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.

One thing I definitely don’t love about this watch is the ring back caseback design. In this case, the threaded ring is very thin, hard to get a case tool on, and extremely difficult not to cross-thread during installation. I’m honesly not sure why Gruen felt the need to use a ring back design with this watch (as opposed to a solid screwback), but regardless it’s always a bit of a PITA to open and close this case.