{"title":"Wristwatches","description":"Vintage wristwatches, chosen one at a time. Rolex, Tudor, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Audemars Piguet and the quieter names, each researched and described exactly as it is.","products":[{"product_id":"rolex-oyster-perpetual-6567-star-dial","title":"'Star' Dial Chronometer, German Market, c.1957","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe scarce faceted star dial, its markers cut as three-pointed darts, on a solid gold Oyster Perpetual chronometer signed for the German market. One of the harder Reference 6567 dials to find original.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is a full-size Oyster Perpetual from the second half of the 1950s, the period when Rolex had settled the self-winding chronometer into the shape it would keep for years: a 34mm Oyster case, a fluted gold bezel, a domed crystal standing proud of the gold. In yellow gold it has real presence on the wrist without being large, the fluting throwing light around the edge of the dial.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat sets this one apart is the dial. Rolex fitted the Oyster Perpetual with plain batons and simple arrowheads by the thousand; only on a small run did it use the faceted star markers found here, three-pointed and diamond-cut, catching the light from a different angle at every hour. They are applied by hand and sit crisp and proud, and the silvered surface behind them has darkened only slightly and evenly with age. Nothing has been refinished or reprinted.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThen there is the line of German under the centre. Rolex printed the chronometer certification in the language of the market a watch was bound for, and this one left for Germany: Amtlich Geprüfter Chronometer, officially certified chronometer, in place of the English almost every other example carries. It is a small thing that fixes the watch to a time and a place, and it is the detail that turns an already scarce dial into a specific one.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe case has worn honestly. The gold at the front carries the soft, even wear of decades on a wrist, and the smooth caseback its own map of fine surface marks, none of it polished away to chase a sharper edge. The signed Oyster crown screws down properly, and the watch winds and runs well.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt comes today on a grey grained-leather strap with a Rolex buckle, a later pairing chosen to wear rather than to match the year. What matters is above the strap: a solid gold chronometer of the fluted-bezel Reference 6567, wearing a dial that was uncommon when it was made and is rarer now, still original and still legible in the language it was sold in. The marks, the movement and the condition are set out in the drawers below.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Rolex","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55030502752595,"sku":"WW-0008","price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1080\/3121\/3907\/files\/rolex-solid-gold-wristwatch-3_3bd5d927-2ffa-46b3-b1f9-edc859dedef7.jpg?v=1790196234"},{"product_id":"longines-single-button-flyback-chronograph-black-dial","title":"Single-Button Flyback Chronograph, Black Tachymeter Dial, c.1940s","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eA Longines single-button chronograph whose hands never stop: a light press on the pusher holds them for a reading, a full press sends them back to zero and straight on again. Steel, 32mm, with its black BREVET dial spotted by age.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is the five-hand version of the Longines flyback chronograph, in a 32mm steel case. The time is read from the leaf hands and the small seconds at 6. Over them run two central chronograph hands, a thin steel seconds hand and a red minute hand, and they do not stop. A light press on the pusher at 2 o'clock holds them for a reading; a full press sends both back to zero and they run straight on.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThat continuous running is the whole idea. A conventional chronograph has to be started, stopped and reset, and the moment spent resetting is lost. Here the next interval begins as the last one is read, which suited timing one event after another: laps, intervals, a pulse against the seconds. The red hand turns once an hour against the inner track, so a run of up to sixty minutes is read from the centre of the dial without a separate counter.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe dial is glossy black, printed around the edge with a spiral tachymeter on a base of 1000 that starts at 60 beneath the twelve and winds inward to 1000. The cream Arabic numerals are large and open, the hour and minute hands are polished steel leaves, and the small seconds carries a gilt hand. The black has aged in patches, with brown and gold spotting spread across the field and heaviest in the upper half, while the printing, the numerals and the scales remain sharp. It is unrestored.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe case is plain and well proportioned, with long tapered lugs, a snap back with no engraving and a domed acrylic crystal. The rectangular pusher sits above a knurled crown on the right-hand side. At 32mm across and 39mm lug to lug it wears as a compact watch, closer to a dress watch on the wrist than to the large pilots' versions of the same movement. The steel shows honest use, light scratches most visible on the back, with the edges still full and sharp.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt runs, winds and sets, and the chronograph holds and returns to zero as it should. The condition and the particulars are set out below.