Which is your favourite, vintage Watch?

Mr Bojangles

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Aug 28, 2012
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Here's mine. A Buren Grand Prix. It's not really valuable but I still wear it every day.

I have two of them. One, I received from my late father-in-law and this one was a flea market buy.

In an earlier life, I was a watch importer and distributor and acquired a few special watches for myself, all vintage and my small collection includes Rado, Revue Thommen, Omega, Baume et Mercier and Girard Perregaux.

The Buren shown here was a bit cosmetically challenged, requiring re-goldplating and some work on its movement - both jobs left to my esteemed master Swiss watchmaker here in Cape Town.

Max did a superb job with the mechanicals and from him, the watch went to firms offering 'goldplating'. I specified minimum 10micron plating but the results were disappointing with the plating coming off after a few days.

A second firm was tried and the result was even worse.

Soon after I started my watch distributing career, I built a plating facility specifically for refurbishing watch cases, using chemistry for plating with 24ct cobalt-hardened gold.

This equipment was put in storage after I changed careers a long time ago, and the Buren watch was packed-away as I don't like to wear tatty watches.

A few weeks ago, I needed to goldplate some unrelated objects and decided to re-do the plating on my Buren myself.

This involves quite a lot of work as plating cannot hide case blemishes. So I disassembled the 70-year old dear, filled the pitmarks with silver solder and first plated nickel and then 20microns gold.

In the pic, you can see the result. Next up, I am sending its dial to England for refurbishing.

Mr Bojangles
 

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flez007

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Aug 31, 2010
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Omega Constellation - I got this from my father-in-law - has seen some services at Omega, runs perfectly.

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Mr Bojangles

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Aug 28, 2012
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The Buren in my pic has an inscription on the caseback "All my love 6-9-42" so this makes it at least 7o years old.

I guess the cutoff time for vintage watches would be 60's.

Mr Bojangles
 

fabinho85

Well-Known Member
Jan 25, 2013
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Nice watch, the Constellation. I have one of those as well:

DSC_5655.jpg

My favorite vintage is this Rolex "Bubble Back" though:

DSC_5657.jpg

I inherited this from my uncle, well in a way, he died before i was born. So this watch is especially valuable to me. I just got it back from the watchmaker who serviced it yesterday... i'm just having the best week: got my Rolex back and got a new preamp for my System :cool:

If there wasn't a story behind my Rolex my favoite vintage watch would be a PP Calatrava though (unfortunately i don't own one).
 

Mrdean

Well-Known Member
Mar 13, 2013
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This is my favorite, but mainly because I bought it and gave it to my father. He wore it pretty much every day until he died, and it was given back to me by my mom. '66 Rolex GMT.
 

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puroagave

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Sep 29, 2011
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This is my favorite, but mainly because I bought it and gave it to my father. He wore it pretty much every day until he died, and it was given back to me by my mom. '66 Rolex GMT.

i always liked the "pepsi" bezel on the gmt and the jubilee band is classic touch.

my two faves and arguably the quintessential vintage sports watch, rolex or not are the "newman" daytona and "orange hand" explorer. i dont own either:( and their values are now outta sight. i need to make more money LOL
 

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Soundproof

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Jan 13, 2012
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Oslo, Norway
Rolex 6263 Daytona.

The trouble I've had with owning one, is that you get at least one offer to sell it, whenever you wear it. Which makes you aware that people are checking out peoples' watches a lot more than you think, and which also makes you aware that you may be asked to hand it over for free by someone ...

But it's a wonderful watch.

Skjermbilde 2013-05-26 kl. 10.25.20.jpg
 

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