Later that day, Nouveau and I arrive at Colbo, one of those now standard New York City boutiques that blend coffee bar and clothing shop, which is a regular setting in his videos. This is my MCU: the Mike Cinematic Universe. Part of what makes Nouveau’s content so popular is the familiar beats, characters, and locations.
I instantly recognize Colbo’s exterior, with its small white stone benches, as the spot where Nouveau and his cast of regulars, like collector Phillip Toledano, sit around and talk watches. It was outside Colbo where Toledano tried, and failed, to buy an ’80s-era Louis Vuitton Monterey II from a random passerby. After posting a video of his attempted purchase to TikTok, the innertube-shaped watch immediately ballooned in value. (Nouveau eventually learned the Monterey’s owner was Trevor Gorji, the founder of the brand Fugazi, which has a shop down the street and makes the hat Nouveau is now wearing. Like a rapper who lives his raps, Nouveau lives his Toks.)
The Monterey is just one of the watches that have felt Nouveau’s glow. The dealer, who has an affinity for Cartier, believes he also buoyed the market for pieces like the Tank Jumbo with an automatic movement, the “Bamboo” Coussin, and the Cristallor. “I bought my first Cristallor in Japan for $3,000 on video,” he says, repeating the price for emphasis. “Now they’re [selling for] between $20 to $25,000 all day long.”
Viewers seem to tune in for the collectors in Nouveau’s orbit as much as they do the interesting watches he unboxes. There’s Toledano, who recently launched the brand Toledano & Chan and allocated a few to Nouveau to sell. (“It’s hard to quantify, but I’m sure it helped [the brand],” Toledano said over text.) There’s Charlie Gray, the collector who often drives up in fabulous cars to bring Nouveau some equally fabulous watches—like the time he dropped off a trio of Audemars Piguet Royal Oaks in a one-of-seven Range Rover. Perhaps Nouveau’s most popular guest star, though, is a collector named Quang, who seems like he could moonlight as an Oxford professor when he’s not showing off grail-level watches. “I try to get as much footage with him as possible when we’re in the same town because people really love him,” Nouveau says.
We walk south from Colbo and pass by Scarr’s Pizza, whose founder, Scarr Pimentel, is an ardent watch collector and another regular figure in Nouveau’s videos. Nouveau’s videos are like Sex and the City for watch nerds, capable of transforming New York City into a fantasyland where great watches abound on every corner. In Nouveau’s New York, you regularly bump into strangers wearing rare Patek Philippes or encounter a guy casually tossing five-figure watches out of his SUV. “The New York City aspect is extremely important,” Nouveau says. “I get so many comments like, ‘Is this really how things happen in New York?’”
Back in November of last year, one of my editors sent me a video of Nouveau’s featuring Gray. “Who is this guy with the Bentley?” they asked. Here it was: Another non-watch person drawn into Nouveau’s web. The power of his videos is in the questions they elicit from people who are otherwise uninterested in the nominal subject matter: Who’s that? Why should I care about watches? What watch should I start with? Is this a good Cartier Tank? Should I buy a watch at Chen’s? What makes that Rolex special? Can you find this Crash? Will you sell this Piaget? Why should I spend $1,000 on a watch? Why should I spend $10,000 on a watch? Well, why shouldn’t I spend $30,000 on an automatic movement Tank? With every answer, Nouveau shines his light, making different segments of the watch industry glow like the lume on a vintage Tudor.
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