An anecdote about Walt from an interview with Richard Paige
What really happened with the Rolex Explorer review?
Ah, the infamous Rolex Explorer review by Walt Odets. Let me tell you exactly what happened and how it played out. All these years people still talk about the article as if it had a life of it’s own. But here’s the truth as it happened, and anybody who tells it differently is either a liar or schizophrenic.
I set the whole thing up; the whole thing was orchestrated by me.
Walt Odets was an eerily complex gay individual, who had this huge, genuine passion for fine watches. By day he was a psychologist, who specialized in aids patients, and all their misfortunes. By night he was a self-taught watchmaker, who found the hobby all too satisfying. He purchased several thousand dollars worth of high tech watch making equipment, and he was most happy when he was fiddling with the movements. But Walt’s innate flaw was that he only collected very fine, high caliber watches, the likes of Patek, Vacheron, Lange, leCoultre, as well fine vintage watches. Under Walt’s high power microscopes these watches were a pleasure to scrutinize: they were of the finest materials, mostly handmade, and had extremely high quality finishes. In other words, he never really looked at mediocre watches, they weren’t in his world.
Conversely, I was a watch repairer by profession, so I saw the whole gamut of movements from the lowly pin lever, to the high quality masterpieces. When I took over TimeZone, 80% of the posting were about the Omega and Rolex, and 80% of the 200 or so guys posting had never seen nor even heard of the great houses of Switzerland and Germany. The typical TZ poster thought that the high end, luxury watch world began with Seiko and ended with Rolex. Of course there were some posters out there discussing these Great House watches, but they were far and few between. So, I attempted to become an “alternative voice” on the site, and began my personal odyssey to “introduce” the great Houses to the rest of the neophytes in the community.
One of the things I felt I had to debunk was this nonsense that Rolex was the last word in watches. Personally, I wasn’t a big fan of Rolexes. I did indeed collect vintage Rolexes, and I had an outstanding collection of 1940’s “Bubblebacks”, but the newer watches after 1970 did very little to increase my pulse rate, and the Rolex designs never really seemed to me to change from their core 1950’s and 1960’s designs. In truth, the quintessential modern Rolex watch, the “2 tone DateJust”, I found to be almost effeminate in look and feel, and not even close to the manly image that the Rolex branding machine spun out. To me, wearing this datejust was the equivalent of wearing your collar up on a polo shirt in public.
So, I set the gears in motion. Walt had been doing some outstanding reviews of some of the Great House watches from his own collection and was gaining in notoriety, but I don’t believe he had never even cracked open a Rolex. I asked if he’d do me a favor and review a Rolex watch for me, and he agreed. I bought a Rolex Explorer 1 “off the shelf” from a friend of mine who was an authorized Rolex dealer, and with a straight face handed the watch over to Walt, knowing full well, when he pulled the movement and exposed it naked to his high power microscopes he would be totally surprised and disappointed with the finish. After all, his points of reference were Pateks, Vacherons, Langes, and Rolexes can’t compete at face value to these watch finishes. Rolex, as well as Omegas, were the kings of “workhorse” watches, not of artistic finishes and high caliber workmanship.
So, Walt did what he does best. He honestly critiqued the watch using the higher standard of much finer watches as his point of reference.
The repercussions were both hilarious and unpredictable. A huge segment of the TZ community was “bitterly” insulted by Walt’s honest evaluation. They felt that Walt had let them down, and had crossed the line of editorial impartiality. They felt that TimeZone was anti Rolex, and that the article be retracted. Other websites sprouted up, to “counterbalance” TZs Rolex negative bias. Personally, I thought the whole thing was utterly amusing.
Then the weirdest thing happened. I got an email from Rolex headquarters, asking me for Walt’s home address. Rolex is super paranoid about their branding image, and it seemed highly likely to me that they might actually go after Walt. Now things began to border on the theater of the absurd. If a movie critic panned a movie, does the director go after the critic? Of course not. I didn’t even answer Rolex’s email.
Ironically, after time, Walt began to review a more eclectic array of watches, and after reviewing enough of these “me too” watches, he admitted that Rolex was a good value for the money. Go Figure.
Y tener mas resistencia, durabilidad y un reloj mas duro.
