Inevitably, buying such watches second hand from an unknown source is a potential minefield, which is why Peter Harrison, Richard Mille’s chief executive for Emea, decided to open the brand’s first authorised, pre-owned dealership in Europe and appoint Mason as its sole watchmaker.
Tom Mason’s average days are spent hunched over a bench but there is a glamorous side, too © Anna Gordon for the FTĪ perfunctory trawl of pre-owned Richard Mille watches for sale confirms that even entry level pieces are seldom listed at less than £100,000, with the majority of sellers asking many multiples of that depending on the rarity of the model. Even when I started 11 years ago, the values of the various models were already incredibly high.” “The job comes with huge responsibility and, to be frank, I was absolutely terrified at first.
“I was taken on as a very junior watchmaker, but was immediately sent to the Richard Mille manufacture in Switzerland for three-and-a-half months of really extensive, specialist training,” he says.
I once travelled 9,000 miles for a collector because he needed to have a strap changed
