To the New Owner of My Old Rolex Watch

It was in 2005 or so that I was forced to sell the Rolex watch I'd worn for more than two decades. I asked that this letter accompany the watch when it found its new permanent owner.

Note: It was in 2005 or so that I was forced to sell the Rolex watch I'd worn for more than two decades. I sold it to a fellow whom I knew would re-sell it, and because it had been so much a part of me, I asked that this letter accompany the watch when it found its new permanent owner.

To the New Owner of My Old Rolex Watch  

Congratulations! I understand that you are now the owner of the stainless steel Rolex Oyster Perpetual Datejust (with gray face and white gold serrated bezel, and jubilee band) that I owned and wore for some 22 years! I thought you might be interested in learning some of its history.

I was not the original owner. I bought it from a pawnshop in Atlantic City, circa 1983. The watch was actually manufactured in 1968, so it was already some 15 years old when I bought it.

At the time, I was working as a Pitchman on the Boardwalk, demonstrating and selling The Amazing Ginsu Knife.  It was not my first experience as a Pitchman (I broke in to the business pitching mops in the basement of Macy’s Herald Square in 1978), but it did confer on me the right to call myself a Boardwalk Pitchman, in the tradition of Ed McMahon and Ron Popeil and Billy Mays. The motto of Atlantic City is “Ocean, Emotion, and Constant Promotion." To be able to call oneself a Boardwalk Pitchman is to be a member of a very select fraternity.

A note about Billy Mays (who became rich and famous pitching the product known as the "Sham-Wow" on TV): I remember when he showed up as a “JCL” (a “Johnny-come-lately”; a “newbie”) on the Boardwalk; we both worked as “agents” for National Kitchen Products, the premier Pitch outfit, owned by Ruby Morris, a cousin of the Popeils (Ron Popeil was a pioneer of the "infomercial," and is probably best known for "The Popeil Pocket Fisherman"). The Morrises and the Popeils are like the Rothschilds of the Pitch biz, although some would say they’re more like the Corleones.

I don’t mean to disrespect the dead. Billy was a hard-working, likeable guy. He might have had some ultimately self-destructive habits, but he made no enemies.

But I simply do not understand how he attained such phenomenal success on TV when all he really did was shout. As a Pitchman, Billy was one-dimensional. There’s a lot more to being a Pitchman than shouting; you have to weave a spell and charm the money out of the people’s pockets.

Anyway, on the Boardwalk I worked 7 days most weeks, usually for 10 or 11 hours a day, although I alternated on the knife joint with another Pitchman and was only on the box every other hour. I worked for a percentage of the gross and was paid daily. Right from the start, I was doing well enough to bank at least $100 a day, over and above my living expenses. At the time I bought that watch, the $400 I paid for it was that day’s pay.

I had wanted a Rolex ever since I had first encountered the watch in the James Bond books. Those books had become popular after President John F. Kennedy revealed that Ian Fleming was his favorite author.

Ian Fleming did something unique in his James Bond books: he included the brand names of many of the products his protagonist used. So readers learned what brand of cigarettes James Bond smoked and who made his shirts. In the midst of a car chase, as the tires squealed we learned what brand they were, and when the supercharger kicked in, we learned what company had made it (I actually believe that Ian Fleming sowed the seed for the entire brand-conscious “designer label” phenomenon we’ve been experiencing over the past 40 years or so). And I recall learning, in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service," that the watch on James Bond’s wrist was a Rolex Oyster Perpetual.

Fleming didn’t identify it as a Submariner or Sea Dweller or any kind of Rolex dive watch such as are now associated with James Bond (and I understand that in the latest films Bond wears an Omega Seamaster). I had just presumed that the Rolex on Bond's wrist was a Datejust, because that was the iconic model, the one that had brought the Rolex brand to prominence. I learned that it had been introduced in 1945, the firm's 40th anniversary, and that's why its complementary stainless steel bracelet was called the jubilee bracelet.

But a lot of James Bond details have been revised. For example, in the books Bond always ordered his martinis “stirred, not shaken," explaining that it was “so as not to bruise the gin." How that morphed into the current “Shaken, not stirred” is a mystery to me; the latter phrase may have better rhythm, but it makes no sense as far as the drink is concerned.

Prior to reading the Bond books, I’d never heard of a Rolex, nor had I ever seen one. But when I learned that James Bond wore one, I knew it was the sort of watch I wanted (in the same way that I wore Timberland handsewn 3-eyelet shoes for years, because I'd seen Ronald Reagan wearing them).

Besides, part of my Ginsu Knife pitch had me carving roses out of beets and sharks out of cucumbers, and keeping them in a bucket of water at my left side. When I reached in to pull one out, my wrist was underwater. I wanted a watch that would take such dunkings in stride.

Some of the garnishes I used to make as part of my knife pitch.

