Vintage watches can combine history, style and mechanical ingenuity into one wrist-sized package. What’s not to love, for instance, about a pilot’s watch from the 1940s that’s both beautiful and recalls the early era of commercial flying? Or a decades-old watch from a legendary brand? How about one of the first dive watch designs from a lesser-known brand? Simply by being old and still ticking, a vintage watch connects us to many stories other than our own, while adding some secret sauce (nobody else can have this one very cool watch) to our personal style.
Maybe the best thing about vintage watches is that they come in all varieties. They can generally be divided into three rough groups, however, according to Steve Kivel, a third-generation vintage watch seller/repairer and the owner of Grand Central Watch, located in New York City’s Grand Central Station.
"You have investment-level vintage watches, everyday vintage watches, and priceless vintage watches — those ones that are sentimental, I mean," Kivel says. These run the gamut from beat-up old Seikos for $90 to $18 million Paul Newman Rolex chronographs to family heirlooms whose value is beyond any price.
One thing all vintage watches share in common, however, is a need for special care. They are by definition old, after all. Their needs are further complicated by their complexity.
“Mechanical watches are complex, tiny machines made of metal,” Kivel says. “Every time you strap on your favorite vintage watch, you are incurring wear and tear.”
These hard truths of age, decay and price make owning a vintage watch a hairy affair. The bad news is, yes, a vintage watch comes with more work than, say, snagging a shiny new Rolex off the shelf. The good news is that with a few rules and know-how, any potential vintage watch owner can feel great buying an interesting and exciting watch.
Step 1: Buy Carefully
Buying a vintage watch is its own tangled jungle of considerations. The words “authentic” and “fully serviced” get thrown around a lot in vintage watch sales. Unfortunately, a watch can be “authentic” (not fraudulent or "Frankensteined" with random parts) and still be in terrible condition. There are absolute headache vintage watches floating around out there — pieces that will rip your heart out when water damage is discovered, or slowly destroy your soul as they stop working repeatedly. So don’t get swindled when buying one.
A “fully serviced” watch has been totally taken apart, examined by a watch expert, cleaned, repaired, reassembled, oiled and regulated to keep great time. Any watch that has truly been properly serviced will be a good companion for a while. (Kivel and Grand Central Watch recommend servicing once every five years or so to keep a vintage watch in great shape.)
“Problem is, 98 percent — and you can quote me saying that — of watch sellers do not service their watches before selling them,” says Kivel. In effect, this means you are buying a watch from John, who never serviced his watch in the 15 years he owned it; who knows what’s been going on in there, how many times it’s been dropped — or dropped in the ocean. (More on these dangerous forces below.)
There are good and trustworthy sellers out there. News flash: their prices are pretty much never “too good to be true.” Do your research, ask former customers about their experiences, and make sure you trust who you’re buying from beyond a few buzzwords.
Step 2: Commit to Regular Maintenance
There’s a good reason your vintage watch should be fully serviced before you buy it. As previously mentioned, mechanical watches are metal machines, in constant whirring, spinning, springing motion every second they are telling time — and friction can slowly destroy them. That means older versions are often inherently more fragile.
Aside from fixing any damaged pieces of a mechanical watch movement, keeping a vintage watch cleaned (using an ultrasonic cleaning machine) and properly oiled is very important. A dirty movement means friction, and friction means destruction.
“In a lot of older vintage watches, ones that have not been serviced in 15 years or more, the oils are made from animal fat,” Kivel says. “These oils, in some ways, are good. They can last a long time. But they also become coagulated over time, and eventually become very little hard stones. This old animal fat oil will keep a watch running even while its parts inside wear down and break.”
Modern oils are synthetic and made to evaporate rather than harden. “They are nicer, cleaner, better oils,” Kivel says. “But because they are designed to evaporate, after five years there is often no more oil in a watch.” In newer watches, modern jewels help dissipate friction. But in older watches that lack oil, mechanical friction can cause significant damage to bushings, pivots and other moving parts.
“Eventually, it’ll ruin the watch,” Kivel says. “It’s very sad to see.” He recommends having vintage watches serviced and re-oiled every five years to avoid the sort of friction that’ll damage a watch.
Step 3: Be Aware of Wear and Tear
As watch lovers, we are often enamored by the tough and hardy build quality of watches. We obsess over meters of water resistance and get pumped about shock resistance that means we can wear our watches every day. They are beaters; they rock.
Vintage watches are, almost to a T, not beaters.
“Vintage watches, I don’t recommend wearing them as everyday watches,” Kivel says. “They can’t take it. You have a beautiful vintage car from 1960, you gonna take that back and forth to work every day? It’s the same with an old watch. You take it out to wear to dinner, or to work occasionally.”
Moisture and shock — submerging it in the swimming pool or knocking it against a doorframe — can cause real harm to a vintage watch. And getting a vintage watch fixed correctly, with proper parts, is not only time consuming but expensive.
Kivel is quick to qualify that and mention that plenty of people do wear “beater” vintage watches, since you can sometimes find a cool watch for something like two tanks of gas. I would know. I own a “beater” vintage watch, a Seiko 7005-8032 of the sort that I imagine some Americans wore in Vietnam.
I bought this watch online from a fellow watch trader (/r/watchexchange; certainly not a place for expecting servicing or even authenticity, but still pretty fun), and because I liked it so much (and because it was a Seiko and felt like a workhorse), I took to wearing it every day. Of course I dinged up the case and wore it in the water, and the crystal leaked and caused water damage on the otherwise brilliant silvery-green sunburst dial.
The good news is, the water damage looks kinda cool and I can call it patina. After a proper servicing she still tells good time and people ask about the “cool” dial. I try to wear it less, though, because Kivel is right — everyday wear can beat up a watch, and I don’t want to kill something that’s been ticking for fifty years.
Step 4: Treat Your Vintage Watch With Love
Again, we watch fans love to talk about a watch’s depth rating and toughness so much that we can sometimes get gung-ho about taking them out on adventures or just wearing them every day. It’s important to recognize that a vintage watch, though it was well made in its day, doesn’t benefit from such rigors.
Remember: when you wear the watch, you are sweating on it and your skin cream is getting in the links of the bracelet. When you change the bracelet, scratching the lug could mean 10 percent of the watch’s value. (And being extremely annoyed with yourself.) In the end, the lesson is simply that being the owner of a vintage watch requires extra care.
“There are guys who wear five-figure vintage watches who just don’t care,” Kivel says. “They just beat their watches up.” Don’t be that person. Take some care and it’ll keep ticking long enough to become someone else’s heirloom.
