Barrel Thief owner opens store-within-a-store to sell vintage watches

Booth Hardy and his dog, Henry, at Barrel Thief. (BizSense file photo)

A West End wine shop is adding a different sort of vintage to offerings.

Barrel Thief Wine & Provisions at 5805 Patterson Ave. recently introduced Booth’s Esoterica, a section of the store selling vintage watches along with retro wine apparel.

The idea was born of Barrel Thief owner Booth Hardy’s interest in old watches, which he said began more than a decade ago when his grandfather passed down to him a 1940s-era pilot’s watch he wore as a World War II pilot. Hardy said it didn’t take long for him to fall for vintage time pieces. 

“I think it’s just kind of my nature. It’s like with the wine business, you can never really know everything about it,” Hardy said. “It’s fun to find a watch and just try to read all about it, (find out) when it was made, who designed it, what it was used for. It’s just endless.”

His interest ramped up during the pandemic when Hardy began scouring flea markets and estate sales for old watches, particularly 1970s- and 1980s-era Seiko and Citizen watches. He began selling them at local pop-up markets and shops, a practice he continued into recent years, until his inventory eventually began to feel more like a collection. 

Booth’s Esoterica carries mostly vintage Seiko and Citizen watches.

“It’s not something where you’ll sell like 10 watches a day or anything,” he said. “I started to collect more than I was selling.” 

Then, after becoming sole owner of Barrel Thief last year – and without any business partners to run things by – Hardy decided the time was right to carve out a corner of the shop to sell watches. Most are priced between $100 and $600, and he said he now also sources watches from dealers as well as through European and Japanese auction sites. 

The watches at Booth’s Esoterica are flanked by a collection of vintage T-shirts from wineries, another type of retro item Hardy said he’s enjoyed trying to find. 

“I think I’m a collector, just in general. I just get obsessed with little things,” Hardy said. “A lot of California wineries did merch, so that’s most of what I find. These legendary California producers were making T-shirts in the ’80s and ’90s.”

So far, Hardy said he’s noticed an overlap between wine and watch enthusiasts.

“Let’s be honest, nobody needs a watch, … but there’s something romantic, I think, about a real watch. It’s a little machine on your wrist that’s marking the time almost exactly,” he said.

“Nobody really needs one, and no one needs wine – I guess you could argue it’s a grocery item in some people’s lives – but these are pleasurable purchases. People who appreciate knowing about a wine region and knowing a little bit about (their wine) are the same kind of person that gets into something like watches.”

The post Barrel Thief owner opens store-within-a-store to sell vintage watches appeared first on Richmond BizSense.