting was a U Boat.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

You know what? That's something. Do you know about these?

[Cole]

Yeah, I do.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah, Like I'm the one. I've heard that from a weird number of people. Like, it's not a brand that we cover. It's not a brand I see much anymore, except once a year I see the booth at Baselworld. But like they were big for a while. They were a thing.

[Jesse Johnson]

It was so it was 2007 big watches were in and I was Christmas shopping for my then girlfriend, now wife. And there was a. It was a collaboration between U Boat and Modern Amusement, which was like a clothing company with the little bird logo in like the way the dial was. The numbers are not the usual like, you know, three, six, nine numbers and everything. I was like, that's really cool. And then it had a display back and I was like, what is that? And I was like, I think it was like, I don't know, a couple hundred bucks or whatever. And I was like, this is it. And then from that moment I was on like, watch you seek and like the forms. I was like, how do these work? Like, what is this thing moving in there? And like, that was it. That was like the beginning of like, I gotta need more.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

This week's episode is presented by Leica Camera and the new Summilux M90mm lens. For the first time ever, Leica Camera has introduced a 90mm Summilux M lens, setting a new benchmark for long focal length wide aperture optics. You've definitely never shot a lens quite like this one before. The combination of the slightly telephoto 90mm focal length and the f 1.5 maximum aperture makes for an incredible portrait lens. You get a bit of compression for your subjects and also the ability to softly blur the background behind them. None of the common vignetting and distortion problems are an issue with this lens either, so you know you're always going to get the results you expect from Leica to get nerdy for a minute. The 90mm Summilux M lens utilizes eight optical elements in six groups with two aspherical elements. Each Leica lens is built and finished by hand, taking more than a dozen hours to create. It's truly a handcrafted product. The Summilux M90mm is extremely compact for something so complicated, and it balances fantastically with all M cameras, whether you're shooting the latest M10P or a vintage M3. It can also be adapted to work with other Leica cameras, including the new SL2. For more on the Summilux M90mm lens and Leica's other cameras and lenses. Visit leicacamera.com alright, alright, let's get back to the show. It's amazing how quick it goes from like, oh, I kind of like. Like this one has a nice face, you know, like, oh, I like the blue.

[Cole]

It's Dial Steve.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Right. I know. I did that. Did that on purpose, my guy. It's amazing how quick it goes from that to like on watch forums till 3 o' clock in the morning trying to figure out like, which ebosh movement provides better performance 12 years from now. Like it really like, like it's so easy to just go totally off the deep end, you know?

[Jesse Johnson]

Yeah. And it's even easier when you're home from tour and you don't have a job and you don't have to wake up in the morning and you're up until the sun comes up looking at the websites at watch you seek and all the stuff. And it's amazing the amount of information that people have on there. Like, it's. I feel like there's certain things they should just publish into a book. Like you have to search for it and find it, but it's insane.

[Cole]

Well, it used to be that way. Like remember Poor man's watch forum?

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yep.

[Cole]

SCWF or something. There was another one too.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah, there's. What was the Seiko mod forum. That was huge for a while. I feel like you would know that.

[Cole]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I was on. I remember this guy Isthmus. Do you remember him? Sounds vaguely familiar for Seiko mods and all that. Watch you seek. But yeah, anyway, yeah, I was literally. We were on the forums the same time doing the same thing. All of us, all of us in this room were.

[Jesse Johnson]

I think Cole and I shared. I don't know if you were in this, but the Yobo keys and the Degas. Oh yeah, like Seiko modding.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Oh yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

It was like a, A photo bucket. It was literally just a photo bucket with pictures. And you'd have to like be like, I need picture number three, four slash bezel red.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Oh yeah. I remember like the first time I was like, you know what, I'm gonna get something special. I'm gonna like customize something. And it was like, you know, it was essentially ordering a Seiko with a blue bezel instead of a black bezel. But like it felt like a big deal at the time and it was,

[Cole]

it was a big deal.

[Jesse Johnson]

It was.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

That's the thing that like. So like I mentioned, I'M a bartender at this place in South Orange, New Jersey. Shout out to the Fox and Falcon.

[Cole]

Shout out to Jersey.

[Jesse Johnson]

And something I feel almost proud of in the watch world is I'm not shy about being like, oh, what are you wearing? Or what is that? Whether it's a G Shock or a Seiko. And they're always like, oh, it's just a Seiko. And I'm like, no, I have three Seikos. This is awesome. Blah, blah. Why did you get it? And he was like, oh, well, actually, this happened. And this and that. And I've gotten. Specifically, there's this one lady that. She always heard me talking about watches. And she was like, you know, I have some watches at home. I got, like, long jeans. I got this. And she's like, but I think they're cursed. And I was like, what do you mean? She's like, well, as soon as I got this watch, everything just, like, in my life got really bad. So I put it in a drawer and it's just there. And I was like, wow, that's crazy. And so I kept asking about the story, and then she came in, like, honestly, like, two weeks ago, and I saw her wearing a watch, and I was like, what's that? She's like, well, I got the long jeans fixed. I'm wearing it now. And like. And she's like, I think I'm gonna fix the cursed watch. Like, I'm gonna wear it now. And like, I feel like I'm kind of, like, pushing that. Like, yeah, let's wear some watches here.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

That's cool. Yeah, that's a wild, wild thing.

[Cole]

This is probably a good time, too. So you're going on tour, like, very, very soon.

