Between the pillars of Fifth and Sixth Avenues in Manhattan, on 47th Street, is a city within a city known as the Diamond District. This is where some of the world’s most desirable watches and gems are kept — tucked between a maze of skyscrapers and gritty watch repair workshops and concealed by a network of offices, hidden rooms, and vaults overseen by the watchful eyes of the most trusted caretakers. Outside, it’s pandemonium. Neon lights. A salvo of shouts from vendors entreating customers to touch, feel, handle — examine — the rarest of the rare. Inside, it’s all business and firm handshakes over hundreds of tattered dollars.
If you haven’t seen it for yourself, let me tell you, 47th Street is thrilling. And the scenes in 2019’s Uncut Gems (along with one of the most quotable memes ever ℅ Julia Fox herself) that made it famous beyond the watch world are accurate. But things are changing. Digital shop fronts are undercutting brick-and-mortar establishments. Social media is overturning stereotypes about who buys and sells watches while introducing the thirst for time-keeping Grails to younger seekers, which means a new generation of sellers is cropping up, too. And in a district that’s been dominated by multi-generational family businesses, where trust is its own currency, tensions between incoming and legacy sellers is high — and only adds to the thrill of a visit.
Let’s back up. The Diamond District was born in the late 18th century on a small stretch of Maiden Lane near Wall Street. Over the next 100 years, New York’s diamond trade took flight, with merchants peddling stones on the streets in greater quantities. Purveyors multiplied and, by the 1920s, sought out a new home for the growing trade on an otherwise typical New York block: 47th Street.
But the street’s history also begins in Europe, where centuries-old Jewish communities worked in the diamond trade. “The portability of diamonds enabled Jews to engage in their trade during cycles of exile and dispersion,” writes American sociologist Mareleyn Schneiderin her review of professor Renée Rose Shield’s Diamond Stories: Enduring Change on 47th Street. It was the threat of the second world war that enacted the cycle that brought so many seasoned diamond traders stateside.
As demand swelled and diamonds found their way into watch dials, timepieces became as coveted as the precious stones themselves. What started as a primarily wholesale experience evolved into a retail-first model: Wholesalers opted to pursue a corporate approach to selling to world-renowned jewelry conglomerates. “This unique stock exchange became a retail center, allowing all sorts of luxury adornments to take off,” says Duke University law professor Barak D. Richman, whose research examines the case study of the diamond industry and ethnic trading operations in the 21st century. “47th has always been a reflection of global trade and where the epicenters are,” says Richman. “It’s been London, Amsterdam, Antwerp, and then in the early 20th century, New York became another center. If you walked through 47th in the late ’80s, it was around 90 percent Jewish.”
It was in the late 1980s that the Diamond District broadened its offerings from stones, primarily, to the consignment of high-end watches. “Watches were always available on 47th Street, just they weren’t as popular, so, less dealers,” says John Buckley, a stalwart in the business. With over 25 years experience in the trade of luxury goods, Brooklyn-born Buckley — as he’s known in the area — refers to himself as “a gatekeeper,” reflecting on how, throughout his tenure, “windows” (that is, shopfronts) for watches have grown from just one to the thousands in operation today. That first one was “called Semion Bronstein. When [another store called] Renaissance opened a window in ’96, only three other windows had watches,” says Buckley. And from there, well, demand exploded. “The consumer demand drives the street,” he says. “Not the other way around.”
Today, 47th Street employs 33,000 people at more than 2,600 businesses, and it accumulates an average of $400 million in daily transactions, according to the Diamond District Partnership, the organization formed in 1997 to “enhance the commercial activities and atmosphere” of the district.
Though the nucleus of watchmaking will always be Geneva, 47th Street has etched itself on the horological map as the place to go in the US for rare Rolexes, niche Patek Philippes, and Audemars Piguets. And the street’s promise of hard-to-come-by haute horology is second only to the knowledgeable merchants that occupy it.
