Triple calendar with moon phase is one of my favorite complications, and I didn’t have to think very hard about purchasing this Zodiac when it showed up as a “For Repair” listing. It badly needed a service, and the case had some cosmetic issues that were mostly addressed by over-plating with 14K gold plate. That plus a new crystal, and the end result is really something special. The movement is essentially a reliable and accurate Zodiac 70-72 automatic with the extra calendar bits added to the dial side. Four small pushers make it relatively easy to set the various calendar functions.

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.

I have tremendous respect for Zenith as a watchmaker, and good restoration candidates don’t pop up on eBay that often, so I was pleased to find this one. The movement in this thing did not disappoint - it’s beautifully made. This is definitely a cut above the usual watches they used to hand out on service anniversaries. W.H. Rogers must have done a really good job.

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.

I wanted a very prototypical American pocket watch for my collection, and found this Waltham. It’s nothing fancy - 15 jewels, not railroad grade, but it works well and serves me as a reminder of a time when the best watches in the world were made in the USA. The porcelain dial unfortuntely has several hairline cracks (not unusual for porcelain), but otherwise it’s a very clean example.

The very bold and and very gold style of this chronograph kinda screams 1970s, but regardless of what you think of the exterior, inside sits one of the all time great movements - the Valjoux 236. This uses a column wheel for smooth operation, and has a high 21,600 bph beat rate for accuracy. Interestingly, unlike many other chronographs, the hammer in this movement only makes momentary contact with the register cams when the reset pusher is pressed. A separate brake is used to fix the central chronograph second hand. This was likely done to enable engineering of a flyback variation, the Valjoux 235.

In the early 1990s, As the Soviet Union was experiencing its terminal collapse following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Poljot and other Soviet watch factories were still churning out watches for re-sale in the West under secondary Eurpoean brands like Sekonda. This alarm watch is from that interesting point in history. It’s still a good looking watch, if you don’t stare at it too hard (some of the dial and hand elements haven’t aged all that well). Re-plating in 14K gold certainly helped in that department. The movement is, in typical Soviet fashion, very workmanlike and pretty much devoid of anything resembling finishing. It still runs well, however, which as any good Soviet will tell you, is the important part.

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.

This handsome Omega must have led a pretty tough life, as the back side of the case had suffered a considerable amount of erosion, the plating was in poor shape, and the original crown was missing. I couldn’t do anything about the erosion of the case material, but with a service, new crown, case polish, crystal polish, and overplate in 18K gold, you still have a good running Omega that looks great on the wrist.

This lovely Genève really captures the understated elegance Omega perfected in the early 1970s, with a champagne silver sunburst dial framed by sharply faceted gold-plated markers that catch the light with every turn of the wrist. Beneath that beautiful dial beats Omega’s revered caliber 565, a 24-jewel automatic workhorse celebrated for its smooth winding action and quick-set date mechanism — one of the finest movements the company ever produced.

The prototypical mid-60s Omega dress watch. Simple and elegant. The small, manual-only 620 movement makes for a very thin watch. Not much more to say, other than the fact I feel lucky to have found this one in really excellent condition.

This Omega caught my attention when it showed up in a “parts & repair” auction listing due to its dramatic case shape and the bold indices on its dial. I was excited when I opened it up and found that the Omega 500 movement looked completely pristine, with none of the telltale signs of previous servicing. Following a thorough service, it now runs beautifully. Other than replacing the crystal, I left the exterior intact, scratches and all, as I didn’t think a re-plate or overplate on this watch would look right.

An Omega bumper automatic with a cool textured black dial. This watch definitely stands out on the wrist - so much so that you definitely need to think about what else you’re wearing when you strap it on. Like all bumper automatics, the winding action isn’t very efficient, but it makes for a lively companion on your wrist.

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.

Pocket watches with a chronograph complication are pretty rare, so I was thrilled when I was able to pick up this single-pusher Le Phare example, which was in non-running condition and very dirty but which cleaned up beautifully and still works well. I didn’t do much with the case, because the real beauty here is on the inside. Chronograph lovers with a keen eye may notice the lack of an intermediate minute recording wheel, as well as the odd shark tooth design of the minute recording wheel itself. That’s because this watch has an instantaneous minute recording mechanism that builds spring tension until it snaps the minute recorder over at the appropriate moment. It’s pretty cool and amazingly still works very well. I can only speculate that this mechanism design didn’t show up in later wristwatch chronographs because it was difficult to miniaturize.

Servicing mechanical alarm watches is a pretty routine task for me at this point in my watchmaking journey, but this was the first alarm watch I took on as a restoration project, and I have to admit that I was quite intimidated by the multiple spring barrels (mainspring and alarm spring), complex setting and alarm trigger mechanisms. I had nothing to guide me, and even figuring out how to coordinate the alarm setting with the hour hand when reassembling the watch was something I had to puzzle through. Eventually I figured it all out, and the result is a great watch with a functional alarm and a really unique and elegant look.

I have restored a lot of Gruens for sale on my shop, but I’ve only kept a few special examples for my personal collection. This is one of them. In this case I really love the watch’s appearance, with its pie pan style dial, sub-second hand, and wide polished gold bezel which together give the watch a nearly perfect vintage aesthetic. It looks especially good after being over-plated in 18K gold.

This is a fine example of Gruen’s mid-century Autowind series, which introduced full-rotor automatic technology to the American market. I particularly love the overall look of this watch, with its subtly recessed arrowhead dial markers, tiered, sloping bezel, and flared lugs. It’s really a timeless, elegant look.

This the elegant lines of this mid century Veri-Thin captures everything I love about the Gruen’s post-war design language. Inside, Gruen’s caliber 423 manual movement keeps the profile thin. Gruen movements from this era are simple but beautifully engineered and consistent. With nothing more than a basic service, this one still delivers reliable, accurate timekeeping after 3/4 of a century.