[Jesse Johnson]

Yeah, I fly to fly out of Boston on the 27th. I don't know when this will air. Probably after that, fly at six in the morning to get to Minneapolis, where the band is from, to go to a brewery, Abel Brewing, and actually brew a beer for Motion City soundtrack, which is super cool. Do that all day long. And then the next morning, fly to Chicago. And our first show on tour is New Year's Eve, House of Blues, Chicago.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Very cool.

[Cole]

And while you're doing that, I know we had talked about it, you're going to try and, like, meet up with watch folks around the.

[Jesse Johnson]

Yeah.

[Cole]

Country or whatever.

[Jesse Johnson]

I've got some meetups. Ben Watch while driving another Shout Out.

[Kara]

Who?

[Jesse Johnson]

I've been really talking a lot over Instagram, and he. He sent me that watch, which we'll talk about later. Yeah, he's he's going to do an Anaheim meetup, and. And I think these are going to be, like, real big hitters. I'm gonna be like, hey, hi, guys.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

You're the guy who put it all together. That'd be cool. Yeah.

[Cole]

Which is so cool.

[Jesse Johnson]

I just. I just want to be involved.

[Cole]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

I just want to be around. And, like, you know, there's certain watches that I will always look at that I'll never have. And, like, that's fine.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

Yeah.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Jack tells this story, and it's always stuck with me that he had a friend or has a friend who always wanted to collect Japanese samurai swords, but they were too expensive, and to get the quality that he wanted was too high. You know, he could buy something cheap, something not very good, whatever, but he always wanted the top quality stuff. So instead of actually collecting the physical swords, he saved up money and he would travel to Japan once a year, and he would go visit the museums that had the highest quality stuff.

[Jesse Johnson]

That's awesome.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

And the idea was that if he couldn't have the. The best actual physical objects in his home, he would instead spend the money seeing the best object and essentially collect the experience of these things instead of the physical things. And I think that's, for me, after Jack must have told me this story probably four or five years ago the first time he told me this. And it's something that stuck with me. And that's kind of the fun thing about hanging out with other watch people is you can experience all of these watches, and you get to see them, you get to talk to people about what it's like to wear them. You get to handle them for a little bit, snap a quick iPhone photo, whatever. And that doesn't cost $80,000 and doesn't cost $100,000. And you make a friend in the process. It's a fun thing, and you get to kind of experience them in a different way.

[Jesse Johnson]

I was recently listening to all Shout Outs here, the Blammo podcast, I think it was. Eric Wind was on there.

[Cole]

Yeah, My man.

[Jesse Johnson]

And he was mentioning. He was like, in a similar aspect of the story you just told. Like, he's like, go to auction previews and go see these watches.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

And I was like, I can do that.

[Cole]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

I could actually, like, just go see these. So that's. I haven't done it yet. This was. I'd listened to it, I know, a couple weeks ago. So now I'm like, I want to. I want to know when these previews are and go see, because these, like, Watches that I would are out of this world. You know, you can go walk in

[Stephen Pulvirent]

and like, sit down with an expert and like, if you go in a not busy time, they're generally pretty happy to like, hang out and talk about stuff. And like, you can sit and try on a, you know, 3448 perpetual calendar. You can try on a, you know, Mark 1 Oyster Paul Newman. Like, you can try on these crazy things that sit in like, such rarefied air. And like, you can do it with a person who knows a lot about them and can, like, tell you why they're special. And it's fun. It's a fun thing.

[Cole]

When we were at the only watch preview, the grandmaster chime was pulled out or whatever.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Cole]

Everyone was just passing it around. The most expensive in the world. Yeah. It was the thing.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah. I mean, everybody just like, put a glove on and like, it was literally passed around the table. It was pretty crazy.

[Cole]

Yeah, you can do that too.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

I'll go visit the swords. I'll go visit the watches.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

So we have some watches here that I want to make sure we get a chance to talk about. So you brought a section of your collection. From the moment you kind of went off the deep end and started spending late nights on the forums, how did your collecting kind of develop? Like, what were you interested in? How is. How is. How did we end up with this kind of like, collection of watches in front of us?

[Jesse Johnson]

I think I actually have a list that I tried to make if I can turn my phone back on. Let's see here. So early days was seiko's, you know, double 7s, turtles, stuff like that.

[Cole]

Oh, the old turtles.

[Jesse Johnson]

Yeah, yeah, the old turtles.

[Cole]

630-963-066309. Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

Yeah. Because you could get them from. Used on the forums for 100 bucks.

[Russell]

Okay.

[Jesse Johnson]

Bucks or whatever.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

And then what I kind of started doing was putting this is gonna sound. I would type in watches that I couldn't afford into ebay searches and forum searches with misspellings pro move to try and find people selling watches that nobody else would maybe find and getting them technically at a lower price point. So, yeah, so I've got on the list of all the stuff I've gone through swatches when I was younger, Timexes of quartz, Timberlands, the citizens, the U boats. I had this funny watch that I bought. So my wife is Panamanian. Okay. And so my first time in Panama, I went to the like, airport watch shop.

[Kara]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

And I got a Festina Manhattan dual time okay. And it was an automatic watch with a second sub dial that kept a second time zone.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Okay.

[Jesse Johnson]

And the sub dial was quartz.

[Cole]

Oh, that's weird. Yeah, really weird.

