I had been looking for the right vintage Cortébert to add to my collection for a while, and I was thrilled to find this early bumper automatic example. The black and charcoal dial with, crisp minute track, and restored stainless steel hands give it real presence, and the whole thing pops even more against the bright, polished stainless case. It’s one of those watches that looks like it was built to be read instantly, in bad light, in the real world—not just to be admired in a box.

I originally planned to list this Wittnauer for sale, but it completely won me over once I had it in hand, so I’m keeping it (sorry, everyone). It’s the kind of watch that looks almost too simple—until you realize how hard it is to get “simple” this right. The big, clean dial and thin bezel give it a surprisingly modern presence for a vintage dress watch, and the applied markers add just enough texture to keep the whole thing from feeling sterile.

I’m a big fan of Zodiac as a high quality but accessible vintage brand. This is a rather basic example, but is still a very handsome vintage watch. The A. Schild-sourced Zodiac 61 movement is a manual-wind-only design that forms the basis of the famous Zodiac 70-72 automatic line.

So, what do when you have a vintage Wittnauer with a fabulous dial but a broken lug, and another with a good case but an ugly, damaged dial? You make a marriage watch! In this case the marriage is pretty incestuous, as the dial/movement and case are both from contemporaneous Wittnauers. Fitment wasn’t that difficult, but did require a thin 3D printed spacer around the perimeter of the dial, which is barely visible in the assembled watch. I also needed to install new hands, since the original minute hand had been badly bent. I’m pretty happy with the result and glad I could preserve this cool guilloché dial, even if it gets points off for historical accuracy.

Back in the 1950s when Sears Roebuck sold pretty much everything, “everything” included luxury Swiss watches, and Orvin was their exclusive brand. I was particularly excited to open this one up, as I had never serviced a movement with a power reserve indicator and I was very curious how it worked. What I found was some very clever mechanical engineering able to track & differentiate the independent rotation of both the mainspring barrel and the winding arbor. Really cool stuff. The watch doesn’t look half bad either. I ended up overplating the case, and it turned out very nicely.

Quality vintage watches with blue dials in good condition are surprisingly hard to find, so I was happy when I tracked down this Bucherer example. The AS 1686 movement isn’t the prettiest, but it’s reliable and keeps good time. The movement is retained with a simple stamped steel case ring - not my favorite arrangement, as the movement tends to want to fall out when you’re trying to regulate it in the dial up position with the case back off.