At historic auctioneer Christie’s, no two days are the same, says Keith Davis.
“One week I am flying to Geneva for an auction and the very next week I am in a rural town in Virginia de-casing a Rolex Paul Newman Dial ref. 6263 so it can be authenticated and ultimately evaluated,” he gives as an example.
That sort of schedule requires multiple skills, among them an encyclopedic knowledge of watches along with the sales, marketing and leadership skills to run a hugely successful department at the venerable auction house.
Keith started young, with his watchmaking grandfather teaching him how to measure and cut balance springs at the age of 12.
This sparked a life-long passion for horology that turned into a career, first with Bulgari as a regional head of wholesale, and later as commercial director for Vacheron Constantin.
Covid restrictions acted like rocket fuel for the collectible watch auction market, but the sales have been done mostly online.
That is now changing, and Christie’s successfully held its first live watch auction in New York in more three years in early June.
“As a team, we wanted to source all of the timepieces in the Americas for this season, and have the majority come from the original families or owners,” says Keith.
“This is an extremely difficult task. However, through word of mouth, strategically targeting certain regions of the Americas where few go, we were able to put forward an extraordinary auction.”
The auction world never stops revolving, so Keith and his team will already be looking forward to the fall sales.
During any downtime he gets in between, you will most likely find him decompressing by restoring old timepieces.
“I prefer to be either behind my workbench, or a lathe, restoring a tired watch that I picked up while traveling,” he reveals.
