Collector Profile: Finding a Community of Independents with Niels Pedersen

How does a vintage Tissot connect to Felipe Pikullik and some of the watch world’s most exciting and dynamic young independent watchmakers and brands? If you said through Danish collector Niels Pedersen, you’d be very much on the right track. Take a quick look over at Niels’s Instagram (@nielsmpe) and you’ll be greeted by a genuinely envy-inducing assortment of watches. Even more remarkable? That each and every watch feels totally at home in Niels’s feed, whether he’s posting a one-of-a-kind piece from an under-the-radar indie, or his latest pickup from Seiko.

So what does a collector like Niels look for in a watch? Well, it turns out it’s a pretty simple recipe. “Basically, I’m design-driven, so it has to be aesthetically pleasing. So that’s the first… and I want something that’s simple, fixable, and reliable because I’ve been sending watches back and forth to the manufacturer so many times,” he told me. “Design-driven and something that’s reliable, I’d say.”

 

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Just because it’s easy to express doesn’t mean this simple philosophy wasn’t a lesson learned over time. The path that transformed Niels into the collector he is today started at a young age, with a little help from his mother. “When I was a kid, my mom used to travel to Asia all the time for work, and every time she would come home, she would have some kind of knockoff watch, either with Porsche on the dial or a skull or whatever — something that a 10-year-old finds cool.”

It would be easy to assume that a childhood enjoyment of watches rolled directly into an adult passion, but it wasn’t until Niels’s 30th birthday that the seeds of his current collecting were planted. Of all things, it was a vintage Tissot, given to him as a birthday present, that transformed Niels from a guy with a passing interest in watches into a bonafide collector. “I was just hooked, and I’m turning 41 this year, so 10, 11 years like really into it, I’d say.”

Of course, the transition from vintage Tissot to Kudoke, Ming, and Laine isn’t an immediate one. “I think after that [vintage Tissot], it was a lot of vintage stuff — vintage chronographs, vintage Omegas, vintage Tudor, Rolex, all that.” Twenty-five years ago, that may well have been where the journey ended — a watch roll filled with vintage Rolex and Omega is, after all, not a bad thing to have — but Niels is a 21st-century collector through and through.

Now, Niels has narrowed his focus slightly, seeking out small independent brands early in their life cycles. “I don’t have any tactics or anything, but what I really like is to try and seek out someone making maybe their first or second series of watches because, at that point, you’re sure that it’s not too expensive and you’re also in a point of the watchmaker’s career where your purchase is really making a difference because you’re putting your trust in someone that’s doing something fairly new.”

None of this is to say that Niels is immune to many of the same impulses that affect the rest of us. “The last couple of years, I’ve really been practicing not just buying any Seiko I like, because that’s something I’ve been prone to. Every time you see a new Seiko, I always feel like ‘Oh, I need to own this.’ I’m too trigger-happy, so I’ve spent the last couple of years trying to scale down on just buying something because I like the look of it.”

The tipping point into independents came when Niels started showing up at meetups, primarily in his home city of Copenhagen. It might surprise you to learn that Copenhagen has a relatively robust watch community. “There’s a fairly big scene, I’d say… we just had the five year anniversary of RedBar in Denmark, [and] before that there were small groups, obviously Facebook groups, people meeting each other through Instagram, so on and so forth. If you consider how niche a hobby it is, it’s pretty good for a small country like Denmark. That’s probably the best way I can put it.”

Becoming a part of that community allowed Niels to expand his horological horizons, and begin experiencing new brands, beyond the standard fare. “I started going to a lot of get-togethers and RedBars and all that, and at some point, I met some other collectors who were into independents and saw some stuff I found really interesting.”

That said, anyone who has ever attended a sufficiently large watch meetup can attest that “really interesting” isn’t always the best way to describe the watches on the table. “I won’t say that everybody brings the same thing, but a lot of people bring the same thing.”

“I always had a tendency towards, I would say, underground stuff, you know? From death metal music to books, I always had a fondness for something that was a bit out of left field… So I just think I naturally progressed out — to find something that was unique.”