Leading a new vanguard on 47th Street, Tyler Mikorski, who sells under the name Vookum — coined slightly under the influence and favored after finding zero search results for it on Google — started working out in a watch dealership at the age of 18, after graduating from high school. I’ve got Buckley and Mikorski on the phone when they patch in another voice: James Buckley, John’s son and school friend of Mikorski, and it’s as if the frenetic energy of 47th Street itself is on the line — no bullshit, fast-paced, self-assured. “Tyler and I met in second grade. I was going to use the bathroom and he was just sitting there taking a shit and we were awkwardly looking at each other,” James says before trailing off, only to pick back up again a second later. “Since then, we’ve become friends. Between the three of us, my dad covers a middle-aged [wholesale] audience of enthusiasts, interested in education; Tyler’s is a younger demographic, including teenagers who want to learn to be hustlers; and I run my own authentication service.”
Family ties remain an important aspect of 47th Street, “for a mix of security concerns and the type of people in the business,” says Ellie Mendelsohn, who joined the family trade after graduating from college and later founded Ellie M Fine Jewelry. “In a business like this, security is extremely important. You don’t want just anyone handling expensive goods, but most would trust family. The street is mostly people that came to the US from other countries many years ago. I think family is very important in those cultures. As someone who is the third generation on 47th Street (my dad and grandfather), I wouldn’t just hire anyone to come work here.”
This kind of safety measure can also be a barrier to entry for newcomers — sellers as well as buyers. If you
know you know, and if you don’t, well, too bad for you. “Most of the people that go to 47th, they have no real idea of what the pricing is they should be paying,” says Buckley. “I’m a wholesaler, I have a totally different pricing structure to Tyler and most of the people on 47th Street. I usually buy the watches back from people when the people that originally sold them are not going to honor their sale.”
Here’s where social media comes in: An influx of content creators, from contributors to #WatchTok to YouTube and Instagram are shaking things up. Reem Soltan aka Reem the Dreem holds a lens to life on the street for over 90,000 TikTok followers. From “Closing an AP Jumbo” to “Deal of the Day,” her short-form videos reveal cost prices, the etiquette of negotiation, what deals you should be getting for your dime, and how to combat counterfeit culture. More broadly, social media has been hugely influential in promoting the panache behind this boulevard of bling to ever wider audiences. “The TikTok generation is a community influenced more than anyone else,” shares Julia Azer, another vendor (and notably, a woman) sharing the rundown of her job online. “People in college are now putting money aside so that maybe in five years, they can buy their first watch.”
“People also form a kinship with a person they watch on social media,” says Buckley, who takes to the app for an hour each morning before heading to work. “I’ve been posting on Instagram as @TuscanyRose [and on the Internet] since the ’90s, when forums were the only way to find out about watches. Now, I get people commenting on my posts saying, ‘I’ll never buy a Rolex but I love learning about the hustle.’”
All this has translated to a broadening of the watch buying and selling community on 47th Street. “There has been tremendous growth and diversity, not only on the collector side but also in the watchmaking sector,” says Carolina Navarro, deputy director of the Horological Society of New York. “For decades the average watch collector was a wealthy older white man. You could even see this reflected in attendance at HSNY’s monthly lectures. Today, it’s refreshing to see younger collectors, female collectors, and enthusiasts of all races and ethnicities.”
Take Azer, who started selling on the street just two years ago. “There are so few women on 47th Street — they’re either helpers or working in marketing. They’re rarely fronting the sales. I try to sell to women and build a platform that makes watches feel accessible to women,” she says. “To be a woman on 47th Street, you have to fight for your meal and have the hustle in your heart. There’s a lot of competition.”
Of course, change brings inevitable tension to a community like 47th Street, where family ties, trust, and institutional knowledge are valued so highly. Beyond inevitable quibbles over territory, there’s concern from some of the older guard that this new bunch just doesn’t have what it takes to educate buyers. Outweighing all this, though, is a front that sellers old and new can largely unite on, and that’s saving the experience of the street from more nefarious forces: online shopping and couture boutiques that ensure watch collecting stays within reach for the ultra-rich alone. “We obtain a lot of products that stores don’t have,” says Reem. “It’s like a flea market — for the right price, everything is attainable. It’s about touching it and feeling it and then purchasing it.”
In short, 47th Street, that carnival of clockwork and its motley crew, may be our last hope for safeguarding the existence of the culture surrounding the watchmaking industry. It may force you to get your elbows out to scout for the best deal, but what’s on offer is worth a little push and shove.
