Scorekeeping last week: the only watch of the four highlighted to have sold is that bonkers purple-dialed Sub from Tropical Watch; the Patek 3970, the Omega 145.022BA, and the Movado Polyplan all remain available. Deep breaths, everyone: another week’s on the books. Auction season’s in full swing, and there are wild results all over the place, but let’s take a little breather here, together, and look at less dizzyingly priced goodies.
Strays
Perhaps you’ve found yourself of late—coincidentally!—more curious than usual about pocket watches. While Mark’s the Official Pocket Watch Tsar, I’ve always liked them, and fight the urge most weeks to include any here. No more! This week, there’s this extraordinary, anonymous jump-hour pocket watch that is almost unfairly beautiful for being 200 years old. If that doesn’t float your boat, you have the relatively uncommon opportunity to nab a Thomas Engel Tourbillon (if the name Thomas Engel doesn’t register, gird your ego before digging in—compared with Professor Engel, we’re all pathetic underachievers).
It doesn’t seem reasonable that any of us should be able to purchase a gold Breguet pocket watch with hour and quarter repeater from 1795—insert Harrison Ford growling “It belongs in a museum!”—and yet you can do just that right here. If, however, you wish to remain yoked to the tyranny of telling time on your wrist, here’s a Speedmaster Racing Dial which, yes, isn’t exactly in showroom condition, but they’re uncommon enough to make it worth a look.
Vintage Movado Cronoplan Ref 11765
I was initially excited to come across this Movado Cronoplan. They’re neat, curious watches with two rotating bezels—an inner one for tracking hours, and an outer one for minutes. I’ve liked them abstractly for a long while, and while their technology seems a bit much to me, it’s actually fairly elegant (or, anyway, no less elegant than a subdial at 3 and another at 6 to do the same thing).
But that particular Cronoplan is a redial. Boo. It’s not a bad looking redial, but still.
However, the good folks at The Time Curator have saved the day by offering this very nice example. It looks used and aged in ways that should make any potential buyer feel confident it hasn’t been too dolled up. The case has dings, the dial’s got a few spots—it looks like what it is, is what I’m trying to say, and that’s a good thing.
Given that vintage Cronoplans came out nearly a century ago, you won’t be surprised that they’re only 34mm, with a dial that’s fairly shrunken indeed, given the double-bezel surrounding it. But you’re not buying this watch to go millimeter-for-millimeter with a Panerai. And in all honesty, you’re more than likely not buying it to see what it would’ve felt like, way before you were born, to wear a watch made for timing things. You’re buying it, Baller, for the same reason we all buy watches (worn on wrists or elsewhere): to see if it’s the missing piece that’ll help us Become Ourselves (or maybe that’s just me). The Cronoplan is available for €14,000.
Patek Beta 21
There’s something a little bit goofball about this watch—and that’s very much part of the appeal.
The thing about the Beta 21 watches is how diligently and seriously the Swiss took quartz movements. This is, of course, not much of a surprise, as they represented an existential threat to the industry; of course, the Swiss would mount a serious and determined effort to develop their own version. But it’s still striking in hindsight, and a reminder of how different watchmaking looked 60 years ago. Consider that Bulova Accutron models were priced almost identically to Rolex Submariner references when they debuted in 1960.
Regardless, this particular example has a lot going for it—from the fact that it’s running to the inclusion of its original Patek bracelet. The 18k case shows the kind of modest wear you’d expect for a watch of this vintage, but the dial and hands look excellent. If you’re curious to dig deeper into the Beta 21 movement and its history, there are plenty of great resources out there—James Dowling has one of the better overviews, which you can listen to here. This quartz Patek Philippe hammers on the 17th and is bid up to $17,000 at the time of writing.
Hamilton 6B-9614045 “Mark XI” for the Royal Air Force
You’d be hard-pressed to name a more significant American timekeeping company than Hamilton. However, that significance hasn’t conferred the sort of respect or collector-hunger you see for other brands. Seriously, though, several Hamilton models are on the short list of most-undervalued watches. Dollar for dollar (or ligne for ligne, if you want to be fancy), it’s hard to think of a more horologically significant watch than a Hamilton 992, examples of which will set you back only a few hundred dollars.
Then there’s this Hamilton. You know your militaria already and don’t need to be spoon-fed data on military purchases. Still, if you’re curious about the background of this particular model, this is a fascinating and well-researched read. You can tell just from looking at the dial that it’s a military watch (the arrow above the 6), and the caseback confirms it’s an issued watch. Interestingly, only 1000 of this particular model were delivered (the 9614045 designation indicates the watch is a hacking model).
Not to keep playing the same song, but it’s mind-boggling to me that you could purchase an issued watch, made by a classic American watch company, for under $1,000, and yet that’s what’s likely to transpire (this Hamilton sells on the 23rd). It’s a 36mm time-only watch that seems to be in phenomenal shape, looks original, and will likely outlast us all. It’s hard even to know what more one could ask for.
Zenith Futur Time Command
Here we have the very first analog-digital watch ever made (well, the *model* anyway—not this exact watch, presumably). This watch was developed and introduced at a bleak moment for Zenith. They’d been purchased by the Zenith Radio company, and, according to several accounts, the new ownership was keen to show off its technological prowess (or, maybe, generously highlight some brand synergy or whatever), so it came up with the Zenith Time Command.
Again, this is a total goofball watch. Why isn’t the LED lit up, you’re thinking? The answer, Baller, is that the aperture allows either the date or the seconds to be displayed, depending on which button is pushed. Also on offer in this model is a minute hand that clicks forward at each minute rather than rotating slowly, and an hour hand that rotates on an elliptical path and therefore moves at different speeds (slow at the start of the hour, then fast, then slow again). Finally, the watch earns its name thanks to a receiver in the movement (synergy!), allowing it to be perfectly synchronized.
Feel free to dig a bit, but I can tell you that this particular model of the Time Command—I’ve seen them listed as Futur, though I can’t find any official confirmation of that—is generally not available in working condition. Further, the case on this one looks sensational, as does the bracelet, and the original manual would, in most cases, seem like simply a bonus, but given the watch’s complexity, it’ll likely be essential. Somehow, with no bids at the time of writing, this watch is part of an auction that’ll be transpiring from the 19th to the 20th.
