The Man Who Lost (and Found) His Grail: Paul Blandford and the Tale of the Stolen MB&F HM9

In the parlance of watch collectors, “grail watch” is a term that is thrown about far too casually, cheapened by hashtags and hype. But for Paul Blandford, a discreet “City man” who became a serious collector, the grail was not a metaphor. It was tangible, sculptural, and mechanical.

“The first time I saw an MB&F was in Marcus on Bond Street,” Paul recalls. “Do you remember Marcus? It was like horological heaven. You’d walk in and there was this aura of never-seen-before – Greubel Forsey, De Bethune, Urwerk. The kind of watches that didn’t belong on wrists so much as in science fiction films.”
 

He had already been collecting for a decade. At the time, he was still in the City of London, which for him meant suits, long lunches, and a Glashütte Original (a PanoInverse) on the wrist. Then, one afternoon, he wandered into Marcus and saw it: the LM101. “I didn’t buy it,” he laughs. “I posted on TZ-UK (it exists still, by the way!) asking if anyone in Britain actually owned one. That’s how rare it was.”

Years later, when MB&F’s Horological Machine No. 9 – the Flow – was launched, something clicked for Paul: “It was inspired by 1950s cars and aircraft. It looked like it could take off from your wrist. I just knew. That was the one. That was my grail.”

In 2019, while in Dubai for his birthday, Blandford finally tried on the HM9 at the MAD Gallery. “It fit perfectly,” he says. “A crazy watch, but somehow it worked. It felt like strapping an art installation to your wrist.”
 

He didn’t buy it then. Instead, he purchased two F.P.Journe pieces – a Resonance (40mm platinum case, white gold dial, and a ref.1499.2 movement) and an Octa Lune ref. (38mm, platinum case, yellow gold dial, and a brass movement) – the way some people have “one last hurrah” before committing to marriage. “Journe was cheaper back then,” he shrugs. “But the HM9 haunted me.”
 

By late 2020, in the midst of lockdown, Paul did it: He sold a few of his sensible, “normal” pieces – a Rolex Red Submariner ref.1680 and an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Jumbo ref. 5402 – and acquired his Horological Machine. “It arrived in April 2021. I had to drive to the airport to collect it because of COVID restrictions,” he recalls. “It came in that ridiculously cool egg-shaped pod - I used to keep it on my desk like a little UFO.”

The grail was his.

Fast forward to February 2022. Blandford attended an MB&F collectors’ dinner in London. “Wolfgang Puck was there, serving dinner himself! It was surreal. Millions of pounds’ worth of watches on the table, and we thought nothing of it.”
 

That night, leaving the bar after the event, Blandford was mugged. “Let’s not dwell on it,” he says quietly. “Everything that could go wrong, did.” And just like that, the HM9 – Paul’s beloved watch, his grail – was gone.

He told almost no one. “A friend of mine posted on Instagram: ‘How do you know if a watch is truly your grail?’ And I replied, ‘You only know when it’s taken from you, and you have to get it back.’ He joked about stealing mine next time he saw me. But it had already been stolen.”
 

Collectors who have their watches stolen often talk about “moving on.” Blandford couldn’t: “I just kept looking at the other watches in my box. None of them meant anything anymore.”

Then came a strange stroke of luck – a bit of horological karma, if you will.

In July 2022, Blandford spotted an HM9 for sale in Chicago that was one of only 33 made in an identical specification to the one which had been stolen. He agreed to a trade with the dealer, who offered him four times the retail price for a watch he had recently been allocated. With that, Blandford acquired his second HM9. “I’m not a flipper,” he insists, “but I needed the HM9 back.”

Then, later that same month, came a message from MB&F: “Your original HM9 has been found.”
 

The watch had surfaced in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar and had been offered to a dealer in the US. “The dealer did the right thing. He checked with Max, who confirmed it was mine,” Blandford recalls. “But after that… silence. The watch vanished again. It was like chasing a ghost.”

Months later, in April 2023, it resurfaced once more, this time at an auction house in Zürich. “They’d actually bought it themselves, not even on consignment,” he says incredulously. “The Swiss police seized it. I just thought, ‘Here we go again.’”
 

It took another year, lawyers, and the involvement of Art Recovery International before the watch was finally returned. “Two years later, in June 2024, I got it back. MB&F even serviced it for me for free.”

Blandford owned two HM9s for a little while. But when asked which he kept, he doesn’t hesitate: “The original. Of course. It’s been through hell – and so have I. But it’s mine. The story’s in the scars.”

He even jokes about its purification. “I blessed it,” he laughs. “In a swimming pool.”