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Longines","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55034751713619,"sku":"WW-0010","price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1080\/3121\/3907\/files\/longines-stainless-steel-wristwatch-1.jpg?v=1790165290"},{"product_id":"gubelin-ipso-day-steel-quick-set-date","title":"Ipso-Day in Steel, Quick-Set Date by Pusher, c.1955-1960","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eGübelin's own self-winding Ipso-Day in steel, built on the Felsa 694 Bidynator: the one calibre of its family with a date set by a pusher in the band. The two-tone silvered dial is clean, with the Gübelin hourglass applied above the name.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Ipso-Day was Gübelin's date model, and on this example the date is the point of interest. Felsa built the 694 on its Bidynator base with a corrector worked from the case band: a flush pusher at 8 o'clock, set so close into the flank that it barely breaks the line of the case. Each press moves the date on by one day, and at midnight it changes by itself. Behind it runs Felsa's bidirectional winding, the rotor winding the mainspring whichever way it turns, with Gübelin's name engraved across the rotor. Within the Bidynator family the 694 is the variant with the pusher. Later Ipso-Days of the mid 1960s moved to an ETA calibre, set through the hands instead, which places this watch in the model's Felsa years. On this one the pusher and the midnight change both work as they should.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe dial was drawn around the date from the start. The 3 o'clock index is cut short to clear the window, which sits in a bevelled frame, with a small dot marker placed beyond it. The rest of the layout is spare: a brushed silvered field, a thin gilt ring dividing the centre from the chapter, and applied faceted batons, doubled at 12. The Gübelin hourglass is applied in relief above the printed name, and IPSO DAY sits in an oval cartouche below it, the two words joined by a small cross. Dauphine hands and a centre seconds hand run over it. The dial is clean, with no staining, touching up or wear to the printing.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe case is stainless steel, 35.5mm across and 43.2mm from lug to lug. A broad polished bezel carries the domed acrylic crystal up above the dial, and the long lugs taper down to a 19mm strap. The crown at 3 is plain and knurled; the pusher sits low on the opposite flank. The back snaps on, with a raised twelve-sided centre, and was engraved at some point with three initials in small serif capitals.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt winds, sets and runs, and the acrylic is free of scratches.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe movement, the marks and the condition are set out in the drawers below.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gübelin","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55037076046163,"sku":"WW-0006","price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1080\/3121\/3907\/files\/gubelin-ipso-day-steel-1.jpg?v=1790864223"},{"product_id":"tudor-oysterdate-home-plate-chronograph-7032","title":"Oysterdate 'Home Plate' Chronograph, Ref. 7032\/0, c.1971","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eA first-series Mk1 Tudor Oysterdate chronograph in steel, reference 7032\/0, with the grey Home Plate dial and the date at six. Unpolished, with its original screw-down pushers and matt bezel, on a Rolex Oyster bracelet dated 1971.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe 7032\/0 is one of the two references that opened Tudor's chronograph production in 1970. It and the 7031\/0 shared their case, dial and movement and differed only at the bezel: the 7031\/0 carried its tachymeter on a black Plexiglas insert, while the 7032\/0 has the scale engraved into satin-finished steel. That split set the convention Tudor kept for the next thirty years, telling its chronograph references apart by their bezels. Within about two years both were replaced by the 7100 series and its column-wheel Valjoux 234, so the hand-wound Valjoux 7734 inside this case belongs to the first run alone. The Monte Carlo name, often applied to the whole family, properly belongs to that 7100 series, whose banded dials recalled a roulette wheel; the first series is the Home Plate, after its five-sided hour markers.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe 7734 is a cam-actuated two-register chronograph with date, beating at 18,000 vibrations an hour, and it sets the layout of the dial: the 45-minute counter at three, the running seconds at nine, and the date at six, shown beneath a cyclops turned on its side so the magnified numeral reads flat along the lower edge of the dial.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis is the grey dial, with a black outer track numbered in orange every five minutes and black registers, the counter marked with an orange segment. The chronograph seconds hand is orange to match the track, over lumed baton hands for the time. The hour markers are cut in the five-sided shape that gave the watch its Home Plate name, and their tritium has aged to an even cream against the grey. It is signed with the Tudor shield at twelve and Tudor Oysterdate beneath it. The dial and the tritium hands are original and untouched.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe case is the Tudor Oyster, made by Rolex, 39.5mm across and 47mm from lug to lug, with a screw-down Rolex crown set between squared crown guards, and its original Mk1 flat-topped screw-down pushers. It has not been polished, and the lugs keep their sharp edges and full shape. The bezel is the original, still in its matt finish, graduated from 500 down to 60 units per hour; the engraving is crisp and deep, and the black fill in its numerals has faded in places. It wears on a folded Rolex Oyster bracelet dated to the same year as the watch, with the fixed end links made for the Tudor chronograph case.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe signatures and the dated bracelet are set out in The Record, and the condition in the drawers below.