Inside Rolliefest: The Watch World’s Secret $20 Million Brunch in the Sky

On a sunny Friday morning in late September, about 200 collectors, dealers and watch world hangers-on rode the elevators up—way up—to Aspire, the private events space on the 102nd floor of One World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan, for a four-hour brunch where food—the menu included a spinach and mushroom quiche followed by plates of chicken and waffles—was utterly beside the point. (So, for that matter, was the nearly-360-degree view, which stretched from the Brooklyn Bridge, past Lady Liberty, across New Jersey and back around to upper Manhattan.)

That’s because all eyes were on the watches—some $20 million in timepieces displayed around the room, but chiefly at a long central table where piles of Rolex Mil-Subs, diamond-set Patek Philippe Nautiluses, and yellow gold Cartiers mingled with far rarer and more esoteric wristwatches in a horological orgy of truly jaw-dropping proportions.

“All the events I’ve been to, I have never seen this many watches on a table at once,” the collector Jason Gong, founder of Complecto, told Robb Report. “Never mind the value. And then the owners just kind of get up and walk away and wander. It speaks to the level of trust in the room. Everyone has such reverence for the watches, and they really do handle them with such care.”