Asked how he came to own 100 classic motorcycles, 39-year-old Jamie Waters replied: “About 15 years ago, I was living in Manhattan, with some disposable income and no means of transportation whatsoever. I missed tinkering and decided I’d start looking for a classic British bike to get started, with no real designs on collecting. I didn’t want anything too peculiar or temperamental or so rare that it would be hard to keep on the road, so I came to a choice between parallel twins from Triumph , BSA, and Norton . I started looking around for bikes and called Randy Baxter of Baxter Cycle about an oil-in-frame BSA he had listed for sale. Instead of just selling me that bike, he asked questions about what I intended to do with it. Me: ‘I’d like to modify the bike to make it sportier and more usable.’ Randy: ‘Well, why don’t you just start with the sportiest, most usable of all British twins, the Norton Commando?’” Waters took the advice and built a unique collection, of which half are Nortons, and races as well as collects them. Why Nortons? “I buy what I like,” he said, and “I like Nortons so much that it became a bit of an exercise to find/own/preserve representative machines from the firm’s significant eras, beginning with their world-dominating overhead-cam singles, then the widely successful parallel twins (especially their iconic works machines and series Production Racers), and eventually to their amazing rotary-engine machines. And there are the sounds: from the uncorked rasp of a Manx, to the snorting crispness of a well-tuned Commando, to the unearthly shriek of a rotary at full song, Nortons rarely fail to deliver the aural goods.” 
I encountered Jamie by selling him one of the seven (out of only 119 factory-built) Commando Production Racers in his collection some years ago because of his interest in significant factory racers, mostly of the 1960s and ’70s. He’s got CR and XRTT Harleys , Yamaha TZs, BSA and Triumph Rob North-framed Triples, plus the occasional Vincent V-twin, Matchless G50, AJS 7R, Laverda SFC, MV Agusta, MZ, Moto Guzzi, Indian twin- and four-cylinder models, and classic Husqvarna dirt bikes. As a portfolio manager and financial-investment analyst, Jamie of course recognizes the monetary value of his collection but says he created it “out of a love for the machines, for the period they represent and competed in, and out of a desire to make sure they survive to be shared with others.” That’s the main reason I sold my Commando Production Racer to him. Besides, as he said, “If I collected purely to make money, I’d have cornered the market on green-frame Ducatis and not on Norton Production Racers!”Jamie Waters Born: 1975, Sylvania, Georgia Education: BA, Economics, Stanford University, 1997 Professional: Financial wizard—Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan in research, SAC, Guggenheim as Portfolio Manager Oldest Norton: 1931 500cc OHC single Newest Norton: 1992 588cc rotary
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