This handsome silver Longines from the late 1960s still wears exceptionally well, with its large (for the era) case size and clean, modernist look. The cal. 302 movement inside is part of the brand’s celebrated 30L lineage—thin, beautifully finished, and mechanically robust—making it one of the better manual-wind calibers of its era. When I received this watch it was in pretty good shape (compared to many of the watches I work on, anyway), but was not running due to a broken balance pivot - a fairly unusual occurence in shock protected watches. The only sources for a new balance stem were in Europe, and, without the de minimus exemption, getting it through US customs, tiny as it was, was quite an adventure in itself.

This is a great example of Longines’ mid-century design mastery - really a great looking watch which manages to look much more modern than it is. The Longines 27M movement inside is beautifully crafted, and also demonstrates Longines’ long devotion to non-shock-protected balances, at least for their dress watches, which extended into the early 1960s.

This elegant Longines tank really captures the refined Art-Deco style of the early 1940s with its dramatic triple-bar “wedding band” lugs. Inside beats Longines’ in-house caliber 9L, a finely finished 17-jewel rectangular movement produced for the brand’s U.S. market dress watches of the era.