How This N.Y.C. Pizza Joint Became a Clubhouse for a New Breed of Watch Collector

What do a pizza restaurant owner, a pizza maker, an artist, a jeweler, and a former DJ-turned-TikTok phenom have in common? A deep interest in vintage watches, cars, fashion—and a playful penchant for one-upmanship.

On any given day on New York City’s Lower East Side, specifically in the micro-neighborhood known as Dimes Square, you might spot watch dealer and collector Mike Nouveau, 40, deep in conversation with his crew of fellow collectors: Scarr Pimentel, 45, owner of Scarr’s Pizza; Christiano Wennmann, 24, head pizza maker at Scarr’s; Bailey Anderes, 23, director of sales at Jonathan Joseph Rosse Jewelry; and Phil Toledano, 55, an artist and co-founder of Toledano & Chan. Perhaps just as often you’ll find them on Nouveau’s social media, where he posts videos of himself and his friends talking watches to nearly half a million followers on TikTok and 238,000 on Instagram (both under @mikenouveau).

It’s an unlikely group. Until recently, watch collecting mostly attracted self-identified nerds—or men more apt to shop at J. Crew and carry a Leica camera. Even more improbable: the epicenter of this new scene is Pimentel’s pizza joint (and Colbo, a nearby coffee shop), where the friends gather to geek out over timepieces from Audemars Piguet, Piaget, IWC, and Patek Philippe.  

Scarr’s has become a clubhouse of sorts for a certain breed of collector, one that leans toward what Toledano has dubbed “geezer watches”—vintage pieces that often sport interesting woven metal bracelets and snazzy stone dials, the kind your grandparents might have worn. “He just used the term ‘geezer’ to refer to everything,” says Nouveau. “And then, we started using it to refer to the weird watches that he bought that nobody else wanted.” Think watches from the ‘70s, with designs heavily pegged to the disco era. Toledano even jokes they’re the “geezeratti”—a tongue-in-cheek nod to their style, which might have once been dismissed as flashy or tacky by more traditional collectors. “It’s hard to define, but you know one when you see one,” says Nouveau.

The group’s collective sense of style is part of a new wave of watch collecting that is decidedly design focused. Sure, some members—like Anderes and Nouveau—can rattle off reference numbers with other watch obsessives, but that kind of bravado isn’t the group’s main focus.

Pimentel’s entrée to watches certainly wasn’t on the snob’s side of the spectrum. “I was broke, so I used to wear Nike watches and Guess watches, Gucci watches, stuff like that when I was growing up,” he says. “[Mike] got me into vintage watches. When he started getting into vintage, that’s when I started falling into it.” He also credits Emilio Vitolo, owner of Emilio’s Ballato in N.Y.C.’s Nolita neighborhood, for elevating his taste early on. Today, Pimentel’s collection includes everything from an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak and a Louis Vuitton Monterey—the one secondary market LV watch that’s found a following among collectors—to a Tiffany & Co.–signed Breguet chronograph from the ‘80s. “I saw it at auction, and I had to have it,” he says of the Breguet. His choices suggest he’s already moved beyond the usual suspects.

That’s not uncommon for this group; all seem to have their finger on the pulse for what’s next. Breguet, for example, long soft on the secondary market, has lately seen renewed buzz among savvy collectors. This fall, Sotheby’s will host the largest Breguet-dedicated auction in decades.

On Wennmann’s heavily tattooed wrist, you might spot a Cartier Santos-Dumont from the ‘90s or an Audemars Piguet with a factory aventurine stone dial encircled by diamonds—both from the neo-vintage era. One recent acquisition: a Piaget Dancer from the ‘80s. “The gold is oxidized, so it’s got this really nice purple hue to it and the dial is onyx and opal with diamond markers,” he says. Wennmann bought the piece on Pushers, Nouveau’s online platform for pre-owned watches. “It was on there for like weeks,” he says. “I got it for $8,500.”

At Watches and Wonders this year, punchy stone dials were everywhere—not just from Piaget but from brands like Rolex and indie darling H. Moser & Cie. Moser, notably, released an entire collection of dials set with chrysoprase, lapis lazuli, and turquoise.

Anderes, who has 17.2k followers on Instagram (@bailey_ss02), leans into a steam punk–esque style he jokingly calls “pirate core.” His collecting interests skew even more off the beaten path. Along with Breguet, he is also chasing neo-vintage pieces from Blancpain, IWC, and even Franck Muller. “You can get a perpetual calendar chronograph with a moon phase in 18-karat gold for like eight grand,” he says of IWC. Meanwhile, his favorite watch is a JAR timepiece by the legendary American jeweler Joel Arthur Rosenthal, based in Paris. “He only made 1,000 of them,” Anderes says. “He’s the only living jeweler to have a show in the Met . . . not the MoMA, but the Met.” The jeweler’s watches, which started as gift-shop fare, now sell for roughly $4,000 to $5,000. Their original price? $600.

Of course, it’s not just about having an eye. In Nouveau’s case, influence may be the most powerful tool. A single TikTok video can transform a sleeper model into the next coveted thing. Take the Cartier Cristallor. “I looked for [a Cristallor] a long time and I found it in Japan for $3,000 so I bought it, made a video about it,” says Nouveau. A few weeks later, he flipped it for $13,000 to buy an even rarer version—with a Bahraini emblem on the dial. Today? “It would probably be $50,000,” he says. An 18-karat yellow gold Cristallor sold for just over $3,100 at Antiquorum in 2019; the same model now lists for nearly $30,000 at The Keystone.

Whether it’s their collective influence—amplified by social media—or simply an uncanny sense for what’s next, one thing is clear: Nouveau and his circle are part of a broader shift in taste that’s driving unexpected models to rise in value—and brands are starting to take notice. Collectors are beginning to look for the unexpected, and the collectors themselves are beginning to look anything but conventional.

Credit: robbreport.com