Talking Watches With Greg Selch, Father To An ‘Orphan’ Watch Collection

I first met Selch at a dimly lit bar in SoHo, hovering over a table full of divers with Scotchlite dials, elegant gilt-dialed ’40s chronographs, and pieces issued to obscure foreign military units all splayed out. Most of them I hadn’t seen in the metal before. In the pre-pandemic days, a few collectors gathered over pints every other Monday to chat about oddball vintage references, show them off, and sometimes sell or trade them. Selch was a fixture in the scene.