He went from managing ad campaigns for non-profits to handling six-figure vintage watches. He wouldn’t have it any other way.
Charlie Dunne didn’t plan on selling watches. He planned on advertising. For four years after graduating from Flagler College in 2017, he ran digital campaigns for more than 250 non-profits at a Google Ad Grants agency in St. Augustine, Florida. Watches were something else, a private obsession built through books, forums, and the kind of focused attention that eventually outgrows a hobby.
Then he met Eric Wind.
Wind Vintage was founded in 2017 by Eric Wind, a former VP and Senior Specialist at Christie’s, where he spent years leading the auction sales of major watch collections. Based in Palm Beach, Florida, the company operates as a direct-to-consumer vintage watch dealer without a physical showroom. Watches are sourced, authenticated, and sold through windvintage.com, with a focus on condition, provenance, and documentation. In 2023, Wind Vintage was named “Pre-Owned Watch Retailer of the Year” at the WatchPro Awards, ahead of eBay and several major pre-owned platforms.
Dunne joined as Vice President and Senior Watch Specialist (relocating to Palm Beach area) to handle authentication, content, and client work alongside Wind. He brings a collector’s instincts to the day-to-day: sourcing, writing, photography, and the constant correspondence that keeps the business running.
No Such Thing as a Slow Morning
A Jaeger-LeCoultre ref. 2983. Dunne’s first great JLC. He sold it. He hasn’t forgotten it.
The idea that vintage dealing is glamorous is for those who do not work in it.
The correspondence alone is relentless. Inquiries about inventory, authentication requests, sourcing conversations with clients hunting specific references and more. At this level, a missed message doesn’t just cost a sale. It can cost a relationship built over years of matched preferences and trusted referrals.
Authentication is the work behind the work. A vintage watch arrives with a story; a claimed provenance, a reference number, a set of papers. None of it is taken at face value. Case proportions, dial printing depth, lume composition, crown size relative to the reference and production period, all of it gets cross-referenced against documented examples and hard-won knowledge. The vintage market’s defining challenge isn’t finding watches. It’s knowing what you’re actually looking at when you find them.
Between authentication and correspondence sit the operational realities: photography, listing copy, social media, logistics. Dunne handles content creation for Wind Vintage, which means translating the specifics of each piece; a matte dial’s texture, the particular shift a tropical Heuer develops over decades with images that give a remote buyer real confidence. Every watch photographed and listed has already been evaluated, sourced, and priced.
“We’re always swamped, but also having the time of our lives.”
— Charlie Dunne
The Ones That Stay With Charlie
Two that got away: the LeCoultre Deep Sea Alarm and a yellow gold Submariner ref. 16618, whose dial had shifted toward an unusual purplish-blue.
We asked Dunne which watches he’s thought about ever since. The list came quickly.
His personal Jaeger-LeCoultre ref. 2983, a time-only piece, and his first great JLC that went to a collector who loves it. Dunne sold his. He hasn’t forgotten it.
A Rolex Submariner reference 16618 in 18-karat yellow gold with a dial that had shifted toward an unusual purplish-blue still comes to mind. “I felt pretty much invincible with that on my wrist,” he has said.
There’s a Heuer Autavia GMT reference 1163 he describes as almost too improbable to recount. It hasn’t resurfaced. He’s still waiting.
What the Market Actually Rewards
The ref. 6542 GMT-Master as Pan American Airways knew it — a dual-timezone instrument built for the jet age, before it became a collector’s obsession.
Dunne’s philosophy on collecting isn’t built around brand hierarchy. It’s built around knowledge, patience, and a specific suspicion of anonymity.
Buy from someone public-facing, a dealer with a verifiable track record, a name attached to a reputation, a history of transactions that can be checked. The vintage market has no central authentication authority and no manufacturer-backed returns guarantee. A seller operating under an alias has no professional consequences for misrepresenting a dial or a movement. A dealer with their name on the business does.
Dunne also pushes collectors to look beyond the obvious. The vintage market’s attention concentrates heavily on a handful of references, and that tunnel vision leaves real gaps.
Longines produced some of the most precisely finished movements of the 20th century, and prices haven’t caught up to that engineering record. Breitling Navitimers from the 1950s and ’60s carry a legitimate aviation instrument history; the slide rule bezel functioning as an analogue flight computer for airspeed, fuel consumption, and distance. The Enicar Ultradive, a Swiss-made dive watch from the 1960s, remains largely overlooked outside specialist circles.
The Book
Vintage Watches: The Modern Guide, co-authored by Eric Wind and Charlie Dunne.
That same instinct of sharing what you know, be specific, don’t be condescending, runs through everything Dunne and Wind produce together. The Vintage Watch Podcast, launched on Patreon in 2024, is one expression of it. Vintage Watches: The Modern Guide, their co-authored book with writer Michael B. Dougherty, is another.
Already ranked #1 New Release in both Fashion History and Antique & Collectible Clocks & Watches on Amazon, the book is available for pre-order. UK readers can order via lnk.to/VintageWatches.
It covers the major reference points of the contemporary collector market — Rolex sport models, Patek Philippe complications, Omega Speedmasters, Audemars Piguet — alongside essays from collectors and specialists. It addresses watch patina with unusual accuracy: the natural oxidation and color shift that certain dials, bezels, and lume applications develop over decades, and what separates a genuinely aged surface from a manipulated one. A practical buying section rounds it out — what to verify, what documentation to request, where the common errors occur.
Still On His Wrist
The Submariner reference 5512 Eric Wind gave Charlie Dunne isn’t for sale. Dunne simply holds onto this one.
“I will die a happy man with a vintage Submariner on my wrist.”
— Charlie Dunne
The business continues regardless. There are emails to answer, watches to authenticate, a Heuer Autavia GMT reference 1163 somewhere in the world that hasn’t found its way back yet.
