Collecting watches ( and lighters) still remains a labor of love for Gordon. ” You fall in love with them” he says. But happily for him, time is, and always will be money.
Collector, auctioneer and author George Gordon is the owner of the world’s largest collection of antique Cigarette Lighters, with 46,000 of them in his possession. He’s also amassed a priceless collection of antique watches, produced three books that have become bibles of the watch trade and issued his own line of hand made timepieces. He sparks up a conversation with Anthony Leung…
George Gordon is not your average collector. He has over six hundred rare wrist and pocket watches. Seventeen vintage cars. And forty-six thousand antique cigarette lighters. ” I also play around with property, too” he adds.
An international wristwatch and lighter dealer ( that’s probably the best way to put it) with offices in New York, a showroom in Hong Jong, and one planned for London, Gordon is surprisingly informal and unpretentious for a man whose business consists in the trade of time keeping, cigarette lighting status symbols. With the world’s largest collection of lighters in his possession, he chooses to light his own cigarettes with a BIC.
Though he has a knack for sparking informality and conviviality wherever he goes. Beneath the amiable exterior lies a considerable amount of erudition and a sleuth like sense for finding rare items in unlikely places. This is the same quality that has led the world’s leading auction houses and antique dealers to commission him to supply them with horological stock. His private clients include Hollywood star George Hamilton and The Sultan of Brunei.
Born in Hungary, raised in the US, and now diving his time between his three practices, Gordon has been going about his business with a passion from an early age. He recalls one of his first acquisitions; “I bought a lighter in a junk store for $200.00. Later I found out it had belonged to General Patton.”
Gordon sold that lighter for $16,000.00 in 1976 and hasn’t looked back since. What started out as a hobby became his livelihood, and he diversified into other areas – principally watches and jewelry. It’s a lucrative trade. According to Gordon, the value of rare and unusual time pieces has gone up by ten percent in the last two years. He talks casually of substantial sums to be potentially won or lost.
“I had an eighteen carat gold Patek Philipe watch, made in 1932″ he says with a matter of fact manner. ” I sold in 1984 for $100,000.00. Today it’s worth $1,000,000.00.” He shrugs and smiles ” Well that’s the way it goes.”
The desire to do something for the watchmakers craft led Gordon to establish his own line of limited watches, available under the name of Churchill. Made by skilled craftsmen in Gordon’s London workshop, Churchill watches are Gordon’s attempt to produce timepieces ” the good old fashioned way – by hand.” Intricately and beautifully made to designs researched by Gordon himself, Churchill watches are now becoming collectibles in their own right.
And as awareness of the value of watches as collectors items grew, Gordon felt the need for some kind of formalized network through which horologists, collectors and dealers could exchange information and ideas. He recently founded the International Collectors of Time Association (ICTA) and the response so far has been overwhelming.
“A lot of collectors operate in isolation” says Gordon. “They have no-one to exchange views with, and often nowhere to get their watches repaired – servicing antique watches is a very specialized skill.”
With the establishment of the ICTA, all that has changed. The associations headquarters puts members in touch with other collectors in their locale, publishes a bi-monthly magazine, organizes functions, offers a repair service and conducts professional appraisal and authentication at a member’s request, investigate history of a particular timepiece, and say when it was made, for whom, and who for. The same service is also available to collectors of lighters.
The ICTA has also started to organize auctions where it’s expertise is used to members’ benefit in the painstaking appraisal and authentication of all lots traded. It’s first international auction will be held in Hong Kong in early December and another is planned in London in the first half of 1991.
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