Page 91 - Esquire (November 2019)

Time and Time Again
The Man Who Bought

the Same Watch Twice

C O N F E S S I O N S O F A
WATC H A H O L I C

“I don’t collect anything with in-
tention,” says restaurateur Sang
Yoon, founder of the Los Angeles
burger-and-beer joint Father’s Office.
“I have an appreciation for supremely
detailed craftsmanship.”
Yoon isn’t so much a collector of
objects as he is a guy who just loves
finely made things. That includes fast
cars (ask him about his Mercedes-Benz
AMG E 63 S Wagon), Champagne (he
owns more than sixty-five hundred bot-
tles), and luxury watches (he stashes
more than a hundred models in bank
vaults across SoCal).
After Yoon graduated from high
school, his father bequeathed three
watches to him: a stainless-steel Rolex
Datejust, a Patek Philippe Calatrava,
and an IWC Portofino. A fixation soon
followed that didn’t always square with
his income. “The first watch I bought
for myself was an Omega Seamaster. It
was like $1,200. I was like, Fuck, do I
even have $1,200?”
He now owns 106 timepieces, ranging
from ultrarare GMTs to a single Richard
Mille. On a trip to Hawaii, a Rolex Deep-
sea Sea-Dweller caught Yoon’s eye and
he purchased it on the spot.
Several years later, in Hong Kong, he
Wa t c h e s o f t h e Ye a r
made another impulse buy. Months af-
B R E I T L I N G ter that, he was checking out one of his
vaults. Whoops. He now had two of the
S U P E R O C E A N I I
exact same Deepsea Sea-Dweller. Talk
AU TO M AT I C 4 6 about First World problems. He realized
Breitling’s Superocean his error and traded the first one to an-
II Automatic 46 is designed other collector. The second one he kept
for men who expect their
sports watch to combine and still occasionally wears to this day.
robust performance and macho That moment made Yoon realize
good looks. Its sizable something: He’s got to cut back on the
46mm DLC-coated stainless- watches. He may be unloading some of
steel case features an
easy-read black dial and his collection soon. “The problem is I
a matching rubber strap. don’t wear all of them. There’s about
$4,850; breitling.com forty I’ve never touched. They’re still
in the box.” —Daniel Dumas

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