[Jesse Johnson]

So that was fun. And then I started getting into kind of the indie kind of watchmakers of the time. So I had like, Oberst, Morgan Magrette out of Australia, I think New Zealand, actually. New Zealand, Yeah. Yep. Unimatics like the U1A, like that stuff. Because again, it was like a lower price point.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

And I kind of look back and I wish I actually kept some of them, you know, Like, I look back and there's like. Those are actually really cool.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah, they're cool pieces.

[Jesse Johnson]

A bunch of G shocks. Like, just like.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Because you love 40 bucks. Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

And then when I started getting on ebay, it was like Bell and Ross's Sins. And then my first big purchase was a Tudor black bay. Okay. The maroon one. Okay. Like, that was the OG.

[Cole]

The OG black 2012 Black Bay.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

Before the. I think they do in house movement now.

[Kara]

Like.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah, this was the end. Yeah. That's super cool. You mentioned G Shock. We have a really cool looking G Shock here. Can you tell me about this watch?

[Jesse Johnson]

It's the. So they did. I think it was for the 35th anniversary.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Okay.

[Jesse Johnson]

A bunch of the all metal.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

G shocks. I originally bought the silver one, and that has since gone to a friend. And this is the distressed black one. And I know you can't see it because it's a podcast, but I have brass bull bars on there.

[Kara]

Okay.

[Jesse Johnson]

People, remember what bull bars are. It was so you couldn't see. Scratch the face of the G Shock. That's super cool and it's fun. So this is my. If I'm going hiking, it's going to stand up to it. It can hit it on a rock. It's going to be fine. It has four time zones. It's got a timer, it's got a stopwatch. And nowadays they can connect to an app on your phone and you can set all the time zones or even where you parked your car or whatever on your phone through the app. Through the. Through your. Your. Your watch, which is, I think, really fun.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Nice.

[Jesse Johnson]

Yeah.

[Cole]

Did anything here on the table? Are any of these watches tied to the Rise of Motion City soundtrack? Or did you mark any occasion in your career through one of these guys here?

[Jesse Johnson]

Honestly, that. That would have been the. The black Bay. My first kind of big purchase would have been the Black Bay was when Motion City was doing well. All right.

[Cole]

Hey, those days are coming. Next Month.

[Jesse Johnson]

A lot of these are tied to dates and numbers and years. Oh, cool.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

I love that.

[Jesse Johnson]

I have. This is my great grandfather's pocket watch. That's awesome. Which is engraved with his initials and his name dated December 6, 1909. Whoa. And runs, you know, it runs a little fast and is pristine. Like it's just absolutely so cool. So that's. I guess watch collecting was in my genes there. This is a. The other John Paul special.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Oh yeah, yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

John Player.

[Kara]

Sorry.

[Jesse Johnson]

John Player special.

[Cole]

Yes.

[Jesse Johnson]

The other JPS Seiko chronograph, which. With the original two tone bracelet, which is kind of hard to find.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

I was going to say. I don't think I've ever seen that watch in two tone and I don't think I've ever seen that watch with that dial.

[Jesse Johnson]

And this is by Seiko's Fun. If you're looking for birth year, even birth month, because all their serial numbers tell you what it is and you can look it up. So this is June 77, which is my birth month and year.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Oh, that's awesome.

[Jesse Johnson]

So that's a fun one. And then My other Seiko 6309 is also from 1977. Also on a jubilee bracelet. Hashtag everything on a jubilee.

[Cole]

That's right.

[Jesse Johnson]

And this one's fun because you don't often see with the, with the Seiko's like a ghosting on the bezel. You see a lot of scratches usually, but they stay black. So that's a fun.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

There. 1997 Omega Speedmaster. Love a good speed professional in what I think is kind of maybe the best condition. I've seen one that's 20 years old.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

It's pretty sharp.

[Jesse Johnson]

Flat end links. Also kind of a trend that I like. The bracelet itself is from a seamaster. Was it Skywalker or Anakin from 1970? They only made this bracelet, I believe in 1970.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Okay.

[Jesse Johnson]

But I like the straight end links.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah, I love it. It's a great look.

[Jesse Johnson]

And last year, last model that they did Tritium. And the last year in model with the 861.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Oh, cool.

[Jesse Johnson]

The bummer is the model number is the same as when they went to Luminova. There's no, there's no reference number change.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Okay.

[Jesse Johnson]

It's just in 97 or 98 it changed.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Nice.

[Jesse Johnson]

So yeah, in 97 is when I met the guy who ended up being the best man at my wedding.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Oh.

[Jesse Johnson]

That's actually when I moved to St. Louis. So that's cool.

[Cole]

You're a bit of a numerologist a little bit.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

So wait, the Speedmaster is what I want to ask about, because, like, that's a watch that, for a lot of people, like, is sort of like a totem. Like, it sits in their imagination, and it's something they always have to have, and it kind of like floats out there. Was this watch that way for you, or is this just something where you were like, oh, this is cool. Like, I'm going to. I'm going to pick this up. It has all these interesting details about it.

[Jesse Johnson]

This actually all stems from my friend Mike Marzano, who actually. You know what? That's why I'm into watch collecting. Because of Mike.

[Cole]

That's why.

