How to Sell (2009)

Clancy Martin's 2009 debut novel, drawn from his years in the Texas jewelry trade, follows sixteen-year-old Bobby Clark into his brother Jim's Fort Worth store, where the Rolex case is the engine of the business and of its frauds. (Open Library)

Watches

Rolex Day-Date: The store's showpiece is the men's Rolex President, the eighteen-karat gold Day-Date, which Bobby learns to sell at $4,995 against the $11,800 charged down the street by Fort Worth's authorized dealer. The novel makes the watch merchandise rather than a wearer's possession: by the run-up to Christmas the store is selling Rolex orders it never intends to fill. Jim also shows a customer the Rolex on his own wrist, won as a prize for selling ten thousand Kirby vacuum cleaners in a year.

Source text: 'That's the one. Yes sir. Forty-nine ninety-five. A brand-new Rolex men's President, solid eighteen-karat gold, lifetime warranty.' (Clancy Martin, How to Sell, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009, p. 37; Internet Archive) Source text: we were already not selling Rolex watches, we were only selling Rolex orders. (Clancy Martin, How to Sell, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009, p. 43; Internet Archive)