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.

Tank-style watches like this one were popular throughout the 1940s and early 50s. This particularly clean example is also dimensionally larger than typical tanks from the 40s, so it looks a bit more modern on the wrist than many similar examples and it still makes for an elegant dress watch. Typical for Gruens of this era, the 425 movement is Swiss, while the case was manufactured in the USA.

I honed in on this Gruen pocket watch from the 1920s for its lovely gold relief dial. It’s interesting to contrast the relatively simple finishing of the Swiss made movement in this watch with the relatively elaborate finishing on contemporary American-made pocket watch movements. The keyless works design on this watch is also very much in line with the Swiss designs that would come to dominate the wristwatch industry, in contrast to keyless works designs on American pocket watches, which were designed quite differently.