[Jesse Johnson]

That's gotta be it. I remember. Okay, so I had my black bay, and we were at Spritson House, which is in. In Brooklyn, and we were hanging out. We had a lot of friends. We all lived in. We all lived in Bushwick, Brooklyn, at the time. And he rolled up wearing a Speedmaster, and I was like, what? You got a Speedy? And he's like, yeah, dude. From, like, original owner for, like, way below value. Like, you know, not gonna list numbers. But, like, it was insane. Like, he was just like, yeah. I basically stole this watch and that. And then in holding it and seeing, like, kind of that. That next level.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

I was like, oh, my God, I need to get into this.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

Like, yeah, it was Mike that got me into it for sure.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

That's awesome.

[Jesse Johnson]

So I've actually owned. This is my third Speedmaster. Okay. I had. I bought a. What's up, Pipes.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah. Geez, man, these pipes are loud today.

[Jesse Johnson]

Like a new one. And again, the numbers. I still remember the serial number was 770-806-557, which is. I was born in 77, which is the first two. I was married in August. 08. I was born in June. 06. And 57, I think is the first year that Speedmasters were made.

[Cole]

That's right.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah. Wow. That's a heck of a serial number.

[Jesse Johnson]

The warranty card was dated Valentine's Day, 2015. My wife and I got engaged on Valentine's Day. Well, that's a lie. I was in Japan on Valentine's Day. Our first date when we got back, which was in one month later, March 15, which is a Valentine's Day date, we got engaged, and our daughter was born in 2015.

[Cole]

Do you think that there's some fate or something? There's something about numbers that determines the course of life and so forth?

[Jesse Johnson]

I don't know. I don't know. What it is, but it's what I see. This is gonna get real boring. And feel free to edit. We were married on 8 8. Our apartment in Los Angeles was. The address was 1010. Our daughter was born on 1111. There's ties to numbers of our apartment in Brooklyn, which is 410. And our house, where we live now. I play a lot of poker. I'm a big gambler. Our address is the number 52, which is the same number of cards in a deck of cards. So I don't know if there's anything that really connects at all or if I'm just overanalyzing everything.

[Cole]

And I think this must have something to do with. Or it helps you. Keyboards, music theory, numbers. Sure, yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

I mean, I guess that would totally go together, but I just. It's weird. I just see connections between dates, numbers, repeating things.

[Cole]

Well, you're like, watches are a good thing for.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah, exactly.

[Cole]

There's plenty of reference numbers.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

One watch here that you don't see too often is this guy sitting right in front of you, which, when we walked in here, I was like, like, oh, you have. You have that. Can you tell us. Tell us about this watch.

[Jesse Johnson]

This is from an independent watchmaker, and he makes Unique one of one. And he does them handmade. They're like, you know, hammered out. The dials are hammered out, handmade, and it's like a jumping hour. It's like, it's. So you have to have a photo to really see what it is.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah, we'll have a photo in the post. So if you're listening to this on a podcast player, just go to hodinkee.com, check out the post. We'll put a link in the show notes so you can see a photo of this.

[Jesse Johnson]

So they're made by Fernando Lopez Ronzon. I don't know if I'm pronouncing it correctly, but he's on Instagram. F ronzon R O N Z O N. And this watch actually belongs to a friend of mine, Ben, in California. And he posted it on watch while driving. And I was just like, what is that? That, I don't understand what that is. How does that work?

[Cole]

It looks pretty wild.

[Jesse Johnson]

And he posted that it was handmade. And then I checked out the watchmaker and went back on his feed and just. He was showing, like, techniques of how he's doing everything. And Ben being nice dude, he was just like, yeah, I'll just send it to you.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Cool.

[Jesse Johnson]

And I was like, okay, you're one of one unique he's like, yeah, it'll

[Stephen Pulvirent]

be in New York.

[Jesse Johnson]

What's your address?

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Cole may or may not have muled this back, didn't he?

[Cole]

I did. I literally happened to be in la, ran into Ben. Ben showed me the watch and I was like, you know what? I like that watch suit. Let me wear it a little bit. I will go take it back.

[Russell]

All right.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

So I'm the only idiot here who hasn't gotten to wear this watch. But yeah, it's a cool thing. It's one of those pieces that, like, I remember seeing it, maybe it's on Instagram a while back. And then like, I don't think I've ever seen one in the metal. It's a cool thing and it's a good reminder that there's cool, interesting kind of like modern, contemporary takes on watchmaking being done at all price points. You don't have to buy an MB&F or an Urwerk to get a sort of modern watch. You can do something a little more accessible.

[Jesse Johnson]

But if only you could get an MB and F. Yeah.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Oh, man. Max makes some beautiful things. Things Max and his friends.

[Jesse Johnson]

Yeah, exactly.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Totally opposite. Would maybe be this guy right here. I feel like that would only be here if there was a story to it. It has a Velcro Mickey Mouse strap on it.

[Jesse Johnson]

Yeah. So this is my daughter Parker, who is now four, just turned four, already owns two watches.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Starting to meow. That's how we like it.

[Jesse Johnson]

So she has one of her mom's old watches that I got in Japan that was. It's a baby G Shock, as they called them, but they didn't make them in America this way. So it's actually just a scaled down 6900. Oh. Like the same dials and everything, but just smaller white with the black, like the inverted black digital white band. And they only. As far as I know, that was only made and sold in Japan. And I bought it when I was there for my wife. She wore it a lot. And I gave it to my daughter, who doesn't quite wear it yet. She wears it around and. Yeah, it'll take a beating.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

It's a bracelet.