I found the watch in question in an Atlantic City pawnshop, a block or two off the Boardwalk. It was just what I wanted. I’ve always preferred silver jewelry to gold, and the stainless steel Rolex had the perfect combination of functionality and cachet, without being overly ostentatious. The ‘80s were a time when the gold Rolex was rather ubiquitous as a status symbol, but I saw wearing a stainless model as a sort of reverse snobbery. It was also a time when fake Rolexes were quite common. But the phonies were always gold in color; nobody wanted a phony Rolex in mere steel!

What’s funny is that, a few years later, in the late ‘80s, I was involved in the fake Rolex trade.

After Atlantic City, I worked as an agent for another Pitch promoter (“Mr. Meatball”; that’s a whole ‘nother story!) and began working single-o at shows, fairs and expos, a different one in a different town each week. After a few years of that, I went on my own, booking my own spots in shows (mostly hunting and fishing shows throughout Dixie) and buying knives directly from the factory (thanks to Ruby Morris giving me his imprimatur). I settled into a schedule of working several “tours” (strings of shows for about 6 weeks at a time) for a total of about 30 weeks a year.

For the first time in many years I had weeks, even months, of free time. And I spent a good bit of that free time in Mexico. And I had learned that, while many Americans were risking prison by smuggling various substances from Mexico into the U.S., I could make a small killing smuggling stuff into Mexico. And the hot item was the phony Rolex. My partners and I would buy them in New York’s Chinatown for $6 to $8 and we’d sell them, in the interior of Mexico, for around $35 USD. Down in Guatemala they’d fetch even more. It was relatively simple to enter Mexico with a quantity of watches, because we were also smuggling cars into Mexico (and that’s yet another story).

But, back to my first acquiring the watch you now own: I spotted it in an Atlantic City pawnshop; the pawnbroker wanted $400 for it. Rather than haggle over the price, I haggled over proof of the watch’s performance. I told the pawnbroker I would buy it if it were still watertight and still worked after being kept in a glass of water for a week. I’d stop in to check on it every day or so.

Maybe because pitchmen and pawnbrokers are both colorful elements in the warp and weft of Atlantic City, there was a Runyonesque quality to our negotiations, and our handshake on that deal was as good as any contract. And at the end of the week, with the watch apparently none the worse for its underwater trial, I handed over four hundred-dollar bills and took proud possession of my Rolex watch.

When I wore it while pitching, I loved the way people gasped when I plunged my arm into the bucket of water. Sometimes they said, “I hope your watch is waterproof!” Often I would respond with a casual “Let’s just see!” and take it off my wrist and drop it into the bucket. After the turn of my pitch, after grabbing their money and duking out the bags of knives, I’d retrieve it and show those who were still curious that it was still in perfect order.

Sometimes, while I was having a drink at a bar, someone would ask, “Is that a real Rolex?” And I’d respond with “I dunno. Let’s find out!”, whereupon I’d take it off and drop it into my drink. That was usually good for impressing women.

I also kept the watch on my wrist while swimming in both oceans and in the Gulf of Mexico, and in some of my favorite hot springs, from McCredie Hot Springs near Oakridge, Oregon to Las Grutas, outside San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico. And I’ve worn it in steambaths, saunas, hot-tubs and sweat-lodges, and in some other very damp places, including when I stayed in London for a month in 1985 (I think that was when I had my name engraved on the back).

I suppose I should mention that a guy once tried to snatch it off my wrist. What happened to the guy who tried to steal my Rolex? I “clocked” him!

I was going down the stairs in NYC’s Port Authority Bus Terminal, and this guy coming up the stairs on the other side of the railing made a lunge for the watch as we passed. I swung my right fist and belted him pretty good in the side of his head. He let go of the watch and stumbled away pretty dazed, but I had broken my hand against his skull and wound up with my hand in a cast and my arm in a sling for about six weeks. The entire time I wore that cast I thought, “If only I’d had this cast on my hand when I slugged that guy!”

During the time I owned it, I had it completely overhauled twice, both times while having the stem repaired because it didn’t tighten quite satisfactorily. The first time was by a jeweler in Atlantic City, within a year or two after I purchased it, and the second time was in the mid- to-late ’90s, by watchmaker Kwang Lam of Overland Park, Kansas. I spent about as much for servicing it as I’d paid to buy it.

But when I started again having trouble with the stem, I stopped wearing it, and because of financial constraints, I put off having it repaired. When I met Mike B. and learned he was a watch enthusiast, I showed it to him and he expressed an interest in it. I wound up selling it to him with the understanding that I could buy it back within a year’s time. Although Mike put a lot of work into the watch, he would have been happy to honor that agreement long after the time expired, but I just never had the wherewithal to buy it back.

Since I have no children, I had been hoping to pass the watch along to one of my nephews. But I was happy to hear that Mike had taken such good care of it, and that he had found a good home for it with someone who will cherish it and pass it along as I would have.

I like to think that watch has absorbed a lot of “good vibes," and now you know some of its history. May it bring you much enjoyment, and may you wear it in good health!

I was still wearing my Rolex when I went from pitching The Amazing Ginsu Knife at fairs, shows and expos to doing it in supermarkets.