Back in the days when the big watch brands hadn’t really established a dedicated retail presence, it wasn’t uncommon for major watch boutiques like Turler to sell pieces with their name co-signed on the dial. The 562 automatic movement powering this example is a bit aesthetically compromised due to oxidation - probably from being worn while swimming - but it works very well and keeps great time. It’s an important watch for me, both because it was my first Omega restoration, and because it was the first watch where I was able to successfully straighten a damaged, bent hairspring - an important milestone in my watchmaking journey.

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 Omega is one of my favorites. The polished stainless steel case contrasts really nicely with the subtle golden shade of the dial as well as the gold hands and indices. The case and dial on this one are also in particularly good condition. Inside is a classic bumper automatic movement which, while showing a signficant amount of cosmetic wear, still runs great. I love the way these bumper automatics occasionally squirm a bit on your wrist as if they’re alive.

Based on Omega’s 1920s workhorse 26.5 movement, this example is in nickel silver (a.k.a. German silver) and styled to resemble military trench watches from a decade earlier. I love the cathedral-style hands, although re-luming them was a bit tricky. The nickel silver is a bit soft, so the case back wore through on the edges and it was patched by a jeweler at some point.

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.

One day I was casually scanning EBay listings and I ran across a gentleman selling brand new modern cases designed for vintage Landeron movements. As it happened, I also had a perfectly good Landeron 149 movement - originally purchased as a parts movement but never used - that came with a decent Loengrin-branded dial and hands. And just like that this marriage watch was born. The new case is extremely chunky and heavily built, and definitely gives the watch a look that is more modern than vintage, but mostly I was glad to be able to put this nice Landeron movement back to work!

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.

If you forced me to pick the best-looking watch in my collection, I’m pretty sure it would be this one. Something about the dial design on this JLC is just perfect - pictures don’t really do it justice. It’s powered by a rather handsome bumper automatic movement, so, like most bumper autos, it occasionally gives a little twitch on your wrist to remind you it’s there. It also has a really unusual shock setting for the balance, where the upper balance jewels are retained by a pivoting brass spring arm.

I had my eyes out for a vintage IWC to add to my collection for quite some time before stumbling upon this example. Even in non-running condition, it didn’t exactly come cheap, but I love the end result. While it’s on the small side, it still looks great on the wrist with the cream colored dial and gold numerals offset by a blued center second hand. The IWC 61 movement is also beautiful but has some flaws. Notably, the indirect drive for the center second hand uses a very light tension spring in an attempt to control flutterg. Unfortunately, the original tension spring was worn out, leading to a distracting amount of second hand flutter when the watch was running (this doesn’t affect timekeeping, but it’s certainly distracting). After some experimentation, I found that a piece of hairspring from a large vintage pocket watch was just the right size and tension to substitute for the original, and the flutter tendencies and now much reduced.

Some vintage watches are highly cooperative. Others, not so much. This particular Hamilton fought me tooth & nail, but I persisted (through multiple donor movements) because I really love the style of the dial. The Buren-sourced microrotor movement in this thing is cool looking, but not fun to work on. Lowlights include a complex and cantankerous compound ratchet wheel, a frankly terrible click spring design, and a difficult-to-assemble automatic winding mechanism underneath the rotor. Eventually I got it working, however. Well, except for the calendar - the calendar driving wheel, like most of the rest of this movement, is complex and delicate, and the one in this watch literally fell apart. I have not yet been able to source a replacement, so the calendar is currently stuck on 6 (short for “666”).

The Soundgarden tune Black Hole Sun always comes to mind when I look at this Hamilton with its unusual black sunburst pattern dial. This really is a great looking watch which somehow manages to be both classic and different at the same time. It’s not all looks though; the ETA Swiss movement is a strong runner. Interestingly, the balance shock spring design resembles Seiko’s diashock design in both form and function. Seiko released the first diashock watch in 1956, while ETA ramped up production of the 1080 caliber in the mid 1950s, so it’s not clear who was first here.

AN 5740 military pocket watches were issued to aircraft (primarily bomber) navigators in all service branches during WWII and into the early post war period. Watches meeting the specification were manufactured by Elgin, Waltham, and Hamilton. Unusually for a pocket watch, they have a central second hand and a hacking mechanism, as well as a 24 hour dial. They were typically mounted in special cases, meant to protect the watch from the effects of vibration, temperature and altitude, and were generally set to Greewich Mean Time (hence the G.C.T. on the dial). This Hamilton example, despite its age, still tells time very accurately.

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.