[Jesse Johnson]

Yeah, exactly. And this is a mini lip, which I believe is French. And this is an actual hand wound mechanical watch that was running for a bit. I'm going to get it serviced so that it actually works properly. And it has a 24 hour track and then it has a 12 hour track inside of that. And the hands are two different colors. And it's for teaching children how to read. An analog clock. Because you can tell them, you know, the 24 hours in the day, 12 hours, tell them there's the hour hand, the minute hand, different colors. And what's really cool about it is there's a third track that counts up to half an hour that says 5, 10, 1/4, 20, 25 and half. To count up to half an hour and then back down from half an hour.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

That's cool. Teaches them like a quarter to the hour. That's, that's cool.

[Jesse Johnson]

Yeah.

[Cole]

They don't make watches like this anymore. They really don't.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

No, because most people, I mean I'm gonna sound so.

[Cole]

Yeah.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Old here, but like most people don't know how to read time anymore. Right.

[Cole]

That's why I was. They don't make watch.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

No, you just use your phone. You need to learn how to read a clock.

[Cole]

Yeah. So this teaches kids how to read analog clocks, which is incredible. And so cool that you bought that

[Jesse Johnson]

with an actual hand. I mean, you know, as a watch, it'd be fine if it was quartz. It's for a four year old.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

Like I was just on ebay, you know, I saw an article on these, these watches and I put up my alert, you know, mini lip kids watch. And it showed up like a week later and I was like, that's mine, it's got to be mine.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

And shout out to the ebay alert. The ebay alert might be the hero

[Cole]

of this episode of ebay tips here, the misspellings.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah, I remember, I remember those days. I used to buy a lot of clothes like, and stuff on ebay and it was just like, that's how you had to do it. You had to find like, you know, the names of tailors and the names of like a shoemaker and just misspell it every way you possibly could. And occasionally you'd get that score.

[Cole]

That's fantastic.

[Jesse Johnson]

Bad photos.

[Cole]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

So yeah, watches, I mean, not to usually sold by an older person that maybe doesn't have a top quality way to take the pictures and like zooming in and be like, is that the correct. Like are the indices? Like, I think it's. I think, I think it's correct. Like I'm gonna take the jump because. And then nobody every else is like, the photo's so blurry, I'm not gonna do it. And then you get it and you're like, yes.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

That's another Eric Wind tip. Eric Wind is a champion of the look for the ebay listing. With bad photos. You can tell also if you have a trained Eye. If you look at enough of these things, you get to realize are the scratches on the crystal or are they on the dial? Is the bracelet scratched or is it dusty? You start to be able to figure out, is this thing a piece of junk or is this thing a really nice thing that's just been photographed and treated very poorly?

[Jesse Johnson]

And that's kind of. Actually, that's how I kind of worked my way up to even afford most of these watches, is finding things that were misrepresented, misspelled, blurry photos, getting them for literally, like, I don't know, less than what they're worth. And then going on the forums, taking better photos, putting them on ebay, taking better photos, better descriptions and making a little bit here, a little bit there,

[Cole]

a little bit there, classic value.

[Jesse Johnson]

And then as you. That moves up, you know, what you can buy moves up. And then that's kind of how I funded what I have. Yeah, yeah, of course there was, you

[Stephen Pulvirent]

know, and you're also. I mean, all of these things, you know, we're talking about them specific to watches, but, like, you collect other stuff, right? You're a collector. You know how this works.

[Jesse Johnson]

I collect things that. So my biggest, like, screw up in life is everything that I'm interested in, nobody else wants to talk about. Okay, so do you want to talk about Bakelite, backgammon, checkers?

[Stephen Pulvirent]

I actually wouldn't hate that. Like, that's a thing I know nothing about. But, like, I feel like this is the right.

[Jesse Johnson]

Do you want to talk about limited numbered, oversized, handmade cribbage boards out of different types of wood? Because I've got those.

[Cole]

Love it. Do you know what cribbage is?

[Stephen Pulvirent]

I know what cribbage is.

[Kara]

I actually did.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

I do know what cribbage is.

[Jesse Johnson]

Do you have family in Minnesota?

[Stephen Pulvirent]

I do now. I married into family.

[Jesse Johnson]

It's very big in Minnesota. Cribbage is huge.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

I'm married into Midwestern family.

[Jesse Johnson]

Do you want to talk about the different, like Italian producers or manufacturers of playing cards?

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Oh, yeah, that I would love to talk about. That sounds super interesting.

[Jesse Johnson]

Do you want to talk about, like collectible board games and different versions throughout the 50s, 60s, 70s?

[Cole]

Also super cool.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah, that sounds awesome. I don't understand what the problem is here.

[Jesse Johnson]

Or do you want to talk about offensive and defensive strategies of playing? Sorry, what's the kids game?

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Okay.

[Jesse Johnson]

That I have played for money with adults.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Oh, I love that. Anything you can do for money is. I'm in, you know, so I've kind

[Jesse Johnson]

of been in this vein where these, like, I'm deep into these things that. And there. There are communities. There's like, you know, there's backgammon boards. Poker chips. Collect poker chips. Different. Which is, like, there's different manufacturers that are. Paulson, for example, it's considered, like, the top poker chip manufacturer. And you can't buy them. They only go to casinos, but then casinos close down, and then you. You can only buy them if you buy all of them, which is all this money. But if you're on the forum, you do group buy. I don't know if that's something somebody knows where. Somebody's like, I'll take 500 of them. And somebody's like, I'll take a thousand. And then the group buys a half million chips or something like that.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Half.

