“I just liked wearing something on my wrist, it made me feel grown up,” says Fred Savage, reminiscing about where his journey as a watch collector began. It’s pretty easy to imagine the star of the iconic 1980s–’90s series The Wonder Years as a ten year old wanting to feel more adult by wearing a watch. He’s now very much matured as an actor-director and as a prominent personality in the watch- collecting community.

When Revolution spoke with him from his car in Los Angeles, a purity to his enthusiasm for watches came through. If he weren’t already likeable enough, he’s also highly relatable as a collector. From a very special Bulova to impulse-buying a vintage Blancpain Tribute to Aqua Lung Fifty Fathoms and more, here’s what he told us about his perspective on watches.

Tell us about the watch you’re wearing right now.

I’m wearing a Rolex GMT-Master II Destro. It’s one of only two watches in my entire collection that I’ve gotten from an AD because I started by collecting vintage watches. I’m the original owner of this, and I love it. I had a blue-black GMT on the Oyster for the longest time and I loved it. I wasn’t necessarily looking for another GMT, but when the Destro came out, I just thought it was so different — so subtly different. I loved what it represented in terms of watchmaking for “the Crown.”

I had a lot of friends that would say to me “when you go Jubilee, you’re never going back,” and they were absolutely right. It’s my first Jubilee bracelet and it’s been getting a lot more wrist time than I’d thought it would.

What are your earliest memories connected to watches?

I remember I always wore a watch. Even in grade school, I had digital watches. In high school, I had this old Russian watch that I loved. I remember I had a quartz Hamilton Ventura that was my bar mitzvah watch. And so I always loved watches. I just liked wearing something on my wrist, it made me feel grown up.

I think, in large part, everything about your youth is wanting to be like your dad somehow, and that was one way I could do it. I really didn’t know what I was wearing, and even to this day I don’t remember what those watches were. I remember the Hamilton because I still have it.

What watches have been in your collection the longest?

That Hamilton is definitely it. But I actually have a really great watch that I got when I was 14 or 15 that I don’t wear, but it has a crazy story. When I was a little kid, just starting acting, I did a lot of commercials in Chicago, where I’m from. When I was eight or nine, maybe ten, I did a commercial for our local Chicagoland Chevy dealer. And they paired us with an athlete, this new rookie from the Bulls named Michael Jordan.

It was a local commercial so very early in his career, and he wasn’t doing these big national commercials. And so we got to know him a little bit and I stayed in touch with him over the years. He had a charity foundation called the Michael Jordan Foundation, and one year I did some work in this foundation. And, as a thank you, he gave me a watch. It’s a gold, quartz Bulova Tank — I think probably gold-plated. And the dial is inscribed “Thanks, Michael.”

So, I think those are the two I’ve had the longest, in terms of years. They haven’t gotten a lot of wrist time, and I’d completely forgotten I had that Bulova. I rediscovered it when I was going through a bin in my garage a couple of years ago, I think during Covid.

When did watches become something to collect?

I remember the very first vintage watch I got. I was in college, and I walked into Wanna Buy a Watch, Ken Jacobs’ shop on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, which is like a mecca of vintage watch buying and selling. I started talking to Ken and I saw this Illinois. And I fell in love with these early American watches from the ’20s and ’30s, the Gruens and Walthams and Elgins and Illinois and Hamiltons …

I just loved the design of them, the filigreed cases that were all aged. I bought this Illinois watch — I think it was around 300 dollars — and I just fell in love with the stained dial. It’s not a pristine example at all, but I loved the story behind it, the history, and that this thing had existed at that point for 80 years, and it was still running. I was taking my place in this lineage of owners. Who knows where it had gone and what [those owners] had done with it, and I love that I was now part of this watch’s story. And that’s what drew me to vintage watches, that was like my entry point.

I loved the story behind it, the history, and that this thing had existed for 80 years, and it was still running. I was taking my place in this lineage of owners.

I still have that Illinois and a couple old Elgins from my earliest days of collecting. This was probably the late ’90s, so I guess I should have been buying Paul Newman Daytonas for two thousand dollars, but I didn’t. Who knew?

Are there watches that marked a milestone in your collecting journey, that broke a seal, introduced you to a new niche, or brought you to another level of collecting?

I kind of dabbled around buying watches in those early years and I would just buy watches that I thought were cool. But I walked into Wanna Buy a Watch that first time and I saw a Rolex Explorer 1016. I fell in love with it; I was like “that’s the coolest watch I’ve ever seen in my life.” I thought it was so cool, but I wasn’t going to be spending thousands of dollars at that time, as I was in my early twenties.

So, while I loved that watch, I didn’t know a lot about watches, I wasn’t reading about them. Just like when I was a kid, I loved wearing a watch. So I got a Shinola that I really loved. I wasn’t chasing a label. I bought a MeisterSinger that I thought was really cool because it only had one hand to tell the time.

