The Collectors
20 collectors, 43 stories. Each wrote about their own Reverso: how it reached them, and why the back looks the way it does.
← Back to StoriesFor Mitch Katz and his wife Linda, watches have never been simply objects to collect. They have become part of a life together, connected to friendships, travels, accidents, laughter, personal milestones, and the people they have met along the way. That same belief, that the real value of a watch…
The very first JLC Randy ever bought is already written into his will — engraved with the family initial, and meant for his son one day. It turned out to be the start of a collection nineteen watches deep, and counting.
For Edi and Deni Shipoli, collecting watches has never really been about building a collection according to a plan. The watches that have stayed with them are usually the ones that became connected to something else: a place, a friendship, a journey, an achievement, the birth of their son Brion…
Sarp Vahabi collects Reversos for the reason the watch has always invited: the blank reverse, and what people chose to put on it. Most of those engravings are private — an initial, a date, a message meaningful to one person and unreadable to everyone since. Occasionally one preserves something…
Roni Madhvani is a collector whose taste has always been drawn toward the unusual. Based in Kampala, Uganda, he has built a collection around vintage watches with character: unusual cases, double-signed and enamel dials, clocks and pocket watches, and particularly pieces from the Art Deco period.…
Farhan Hussain collects from London, where two Reversos in his collection have become tied to his two children — one ordered a week after his daughter was born and personalised with her name, the other bought years earlier and engraved before his son arrived.
Robin Tong Lin Wong collects from Singapore, and Jaeger-LeCoultre has always been his favourite maison. His most personal Reverso marks a professional milestone rather than a family one: the technology startup he backed as an investor and joined as an early employee, and the exit that followed.…
A Reverso collector known on Instagram as @decowatches. His two engraved pieces trace two different threads of his life: a promise made to his wife on their honeymoon in Milan, and more than two decades spent playing guitar, including one professional stretch. A third, a steel Tribute Duoface…
A DC-area watch enthusiast whose Reverso marks a specific professional milestone: joining the Advisory Board of George Mason University’s Costello College of Business, translated into the watch’s own hand-decorated case back rather than a literal school crest.
Paul Stewart’s Reverso carries a piece of family history few watches could: an engraved portrait of his great-great-grandfather, taken from a sketch drawn generations ago by a cousin who happened to be a working artist.
Taylor Wos grew up in New York City sharing a love of Art Deco with her architect father. That shared interest became the one-of-one engraving on the back of her Reverso, since recognized by other collectors and once photographed for The New York Times.
Rashawn Smith collects under the name Fit 2 Win. His Reverso is a 2007 Jaeger-LeCoultre × Aston Martin collaboration piece, acquired secondhand from the original owner’s son in a sale that started as a favor and ended as a purchase.
Haoming Wang shares his watches on Instagram as @h.m.montre. His Reverso is a tribute to the musician Sarah Àlainn: a commissioned illustration hand-engraved on the case back, and a strap chosen to bring back the one thing engraving could not carry, its colour.
SM is a collector in Hong Kong who shares this story under initials. The Reverso was a surprise gift from a godfather; the dragon on its back was designed over drinks and sketches with the engraver Carlos Koo.
Bird collects Reversos with a close eye for proportion: after trying almost every size on a small wrist, the smaller vintage case won. A love of Japanese city pop shows up in the straps, made in unusual colours with contrasting stitching and linings that do not match.
A Reverso collector in Thailand who shares the collection on Instagram as @jlc.reverso. The pieces here follow one thread: the Reverso as a record of history, from a coloured dial of 1933 and the first complicated Reverso of 1991 to editions made for Thailand and Kuwait, a tourbillon given a dial…
Ian Cassar collects from Malta. The Reverso here carries the Cassar family coat of arms, engraved by Jaeger-LeCoultre through the island’s jeweller, run by an old school friend, and it is meant one day for the next generation.
A Reverso collector known on Instagram as @wristwatch_kitja, whose love of one red dial led to a first trip abroad made purely to find a watch.
Win started looking at watches in high school. The first Reverso, a Dual Time on an ostrich strap, was a mother’s offer, set aside for a week and sold in the meantime. Almost twenty years on, a Reverso Duoface brought the whole moment back.
A collector known on Instagram as @thefinesttastesclub, drawn to the Reverso’s design and to the history it carries. This 1930s example, sold through Favre-Leuba in colonial India, turned up in West Bengal in 2026 with the traces of a removed engraving still on its back.
Share Your Story
If your watch carries an engraving, a memory, or a story worth telling, we'd like to hear it.
Get In Touch