[Jesse Johnson]

Well, I don't know.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Jeez.

[Jesse Johnson]

A bunch.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

That's incredible.

[Jesse Johnson]

Casino. And then divvy them up.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Wow, that's super cool. Okay. I ended up in a weird Instagram rabbit hole maybe. Maybe two, three months ago. Like, late at night. I was just, like, bored and scrolling through my recommended. And I ended up, I guess, sifting through a bunch of dice. Collecting.

[Jesse Johnson]

Yeah. I have a whole jar of dice.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Cole]

Is it die or dice?

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Dice.

[Jesse Johnson]

Die would be singular. Dice is singular.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

A whole bunch of dice. Yeah. It was really fascinating. I'm like, I was. I mean, big surprise to everyone. I am and was a big nerd. Used to play Dungeons and Dragons, for sure. So I had my fair share of dice back in the day, but they were not particularly, like, premium.

[Jesse Johnson]

So did you. Did you read about precision dice?

[Stephen Pulvirent]

No. No, no, no.

[Jesse Johnson]

So precision dice. Well, we cut this out, too. Are where the material that's put in to make the actual dots on the die are the exact same weight as the material the die is. So there's no shift in weight on the die.

[Cole]

Wow. Interesting.

[Jesse Johnson]

Because six numerals of a heavier material would make the six heavier and the one light.

[Cole]

But then how do you compensate for removing the material?

[Stephen Pulvirent]

You're just filling it back in.

[Cole]

Oh, you're filling it back in.

[Jesse Johnson]

So it's two materials that are the exact same weight, so that every side is the same way.

[Cole]

I love that.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

That really. That really appeals to, like, the, like, painfully obsessive and, like, totally pedantic part of me. I love that.

[Cole]

Yeah. Very cool.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

So what was the first thing you got into collecting? Like, when. When did you realize, like, oh, shit, I'm a collector? Like, I'm just gonna hoard things.

[Cole]

Oh, keyboards. Moog Right.

[Jesse Johnson]

Well, I did have a lot of Moogs, which actually, when Motion City Soundtrack started playing, I played a realistic MG1. You guys might be old enough to remember the name Realistic. That was Radio Shack's brand of musical instruments.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

And literally plastic. Literally duct taped together. I think at some point we had about eight of them because they would break, get them fixed. Break, get them fixed, Break, get them fixed. We used to. I think the first one that Motion City Soundtrack got was, like, $75 on eBay. And then throughout the popularity, unfortunately, of our band and me playing the realistic MG1, then they were like $500. And they were like $700. And we kind of shot ourself in the foot with that one.

[Cole]

Will you have one?

[Jesse Johnson]

For this upcoming tour, I've moved onto the big boy keyboard. And I play a Moog Lil Fatty, which is.

[Cole]

Oh, the old little fatty.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

A lot more bells and whistles and made out of some metal and wood instead of just plastic and duct tape.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Sweet.

[Jesse Johnson]

But, yeah, the first thing I remember being obsessed with and collecting was he man toys.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Okay.

[Jesse Johnson]

I remember when I got the Castle Grayskull to put him in and play in. That was like, the beginning of being obsessed with something for me, for sure.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

What is it about? Cause like you said you collected a bunch of different things. Like, like, what is it about collecting that appeals to you, like, fundamentally, regardless of, like, what the actual object is? Like, what is it about being a collector that you like?

[Jesse Johnson]

I think there's two things that I've come to realize. One is I genuinely enjoy the process in the research. Like, my wife makes fun of me because, like, I enjoy reading the instructions to put something together. Like, I read through it before I start. I'm like, okay, so this is what we're going to do. I enjoy manuals. So it's like, I enjoy the process of being like, okay, so this was manufactured from this time. And this is, like, with bake, like, materials, which they do, like clocks and bezels on watches and backgammon checkers is like, you heat it up with your thumb and you can smell the formaldehyde. And so learning stuff like this and then and getting stuff and being like, oh, no, this one's not real, or this is like, the process of getting there I actually think I find really fun. And then there's also the process of thinking about heirlooms for me, both sides of my family, really. Nothing ever passed down. Like, nothing's ever kind of been there. This pocket watch, well, we found it that we Found it in a box.

[Russell]

Wow.

[Jesse Johnson]

And, like, my mom was like, you like watches, right? And I was like, yeah, classic. And now, you know, being married with family and daughter and everything, like, all of a sudden, I kind of want to have those things that are like, daddy's things.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

You know, like. Like, so then. Then I. Then I want, you know, heirloom quality. Like, my main backgammon board is, like, handmade by this guy in Chicago with. I picked the wood, you know, and I picked the felt and the leather and everything that it's made out of and stuff. And like. Like, the idea of down the line, her being like, this was my dad's thing.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

Like, I kind of like that.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

It's a good thing.

[Jesse Johnson]

But to it to get there, there's like, it kind of has to be like this. This journey to find what that thing is, you know?

[Cole]

Yeah. Gotta put the time in. That's the thing. It's really just putting the time in.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Cole]

Yeah.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

So let's go back to music. So how did you end up Emotion

[Jesse Johnson]

City Soundtrack So I was living in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at the time, and I was working at a restaurant, and I was playing in kind of hardcore and punk bands mostly.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

What year is this?