That’s not to say that Niels doesn’t have certain tendencies. Like all of us, there are things he likes and things he doesn’t. Look across his collection and “you’ll probably notice a lot of gray and sandy, earthy tones because that suits my style. My wife is on my back all the time and says I always wear khaki colors — and she probably has a case.”

Niels also has very specific taste in movements, leaning towards watches with calibers derived from ETA or other stock movements. Of course, we’re not really talking about stock movements, Niels likes when “the maker puts their own personality into it,” particularly if they’ve “designed or redesigned the bridges.” This taste for widely known and reliable movements is rooted in his experience with much higher-end watches.

“I had a Vacheron at some point and the thing just didn’t work. It went back three times. And I know so many Vacheron collectors — they just [don’t] work. They break all the time. I had some Lange & Söhnes that went back and it’s just [frustrating]… you get it back and then you have to send it back — two months, two months after.”

On the other hand, Niels has, in his preferred realm of small indies, found the service he’s after (and yes, I mean that in every sense of the word). “Every time you have something with an independent, that doesn’t work — my Felipe Pikullik, there was something wrong with the balance. I sent it down to him and he took a look at it. Two days after, he just explained to me what was wrong and he fixed it. And a week later I had it back. So you don’t have to wait six months for Vacheron to fix up your watch.”

Getting drawn into the wide world of independent watches did more than just open Niels up to the new and different, it gave him a window into yet another community. It’s no secret that Instagram, and the digital forums that preceded it, have been a massive boon to watch collecting. Digital communication gives us all the chance to not only see the new and different but to talk to the people pushing watchmaking forward, as well as the enthusiasts who support them.

“I would say, the Instagram part of it, particularly if you follow smaller independents, I would say it’s a lot easier to fall into talks and chats with people because they’re so passionate about it. So every time someone gets a question about some obscure watch they have, they’re just waiting to pour out… I’ve spent a lot more time actually chatting to people since I’ve been [diving] into the smaller independents than I did before.”

 

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Wading through the endless streams of Submariners and Nautiluses that fill all our Instagram feeds is no small task, but Niels has seemingly cracked the code and made Instagram work for him. “First of all, I think I actually do a lot to curate my feed because otherwise, the algorithm will just kill you with what’s popular… But I think I shaped it, in a way — more than just going through my feed, I actually use Instagram and go through specific hashtags to search for something.”

“If I read an article about an independent, then I search for that. And then through that, pick up collectors who own it or find different ways to check it out and see what else is out there, and through that get to talk to people who either own it or aspire to own it.”

It’s an undoubtedly focused and intelligent way to make use of the app we’ve all come to depend on to feed so much of our collective watch obsession. But Niels admits that life has (in a very positive way) somewhat interrupted his dedication to social media. “I had my second child a couple of years ago, so I would say I was more active on social media four or five, six years ago. But I don’t have that much time to scroll through thousands of pictures anymore, especially with the second child.”

Through Instagram, Niels has developed a particularly strong bond with the team behind Dekla watches, who he originally connected with through their social media channels. “Well, first of all, I just ordered the watch. And one day, I just posted a picture of it and they wrote me on Instagram. Basically, I’ve been posting some pictures of their watches and they just responded.” Since that initial DM, Niels has cultivated this relationship and now acts as somewhat of a sounding board for the team at Dekla, offering them a collector’s perspective on their growing catalog.

“So they would like my input to both the design process and materials used and so on and so forth. And I have, actually, absolutely no knowledge or anything other than what I can see with my eyes, so I think they looked at my collection and thought that I would have a meaningful input.”

And at the end of the day, “meaningful input” is what it all comes back to with Niels. Talk to almost any collector who’s in deep, and they will almost always tell you that their favorite watches are the ones that represent a connection to other people. Indies aren’t just Niels’s favorite because they’re different or new. They speak to him “because you can just pick up the phone and call them, and talk to them, and get something special done.”