I opened my list of recommendations with Plaza, but rest assured that I will have a couple of additional recommendations, that will be more conventional. My bottom line on Plaza:

• if you want to see more vintage watches than under any other roof in Manhattan, and
• you can look at a watch and know what it is, and
• you have a sense of market values, and
• you can endure a difficult (perhaps unpleasant) negotiating experience, and
• you are in the mood for a bizarre experience,

: I will make a couple of recommendations, in no particular order.
: First up will be Plaza Jewelry Exchange: 145 West 57th Street
: (between 6th and 7th Avenues; near Carnagie Hall; Russian Tea
: Room; Central Park South)

: This is the most unusual watch destination of all . . . a
: relatively small store, in the "high rent district",
: that is absolutely jammed full of vintage watches, as well as
: coins, stamps, albums, posters, baseball cards, magazines,
: silver, jewelry and other junk, all of it piled from floor to
: ceiling. You must be in a certain mood to even walk in the door,
: as I will try to capture below.

: First, the vintage watches: dozens of trays of watches, primarily
: arranged by brands, ranging from the rarest Rolexes to junk
: brands that you have likely never heard of. Let's take the
: Heuers, as an example. On a given day Plaza will have 20 or 30,
: Heuers (and TAG-Heuers), ranging from the worst Formula Ones to
: some decent looking Caliber 12 chronographs. These will be
: stored in a couple of trays; for a brand like Omage, you might
: see 150 t0 250 watches, in six or eight trays.

: Condition of the watches will be all over the board . . . from some
: really nice ones, to some put together from all the wrong
: pieces. The prices of the watches will not be all over the
: board, but rather they are all marked with sky high prices.
: Let's take a Heuer Daytona, that should be selling for something
: like $1,500. The price tag is likely to say $4,500, and if you
: want to try to buy it, that's how the discussion might start.
: You offer $1,200 / Lee (who seems to be in charge of the store)
: counters at $3,800, and the conversation continues from there.
: At some point in the negotiation, Lee is likely to take a break,
: as he begins the negotiation on buying a stack of comic books
: (or maybe some old coins) . . . you will have narrowed the
: spread on the Daytona, to something like $2,200 ask / $1,400
: bid, and Lee will start up on the comic books, which open with
: him offering $15 [that's right, fifteen dollars], and the owner
: wanting $35. As you ponder the Daytona, and try to resume the
: conversation with Lee, a third from may open, as a tourist (from
: Eastern Europe) walks in and wants to see a brand new IWC
: chronograph, in the box with all the papers, etc. On this IWC,
: the bid and ask might be $8,500 / $11,000.

: So there you have it -- you are trying to buy a vintage Heuer,
: another customer is trying to get $25 for his comic books, a
: confused tourist is piling hundred dollar bills onto the counter
: trying to buy the IWC. You stand among stacks of albums,
: magazines, and boxes of silverware, trying to continue the
: negotiation with Lee. While this is happening, Lee is
: instructing his clerks to do other unrelated things -- like
: arranging to pick up some rings on 47th Street or call the phone
: company to dispute some charges on the monthly bill . . . it is
: nothing short of bedlam. Lee is abusive to his staff; distant
: from his customers; he seems to know little about the vintage
: watches, but there is stands, among hundreds or thousands of
: them . . . weird, very weird.

: Return one year later, and the Daytona is still there, with the
: same price tag. It's absolutely maddening . . . impossible to
: figure out what is really happening in the store . . . what is
: going on in this crazy man's brain? where did these thousands of
: watches come from? Where are they going? How can you ever be
: successful in buying one?

: Here's what they wrote over on Watch-U-Seek --
: http://forums.watchuseek.com/f65/plaza-jewelry-exchange-145-west-57th-street-nyc-264528.html
: Went in there today. They have tons of stuff, but the staff is
: clueless; the showroom rat packed and chaotic. Owner seems
: knowledgeable, but hurried, curt and rude.

: My bottom line: On the crazy, crowded island we call Manhattan,
: this is the craziest, most crowded watch destination of all. I
: have probably visited five or six times over the years; you have
: to be in the mood; you have to have time to waste, as nothing
: happens quickly (or rationally) in this crazy place. Shown below
: is the one watch that I have actually bought there . . . there
: have been five or ten others that I have wanted to buy (or at
: least discuss), but I could not get them to closure . . . in
: most instances, we never got to the first bid and ask. Most
: times, I have left the watches that I had selected, laying on
: the counter . . . walking out is often the best revenge, the
: only esacpe. One thing I can promise: After a few minutes or
: hours in Plaza, the rest of Manhattan will look more peaceful
: than when you entered the store.

: I hope that you will vist, and share your report with us.

: Jeff

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