[Jesse Johnson]

This is 2001. Okay. And those bands broke up. And somebody that I worked with at the restaurant was in this band called Motion City Soundtrack. And they were like, we've seen you play in these other bands. You have a lot of energy. You have a lot of, like, you have a lot of fun. Like, cool. Can you play keyboards? Because I played bass in all my other bands and I was like, absolutely not. Never touched a piano or a keyboard in my life. And they go, cool, we'll show you.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Nice. I mean, that's. Honestly, that's pretty punk.

[Jesse Johnson]

Yeah, that's a pretty punk attitude. And I had never played in, like, a poppy band. Like, I grew up thinking I was like, punk and, like, hardcore and, like, you know, really aggressive stuff, you know. And they were kind of poppy, like pop, punky, ish at the time, you know? And I was like, maybe that'll be fun. Yeah, maybe.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Give it a shot. Sure.

[Jesse Johnson]

Yeah, why not? And I figured we'd be like, local opener, you know, like, oh, the Get Up Kids Are Coming to Town. Local opener, Motion City Soundtrack oh, look, the Promise Ringer coming. Local opener, Motion City Soundtrack I was like, it'll be cool. Let's work at this restaurant, playing this band. Everything's cool. And then we were like, okay, cool. So we love the Get Up Kids. They Own this studio in Kansas. We'll go down there and we'll make this record with Ed Rose at Red House. And then it became Black Lodge. And we're just going to make a record and we're going to do it in like four days. And we did it. And then we. We would burn them ourselves on like two time CD burners. So. Oh yeah, it was a.

[Cole]

Like a CD RW versus I was

[Jesse Johnson]

like, we'll get the ones that are colored on the bottom. So we'll do 100 in orange and 100 in red and 100 in blue and 100 in black or whatever.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

So cool.

[Jesse Johnson]

And then we cut. We took five inch floppy disks.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

If anybody remembers what those are, of course. And would razor blade the very top off and pull out the floppy disk. And the inside of those are almost like. Felt like it's, you know, so it doesn't scratch the actual. And we put the CDs in there.

[Cole]

Oh, so you're a marketer too.

[Jesse Johnson]

And then we made stickers that were the same size as the top of where you would label a floppy disk. And that's how we sold our CDs.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Oh, I'm loving this.

[Cole]

That's cool.

[Jesse Johnson]

Yeah, very cool. And then the big thing that I think that we did that actually made it all work is 2000. I want to say 2002. We did over 320 shows in one year.

[Kara]

Jesus.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Whoa.

[Jesse Johnson]

In a van with our gear. And we built people out there that has ever seen a band or touring. Like we built a loft in the back of the van. Like plywood and two by fours.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

So that there was about

[Stephen Pulvirent]

two feet

[Jesse Johnson]

from the ceiling of the van to the top of the loft. And you would put all of your gear and all of your equipment underneath it. But then you could sleep three or four across just filled with farts. Like it was like. Yeah, it was like, you know, five.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

That van still smells like farts today.

[Jesse Johnson]

Yeah. Five or six people, seven people depending. Like if by the time we finally had a merch person, you know, who is still our merch person almost 20 to 20 years later. Wow. Shout out to Beth Rable. And yeah, we just went on the road. We went on the road. We played. I remember playing shows for three people, you know, ten people. I remember. So this is another funny one. So we before, if anybody knows the band All American Rejects.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah, of course.

[Jesse Johnson]

Good friends of ours. Now we did a quote unquote tour, three shows with them in the Midwest.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

Columbia, Missouri, somewhere in Iowa. And the Iowa Show Motion City Soundtrack, All American Rejects. Zero people showed up.

[Cole]

No.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Zero.

[Jesse Johnson]

Zero. Wow. Zero.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Do you remember the first show where you ever like walked out on stage and you were like, like, like, what is happening here?

[Jesse Johnson]

I remember a couple. Earliest one would be there's a venue in Chicago called the Fireside Bowl.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Okay.

[Jesse Johnson]

Which when I lived in Chicago, I lived like five blocks away from it. And I saw every show at the Fireside Bowl. It was like a legendary. Still is a legendary punk venue. We, like the day we, we sold, that was our first, like, sold out show. I wanted 300 people. I don't know, like, still sold. Not crazy. It's all that matters. And we were like. And we, we sold so much merch and it was like, not that much, you know, and that, that was like a big, like, oh my gosh, like we're actually doing something. We sold out the fight. Like where I went to shows.

[Cole]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

Where I grew up, you know, in my early twenties going to shows. We sold that out. That was like, holy crap.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

That's amazing.

[Cole]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

And then there was. There was a festival in Jersey called Skate and Surf.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Skate and Surf.

[Jesse Johnson]

And then.

[Cole]

Oh yeah, I was there.

[Russell]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

And then. And then it was later, I think, called Bamboozle. So we were playing middle of the day and we weren't on like the big main stage and we weren't on the other cool stage. We were in, if any of us have been to Asbury Park. We were in the hallway of the Convention Center.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

Like the big booming hallway. Right. And we're setting up and we're like, cool. Maybe people show up and like you could kind of hear like in the background, like people talking. And it was getting louder and louder. And the place was packed like to the gills. Couldn't get anybody else in. And we were all like literally tearing up, like on stage being like, what is life that's so awesome? Like, I don't know, 2000, I don't know how many people, but like just insanity, you know? And we were like, why aren't you watching? Like, I don't know, Coheed and Cambria or like whoever else was on the say anything. Whoever was on that year, that was another one. I remember we were on Warped Tour.

[Cole]

Maybe you've been on that a lot.

