Mitch Katz - Who Writes Watch History? Collecting, Taste, and Power

Collectors are often treated as participants in a market.But collecting, at its deepest level, is something else entirely.It is a process of selection, rejection, revision — a way of constructing meaning over time.Mitch Katz is a collector and author whose work shifts the focus away from watches as status objects and toward the inner life of collecting itself. In his book Time on My Hands, he frames collecting not as accumulation, but as a lifelong practice of taste formation — shaped by mistakes, obsessions, learning, and memory.In this episode of Watches & Politics, we examine the collector not as a consumer, but as a political actor. We discuss how taste becomes authority, how narratives are formed and contested, and how modern media ecosystems are reshaping who gets to define what matters in horology.This is a conversation about authorship:How collectors shape history.How meaning resists price.And how legitimacy is constructed — slowly, personally, and often invisibly.⏱ SUBSCRIBE for upcoming episodes:https://youtube.com/@WatchesAndPolitics Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shipoli_e/ #watches #politics #history #horology #collecting #art #books #collecting #collector