Congratulations: you have made it to yet another Friday. By way of proffered back-pats, how about a Bring a Loupe instead?
A bit of a scorecard for my first two weeks at BAL: Last week’s Zenith S58 remains available (and now listed as “Hodinkee Featured” in the tile), as does the burl wood Datejust, though the Waltham 100 sold (presumably for near its $200 asking price), and the Tudor 4453 sold for 480£ (not including the 23% premium). Interestingly, someone believed last week’s Buyer Beware Constellation was a hidden gem; it sold on eBay for $2476. Buyer, whoever you are: be in touch when you get the watch (if you want). From the watches in the prior week’s “Bring a Loupe”, the Seaboard Yacht went for a pretty impressive $6,000 (not including the 25% premium), and the EZM1 for £3,200, including the premium. I don’t know how to feel about these results, truth be told, but you’re not here for my blather about what I see as market trends. You’re here for interesting watches. Onward, friend.
A Silvery Heuer Carrera Dato 12
The first Heuer Dato was offered from 1966-67 for $89.50, meaning the watch presently up for bidding is 60-ish years old. You can tell it’s a first-execution model because the date is at 12 o’clock instead of 9 o’clock, as it would be on the second execution. The Landeron 189 chronograph movement has a 45-minute counter, which is immaterial in terms of utility aside from the fact that the original Carrera two-register models also featured 45-minute counters (this would change in 1970, with the introduction of the 7753, when the minute counters switched to 30 minutes).
This particular example is very nice indeed, with a clean dial, good lume on both dial and hands, a correct (unsigned) crown, and what looks to be a very sharp case. As a bonus, the watch was serviced in 2025—and not “serviced” like those on eBay claiming to be freshly serviced, but actual, bona fide, “comes-with-a-receipt” serviced.
Heuers are a little tricky for me to attempt objectivity about: when I started getting into watches, they were The Coolest Watches, and their rise in price was both exciting and confusing. I’m not a market expert by any stretch of the imagination, but the Heuer market seemed to lose some of its heat after the Heuer Parade in November of 2017, which is too bad. Vintage Heuers are still some of the best-looking watches around. The estimate for this one is €3,00 to 4,000, and the auction also has a pretty lovely Movado 19068 available.
An F.P.Journe Élégante 48mm in Titalyt
The best watchmaker I know likes to joke that quartz watches are toys, a claim I’ve generally found myself agreeing with. This is not in-and-of-itself a bad thing: not only is there a time and place for a G-Shock, but as an adult man who gladly has remote control cars on a shelf in the basement, something being a toy is not, to me, a derogatory term (there’s also a remote control boat, which I highly recommend purchasing). However, Donovan (the excellent watchmaker) has never seen nor held a Journe Élégante.
Perhaps you, reader, are like me and have found yourself deeply compelled when one of the Hodinkee writers covers a watch that fries their brain a bit, offering an uncanny-valley-ish experience. My own such moment came in the summer of ’22, during which I got to handle an Élégante and sort of couldn’t or didn’t quite believe what was in my hands. While I don’t understand every last detail of a mechanical watch, I generally understand how it all works: the mainspring slowly unwinds to power the movement and drive the various wheels.
The Élégante, on the other hand, felt like the same sort of impenetrable magic my phone offers: it works almost flawlessly at a level I couldn’t begin to get my head completely around. It is improbably light—too slight to be worth as much or as accurate a timepiece as it is, and yet it is both. The caliber 1210, aside from the expected top-notch finishing, is also interesting and clever, with a sensor kicking in if the watch hasn’t moved for 35 minutes. The caliber will then shut the hands down but continue keeping the time until the watch is next picked back up, at which point the hands adjust themselves to the correct time, moving either clockwise or counterclockwise, depending on which path is shorter.
Beyond the mechanical wonderment the watch offers, there’s also its grade 5 titanium case with Titalyt treatment and its fully lumed dial. Actually, this particular configuration isn’t available. However, the fact that it can do what it does, and that it feels as it does (so light! impossibly light!), is so alluring that, if you’re like me, how it looks ends up seeming almost immaterial.
This Élégante is available for $135,000 through Hairspring. Yes: that’s huge money. Prices for these watches have gone through the roof over the past year, especially the last 6 months, which is pretty crazy for a watch that’s Journe’s most affordable offering (and not even a mechanical one). That said, whatever else watches represent, they serve as evidence of someone’s intense, intentional care. I’d argue one of the reasons higher-end independent watches are having the moment they are is precisely because of that: in the same way it’s thrilling to eat food prepared by a chef who has obsessively thought through the offerings, there’s something almost relieving about objects that’ve been so inordinately fussed over and considered. We’re comforted by these things; it makes the effort we’ve put into earning the money to secure them not feel like wasted time. The Élégante, whatever else it is, has 100% been inordinately fussed over and considered, and it’s the furthest possible thing from a toy as I can imagine.
A 14k Gold Rolex Bombé Ref. 1010
Continuing on my seeming quest to bring attention to the most grandpa-ish Rolexes imaginable, here’s an incredibly beautiful time-only in the Bombé case. The reference 1010 was introduced in 1959, but the example on offer here is likely from the 60s or even 70s, as evidenced by its refined, restrained dial and standard rectangular hands, which you’d expect to see on 15XX and 16XX models of the same period.
And the condition on this is stunning: the case looks extraordinary (up to and including the hallmarks on the back of the case and the horizontal brushing on the sides). Jack Gilbert, in his flawless poem “A Brief For the Defense,” writes, “We can do without pleasure, / but not delight,” and I personally end up finding the most delight in unexpected Rolexes. All the sort of heavy hitters in the Crown’s history make sense and offer an almost gravitational pull (handle a Paul Newman Daytona sometime; you get lightheaded), but this curved-lug charmer is what I came back to, over and over again, in the past several days. It simply delights.
At the time of writing, nobody’s even entered a $4,000 starting bid for this (with an estimate of $5,000-5,500); I will certainly be tracking it closely.
Omega Speedmaster “Teutonic” Ref 145.0040
By now, BAL reader, I suspect you’ve begun to wonder if I’m one of those guys who like weird things only because of that thing’s weirdness or uniqueness. I personally don’t think I am That Guy, but the examples on offer this week—Journe’s only quartz watch, a Bombé Rolex—sure paint a specific picture.
How about this, then: I hated the Teutonic Speedmaster the first time I saw it. Loathed it. The Teutonic case looked, a decade back, when I first came across it, like a bad joke. The Speedmaster had a classic case! At the time, I was Team Lyre Lug, and so anything beyond that for any Speedmaster was basically sacrilege. The Speedmaster Teutonic case looks ugly. It’s sandblasted and lacks all the refinement of the classic Professional case. Worse, the Teutonic features only a snap-on caseback, meaning it lacks the water resistance of a standard Speedmaster. Sure, the dial and hands are recognizable, but it’s hard not to look at the watch and feel like it’s AI slop.
Yet I find myself embarrassed to admit that I really, really like Teutonics. I do not know why—maybe simply because it’s powered by the venerable 861 and looks different than every other Speedmaster? I don’t know. I, in fact, bid on a white-dial one last month. I may still bid on this one. It is illogical, I know—the whole watch screams 80s in the worst way (rounded pusher caps for god’s sake!)—but there’s some wallflower charm here I cannot seem to shake.
Presently bid to £325, I cannot promise I won’t be bidding against you on this one. And for those for whom the Teutonic scratches no itch, there’s also a 1990s UG Compax with a burgundy bezel in the same auction—another update of a classic model.