[Jesse Johnson]

We think we did eight or nine. Yeah, we held the record.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

One of my all time life regrets is I never made it to the Warped Tour.

[Cole]

Oh my God, you missed out, Steve.

[Jesse Johnson]

I know, man.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

I know.

[Jesse Johnson]

How do you feel about Porta Potties

[Stephen Pulvirent]

and Sweat I mean, when I was, like, 14, I felt great about it. Less so now.

[Cole]

But I went honestly for 16, honestly

[Stephen Pulvirent]

for, like, some good music. Fine.

[Jesse Johnson]

It was great. Warped Tours was the most awesome part about Warped Tour was kind of the. It was like a. The kind of family base of, like, a circus, what I think a circus would be where, like, so we were in this kind of, like, poppy, you know, pop punk band. But then we would hang out with, like, the Casualties, which is, like, full on Mohawk Band. Or, like, I remember, like, I talked to, like, Tim 10 bomb from rancid or the guys from the Offspring who were in these, like, gigantic, like, millionaire bands. And we were all on the same playing field. Yeah, we would. You know, I ran the poker table, like, one year and. And, like, hanging out with, like, Fat Mike from no Effects and, like, all these people and, like, everybody was on the same wavelength. No matter how much money you had, no matter what. What city you were from, no matter what kind of music you played, it was like 800 or 900 people traveling together for two months.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

That's amazing.

[Cole]

So cool.

[Jesse Johnson]

Yeah, it was awesome.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

So you out on tour in a couple days. This. We're recording this, like, middle to end of December. How long's your tour?

[Jesse Johnson]

I believe it's five weeks. So it starts New Year's Eve, runs into the first week of February.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Okay.

[Jesse Johnson]

Full U.S. most cities.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Amazing.

[Jesse Johnson]

And then we have some hometown shows. We're doing three shows in Minneapolis, 15, 16, 17th, which is technically our hometown shows, which we're really excited for. We're going over to Slam Dunk Festival in England in May.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Sweet.

[Jesse Johnson]

And maybe some more stuff. We're trying to figure it out. We're all kind of in that married with kids life these days, where, you know, five weeks is a long time.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

Whereas it used to be, you know, eight months.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Right. Different thing.

[Jesse Johnson]

Yeah.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Well, we'll link it up so that people can hopefully come out and see you. And we'll put your Instagram handle so people can. Can shout you out and let you know if they're. If they're around and hopefully join these watch meetups.

[Jesse Johnson]

Yeah. I'm starting a new Instagram thing.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Okay.

[Jesse Johnson]

That I've started, I don't know, two, three months ago, still pretty new. Called Modern Patina.

[Russell]

Cool.

[Jesse Johnson]

Which is Modern Patina on Instagram. And my whole thing on that, which is kind of my whole thing with watches is in collecting and heirlooms and even, like, people that are into cars. All that whole thing is, like, trying to find and tell the Story of the relationship to the object.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

So I've got a couple posts on there. I've got some amazing stories. I'm gonna get together with the lady that has the haunted watch, the cursed watch.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Amazing.

[Jesse Johnson]

And it's been really fun telling the stories and just literally just seeing people and be like, what's up with that watch? And they're being like, oh, I got it because I broke the sales record this year or whatever. And like, they were like, I was gonna get a. Like a. Put it towards a Porsche. I got the watch, and next year I got the Porsche. And then I was like, do you

[Stephen Pulvirent]

still have the Porsche?

[Jesse Johnson]

And they're like, no, I still have the watch. Like in things that have been handed down. I've got watches on there that like, have been from grandfather to father to son.

[Cole]

Rutgers watch or something.

[Jesse Johnson]

Yeah.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Oh, yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

Yeah. That was awesome. This guy, this. I don't know, he must have been in his 80s, and he was wearing a double signed Seiko Rutgers University quartz.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Wow.

[Jesse Johnson]

Gold or gold plated or plastic watch. Right. And I was like, that's a cool watch. And this. The. The dial looks like rough sandpaper. But, like, on purpose, like, it was like made that way. And I was like, do you have any other watches? He's like, no, I bought this in 1976. This is my only watch. I wear this every day. It's so cool, you know, like, and it was probably at the time, like, kind of expensive for him.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah.

[Jesse Johnson]

He's like, I bought this when I graduated and I was so happy that I graduated college. I bought this watch and I wear it every day.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

That's so cool. Yeah.

[Cole]

So modern. Patina is definitely worth checking out.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah, check it out, dude. Thanks so much for joining us. Yeah, this was a blast. And I have a funny feeling this isn't your last time on the show. I feel like. I feel like we could do a whole show on non watch collecting, like, just get real deep on a bunch of weird stuff.

[Jesse Johnson]

All the stuff that my friends don't want to talk about.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

I love it. It's the story of my life. Awesome. Thanks, dude. And enjoy your tour. And hopefully some people listening here will see some shows.

[Jesse Johnson]

Yeah, it'll be fun. We're gonna get sweaty, give out high fives.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Perfect.

[Cole]

Love it. I'm gonna be there.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

Yeah, me too. All right, awesome. Take care, man.

[Cole]

Cheers, Jesse.

[Jesse Johnson]

Thank you.

[Stephen Pulvirent]

This week's episode was recorded at Hodinkee HQ in New York City and was produced and edited by Grayson Corhonen. Please remember to subscribe and rate this show. It really does make a difference for us. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next week.