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Tudor","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55037106389331,"sku":"WW-0007","price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1080\/3121\/3907\/files\/tudor-stainless-steel-wristwatch-1_859575f7-a106-46c2-bee5-83613366b9d5.jpg?v=1790849283"},{"product_id":"jaeger-lecoultre-reverso-pink-gold-engraved-ibex","title":"Solid Pink Gold Reverso, Hand-Engraved Ibex, c.1996","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eA small hand-wound Reverso in solid pink gold, its black dial framed by applied gold numerals and its reverse cut by hand with an Alpine ibex, dated January 1997. One owner's mark on the panel the Reverso was built to carry.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTurned dial-up, this is a discreet rectangle of pink gold on a black strap, no wider than 20mm across, one of the smaller sizes the Reverso was made in. Turned over, it is something more personal, and the whole appeal of the watch sits in that second face.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe reversing case is the reason the Reverso exists. The design lets the case slide out of its cradle and flip, carrying the dial and crystal to safety against the back and presenting a plain slab of metal in their place. On most examples that slab stays blank or takes a set of initials. On this one it holds a full hand-engraved scene: an Alpine ibex, horns swept back, braced on a rocky outcrop, with the date beneath it. The cutting is fine and confident, the coat and the rock worked in close parallel lines, the horns ridged. It is not a stamped motif or a machine pattern but a piece of hand engraving made for a single person, and it turns the back of the watch into the front.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe dial it protects is formal and restrained. Black, with applied pink gold Arabic numerals at twelve and six and slim applied dagger markers around the rest, a railway minute ring ruled in a circle across the centre, and a pair of dauphine hands. There is no seconds hand and nothing else on the dial but the JAEGER-LECOULTRE signature and the Reverso name. Against the black, the pink gold reads warm rather than bright.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the hand it is small and flat, a dress watch in the strict sense, meant to sit under a cuff and be turned over rather than to announce itself. The gadrooned bars at the top and bottom of the brancard, the fluted crown at the side, the way the case clicks out and swivels and locks back down, all of it is the same mechanism Jaeger-LeCoultre has refined on this model for decades, here in its plainest and most wearable form.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhat makes this the one is not a complication or a rare dial variant. It is the combination: solid pink gold, a black dial, the smaller case, and a reverse that one person chose to have carved and dated. The marks, the movement and the condition are set out in the drawers below.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Jaeger-LeCoultre","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55037117890899,"sku":"WW-0009","price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1080\/3121\/3907\/files\/jaeger-lecoultre-solid-gold-wristwatch-1.jpg?v=1790190552"},{"product_id":"boucheron-reflet-18ct-gold-pointe-de-diamant","title":"Reflet in 18ct Gold, Pointe de Diamant Case and Dial, c.1955","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eA Boucheron Reflet in 18ct rose gold, c.1955, with the pointe de diamant pattern carried from the case onto the dial, in new-old-stock condition.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Reflet was designed around its strap. Rather than hanging the case between lugs, Boucheron ran each end of the strap into a gold tube that slides into the end of the case, so the watch has no lugs, no spring bars and nothing to break its outline. The case is a single flat rectangle of gold, 20.4mm by 30.2mm, and the strap continues straight out of it. It can be changed by hand, without tools, which was the point of the design. On this example the fittings are part of the design rather than hardware: the two tubes are gold, hallmarked, and their end caps are cut in the same pattern as the case.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThat pattern is pointe de diamant, a close grid of small raised pyramids, worked here across the front and down the sides. The Reflet was launched in 1947 in the house gadroons, the vertical ribs most examples carry; this is the pointe de diamant version, and it gives the case the texture of a piece of Boucheron jewellery rather than the lines of a watch case.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe dial continues it. Instead of a plain or sunburst field it is gold worked in the same grid, so case and dial read as one surface, and the markers are applied gold: rounds and squares set around the edge, with slim gilt baton hands at the centre. There is no name on the front. Boucheron put its signature on the back, engraved in the house script beside the Omega symbol, and left the face to the gold.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAt 20.4mm across, this is the middle size of the period Reflet, between the narrow cases of around 16mm and the large model at 22mm by 36mm.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe watch dates from the mid 1950s and is in new-old-stock condition. On a pointe de diamant case the points are the first surfaces to soften, and here they are sharp from edge to edge, the corners and the ends of the case as crisp as the centre. A knurled gold crown sits at three. The strap is red crocodile, stamped Boucheron on its beige lining.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe marks, the movement and the condition are set out in the drawers below.