Inside Tyler, The Creator's $600K Watch Collection

The Crash began life in late 1960s Cartier London as a distorted, elongated case that looked closer to a Dali painting than a wristwatch, and the original London examples number only a few dozen. Cartier revived the design in 1991 with a Paris series limited to 400 numbered pieces in 18k yellow gold, a slightly smaller case at roughly 38.5mm by 22.5mm, signed Paris on both the dial and the caseback. Tyler wore his Crash in the 2021 "Lumberjack" video and again at a Cartier auction in Monaco that same year, following Kanye West's appearance with one on Letterman, and the two sightings are widely credited with turning the Crash from a collector's secret into one of the hottest references on earth. Prices have followed accordingly, with Paris examples now trading well into the mid six figures and London originals reaching over a million dollars at auction. What separates Tyler's approach is that he does not treat it as an investment, he has openly described wearing it swimming, biking and sweating with a dead battery and dents in the case.

The Pebble is one of the boldest things Cartier London ever produced, a perfectly round 18k gold case with a square dial rotated 45 degrees inside it, giving the watch its "baseball" nickname among collectors. Production was tiny, believed to be around a hundred pieces in the original 1972 run, which puts it in genuinely rare territory even next to the Crash. Cartier revisited the design decades later in a strictly limited reissue, but the vintage London examples are the ones collectors chase. Tyler has worn his on a simple tan leather strap with shorts and a bucket hat, which is exactly the point, a six-figure vintage rarity treated as an everyday object rather than a display piece.

The Tank Louis Cartier is the purest expression of the 1917 original, with soft brancard lugs that flow directly into the strap and proportions that have barely changed in a century. Tyler's example is the large model in rose gold, W1529856, with the silvered Roman numeral dial, blued sword hands and a sapphire cabochon set into the crown. It is the least loud watch he owns and probably the one that gets the most wear on ordinary days, worn on a rich brown alligator strap that ages into the gold. In a collection built on obscure shapes, the Tank Louis is the anchor, the reference every other piece is measured against.

The Obus takes its name from the artillery shell shape of its lugs, a detail Cartier introduced in the 1920s and revived across a handful of small runs in later decades. Tyler's is a 1980s piece with oversized blue Roman numerals painted across the dial, a graphic treatment he has compared to a Picasso, won at a live auction in Monaco. He wears it on a red alligator strap, which is the kind of decision that separates a stylist's watch from a collector's watch, red leather against yellow gold and cobalt numerals should not work and completely does. It is one of the few pieces in his collection where the dial does the talking rather than the case shape.

The Must de Cartier line was launched in the 1970s as an accessible route into the brand, built in vermeil, sterling silver plated in gold, rather than solid gold, and powered by quartz. That history is exactly why it belongs here, because it is by far the cheapest watch in the collection and Tyler wears it with the same regularity as the six-figure pieces. His example carries an Arabic numeral dial with the Cartier signature at twelve, mounted on a bright green alligator strap. In a collection where individual pieces trade for the price of a house, keeping a few thousand dollar quartz Tank in rotation is the clearest signal that the buying is driven by design rather than price.

Baignoire is French for bathtub, which is precisely what the elongated oval case looks like, and it is the design the Crash was allegedly derived from after one was returned to Cartier in a damaged state. Tyler's example is a London signed piece in yellow gold with stretched Roman numerals curving around the oval and a black leather strap. The Baignoire has historically been read as a women's reference, and part of what Tyler has done for the vintage Cartier market is dissolve that assumption entirely, small gold ovals now sell to men at prices nobody would have predicted a decade ago. He wears it on stage, which is the same treatment every other piece in the collection gets.

The Coulissant is the most conceptually strange watch Tyler owns, a fluted gold shutter that slides across the dial to conceal the time completely, leaving what looks like a solid gold bracelet link on the wrist. The mechanism traces back to Cartier's Art Deco secret watches, jewelry first and timekeeping second, and very few were built in the modern era. Tyler pairs his with an electric blue alligator strap that turns a discreet piece into something loud without adding a single stone. It is the clearest evidence in the collection that he is buying objects rather than watches, since a watch you cannot read is a sculpture with a movement inside it.

The Santos is the watch that arguably started the entire wristwatch category, created in 1904 for the aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont so he could read the time without letting go of the controls. The Santos-Dumont line keeps the squared case and exposed screws of the original but drops the integrated bracelet in favor of a leather strap, making it far dressier than the modern Santos most people picture. Tyler's is yellow gold on brown alligator, worn to a red carpet with a cream puffer jacket rather than a suit, which is the entire thesis of his collection compressed into one outfit. It is also one of the more attainable references he owns, which matters for anyone reading this and taking notes.

The Petit Cylindre is a narrow, tall rectangle with a gently curved case that follows the wrist, closer to a cuff than a conventional watch. The dial is stripped back to Arabic numerals at twelve, three and six with simple batons elsewhere, which gives it an almost 1930s drafting-table feel. Tyler wears his on a deep green alligator strap, and it reads tiny even by the standards of a collection where nothing is large. Alongside the Coulissant, it is the piece that best demonstrates his willingness to buy references with essentially no secondary market visibility, which is how collectors find value before the rest of the market does.