And when we got married, my wife got me a Bell & Ross 123 for our wedding present, and on the back is inscribed “The Best Is Yet To Come.” And she said, “Look, this is your working man’s 1016.” It’s reminiscent of the 1016 and it’s from a nice company, and it also made me realize that watches can mark these important moments.

So people say “what watch would you never sell?” And I’ve been fortunate enough to collect and own some really beautiful watches that are really important to me, and maybe to collectors, but all those watches I could take or leave. But that Bell & Ross is really special to me.

The Bell & Ross was a step. Then it was buying a dive watch, a couple Seikos and vintage things like that. But then it was for my 40th birthday that my wife got me the 1016. She knew it was something I’d wanted, something I’d always coveted.

That’s an incredibly meaningful watch, but I don’t think she knew what she was unleashing. I don’t think either of us knew. It was like she was giving me permission and that these kinds of watches were now on the table. So that kicked it into a whole other level of buying and collecting. It was a real turning point.

If you could drill down further, beyond vintage, do you have a niche — traits that you seek out, or something that characterizes your tastes?

It’s something that I ask myself and challenge myself with all the time. When I look at my collection, it’s all over the place, it doesn’t have a real focus. It represents my journey as a collector, so there’s a throughline to me, but there are some times when I look at it and I really beat myself up. But then when I step back, all these watches I get because I really love them and it’s all for different reasons.

I have an Omega Flightmaster that I absolutely love, and I bought it because it was the ugliest watch I’d ever seen. It’s the one with the 24-hour register with green and black, and the register has gone a little chocolate. So it’s got brown, orange, blue, green, black, white, and the case is gorgeous brushed steel. It looks like a UFO landed on your wrist. I just imagined this designer walking into his boss’s office and saying “I got it. I solved the problem, boss.” It’s so audacious, and I got it because it just made me smile.

I have a Framont Parking Meter watch because I love the idea that it was [made for] some traveling salesman, and the most important thing to him was not to get parking tickets. And so for him it’s the most practical tool watch you could ever imagine. I mean, who needed that watch? I just imagine some traveling salesman.

I also have a great A-Series 5402 Audemars Piguet Royal Oak because I love origin stories. It’s a storied silhouette by a storied designer (Gérald Genta, d’oh), and it was a crazy swing for the fences at the time. But it just built this empire that all started with this really simple, brutalistic design. There are more complicated or desirable Royal Oaks, but I love looking down at the 5402 and thinking this is the ship that launched all the others.

So I guess the point is that those are very different kinds of watches and very different stories. But every watch in my box has a story, so the cohesiveness in my watch box is that they all appeal to me for some esoteric reason.

How do you discover new watches? What influences your tastes?

I don’t have a lot of what people would refer to as hype watches, I don’t have a lot of trendy stuff. People talk about “the hunt,” and there’s something to be said for that. But for me, my favorite watches are the ones I had no idea I was even looking for or wanted.

I have this great Rolex Commando, which was not a model that I knew about, but it came in front of me and was offered, and I just love the story of it. “The cheapest Rolex ever made” felt so humble, you know? It wasn’t automatic. It was sold at the PX [store for American military personnel] and stamped “Commando” by Abercrombie & Fitch to make it more marketable. I love the story behind it and how humble it was.

That’s now become a really collectible watch. But when there were watches I really wanted and then got, sometimes it felt like the thrill of ownership was in the hunt and questing for it — the research on it and the thirst for it. And then once you have it, you feel like now what? The watches I love are the ones I got impulsively, and then you get to enjoy it and discover it and bond with it as you wear it, as opposed to before you own it.

But as much as I love the watches, I love the people that come with the watches. I know this sounds super corny, but there’s a real community of people that I really enjoy being with: other collectors, dealers, journalists, podcasters, scholars, watch company owners, watchmakers. The world of horology has introduced me to some of the most interesting people I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. It’s really the people and the friendships that have kept me in it.

What was your most recent purchase?

My evolution as a collector is all summed up in this one purchase. It synthesizes all the things that we’ve talked about: the sense of community, the impulsive purchasing, my evolution as a collector.

Several years ago I stumbled on Analog:Shift in New York, and I met Geoff Hess, Vincent Brasesco, James Lamdin and all these great guys who really continue to be a part of my watch collecting journey. Then, last December, it was Geoff Hess’ first auction as Head of Watches at Sotheby’s, and I was so excited for him I went to New York to support him and just to be in the room.

It was the 70th anniversary of the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms. When I started collecting and I learned about the Fifty Fathoms, I didn’t like it at all. I just thought “what is that monstrosity?” It was so big and ugly, it made no sense to me. But when I went to the preview for that auction, I saw this Fifty Fathoms, and I put it on, and it just struck me.

It was double signed with Blancpain and Aqua-Lung. It didn’t have the moisture indicator though it had the numbers, so it was much more symmetrical. I got it right then, in the room, and it was a thrill to do that. It pulled so many things that were important about watches into this one moment: the evolution of my tastes, the relationships I’ve developed, the story of it, and just being open to falling in love with something. I wasn’t looking for it, but it’s just spectacular.