I had the chance to speak to Ron at the OtD get-together in London, and he told me about Plaza Jewellers.

I was in NY the week before Christmas and I went to check out the shop. It is pretty crazy. The owner was very intense, hassling the salewomen for not showing me enough and not noting my details and requests clearly enough, even though they were perefectly helpful. He was pretty polite to me, but I didn't have anything to seriously engage him about. They had a lot of 80's Heuers before TAG, but mainly womens or very 80's two tone watches (not 80's in a good way). They had one Daytona, in decent condition. The prices were crazy, around $5000 to $6000 for very uncollectable 80's Heuers. The Daytona was also $6000 I seem to remember, so maybe it was cheap? They kept telling me, don't worry about the prices, we can do a deal, but I am not a huge Daytona fan so couldn't be bothered to even discuss. They had a few nice vintage Omega's as well, and some nice Porsche design models. But I wasn't in a mood for buying (3 days after Bonhams....). The guy does note everything that people ask for, so he probably has a good view of the evolving tastes in vintage watches.

Good recommendation though, and pleased I went there. It was very New York. I didn't try Grand Central. I went to a the Flea Market in Hells Kitchen, which was great, but no watches - but I did buy some cufflinks made with an old small watch movement, pretty nice.

As far as the snow goes, I got stuck in New York for Christmas as my flight was cancelled (snow at Heathrow), but as I was with my wife and kids it was pretty nice, and I made it out of New York on the evening of the 25th, just before the snow closed the NY airports - a small window between Europe being closed and NY being closed!

Shaun