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Boucheron","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55040915833171,"sku":"WW-0011","price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1080\/3121\/3907\/files\/boucheron-solid-gold-wristwatch-14.jpg?v=1790193950"},{"product_id":"audemars-piguet-huitieme-chronograph-25644tr-tantalum","title":"Huitième Chronograph in Tantalum and Yellow Gold, c.1988-1990","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eAn automatic chronograph from Audemars Piguet's Huitième line, cased in tantalum and 18ct yellow gold in the first years the firm worked the metal.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eTantalum is the reason for this watch. The metal is blue-grey, close to 18ct gold in weight and very hard. It cannot be soldered, so a case has to be cut as one piece, and it is hard on the machines that cut it. Audemars Piguet took it on at the end of the 1980s, first for the Royal Oak and then for this chronograph, and never produced it in quantity: the difficulty of machining kept numbers small, and by the early 2000s the firm had stopped using it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe 25644TR puts gold only where it counts. The bezel ring, the fluted crown and both flat-topped pushers are 18ct yellow gold, and at twelve a gold plaque is let into the bezel, engraved with the maker's name and framed by two recessed channels cut into the tantalum on either side. Against the grey metal the gold reads as detail rather than decoration. The case is 40.2mm across, with lugs that turn down sharply to the strap, 42.7mm from tip to tip.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe dial is anthracite, close in tone to the case, so metal and dial read as one surface and the gold picks out the structure: applied batons, a gold AP monogram, and a fine gold ring around each of the three sunken counters. Running seconds sit at twelve, the thirty-minute counter at nine and the twelve-hour counter at six, with a tachymeter scale at the edge. The hours, minutes and counters take gold hands; the chronograph seconds hand is slim polished steel, which keeps the timing hand apart from the time. The date at three is read through a magnifier set inside the crystal rather than mounted on top of it, an arrangement rarely seen.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt comes from the first years of Audemars Piguet's work in tantalum, and it is the yellow gold version, made alongside one in rose gold. It is still on its Audemars Piguet crocodile strap, and the clasp is the Audemars Piguet double folding type, with the AP monogram on its cover plate.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe marks, the movement and the condition are set out in the drawers below.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Audemars Piguet","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55076602544467,"sku":"WW-0005","price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1080\/3121\/3907\/files\/audemars-piguet-tantalum-wristwatch-1.jpg?v=1790506339"},{"product_id":"breguet-marine-3400sa-steel-gold-guilloche","title":"Marine 3400SA in Steel and Gold, Hand-Guilloché Dial, c.1994-1995","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe first Breguet Marine, ref. 3400SA, in steel with an 18ct gold bezel and fluted gold caseband, its hand-guilloché dial numbered 3714 to match the case. Complete on its original two-tone Marine bracelet, with its box and certificate.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe 3400 is the original Breguet Marine: a 35.5mm automatic with date and centre seconds that put the house's classical details into a sporting case. It was introduced with the collection in 1990 and made until the line was redrawn in 2005. This is the steel and gold version, the 3400SA, from the first half of that run.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe case is what sets it apart from Breguet's dress watches. A pair of steel guards stands out from the right flank to shield the crown, and the band of the case is fluted along its full circumference, the coin-edge finish Breguet also gives its Classique cases. Here the fluted band and the stepped bezel above it are 18ct yellow gold, set against a steel case body, steel guards and a steel back, and the fluting carries on across the steel at each end of the case where the bracelet is fitted. The steel crown between the guards is capped with the Breguet rosette.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe dial is the other half of it. Breguet kept the hand engine-turning of its dress watches for the Marine, and the dial says so at six: Swiss Guilloché Main. The turned centre sits inside a plain silvered chapter ring with black Roman numerals, a dotted minute track and a beaded gold edge, and the date window takes the place of the VI. Blued Breguet pomme hands and a blued centre seconds, and at the top of the dial the signature with the watch's own number, 3714. It is clean, with the print sharp and the turning crisp.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt is on the original Breguet Marine bracelet in the same two metals: rows of brushed steel links joined by polished gold, gold edge links down each side, and a folding clasp closed by a gold cover signed Breguet. The gold of the bezel and caseband is picked up link by link along its length.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe 3400 was also made in solid yellow and white gold. The steel and gold version keeps the same dial and the same fluted gold at the edge of the case, set on steel. This example has all of it: the numbered hand-turned dial, the gold fluting and bezel, the crown guards and the complete two-tone bracelet, and it still has the box and certificate it was sold with. The marks, the movement and the condition are set out in the drawers below.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Breguet","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":55116198478163,"sku":"WW-0003","price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1080\/3121\/3907\/files\/breguet-marine-3400sa-steel-gold-1_578fd084-483a-43bf-8de9-12ffb9962459.jpg?v=1790775023"}],"url":"https:\/\/estatecollection.nl\/collections\/wristwatches.oembed","provider":"The Estate Collection","version":"1.0","type":"link"}