Particularly over the last decade, as the field moved more into the mainstream as a consequence of its widespread exposure in the media, there has been an increasing trend of giving high grade vintage watches as birthday, Christmas, bar mitzvah, wedding and anniversary presents. This makes logical sense. There are very few things that are as personal to their owner as a wristwatch, or potentially as long lasting. If a well preserved classic Rolex or Omega watch is given to a young man as a graduation gift, it is quite reasonable to think of this as something that will stay with him for the rest of his life. Similarly, this potential for extreme longevity, coupled again with the intimate nature of the object, means that a good vintage watch makes an ideal heirloom that can be handed down as a prized possession from one generation to the next. The other plus of course is that vintage wristwatches have a proven track record over thirty years as being excellent investments. Unlike mass produced modern luxury goods that will suffer horrendous depreciation from the moment they leave the shop, a vintage watch, already firmly established as a sought after collectible, will continue to rise in value as the years go by.

One of the great advantages of having a great deal of stock is that, almost uniquely, we almost certainly will have a selection of vintage watches for sale by most of the famous Swiss houses from every year from World War I through to the early 1980s. With over four thousand watches in our safe, we haven’t actually catalogued them all in strict chronological order, but I would be very surprised if there was a year that we couldn’t cover in this way.

With this in mind, if you’re looking for a watch from a specific year and can’t find something suitable on the stock pages of this site, do drop us a line and we’ll have a rummage around in our safe and see what we can find. The detail that we go into in our descriptions, and the length of time it takes to research and write these, means that at any given moment, only a tiny percentage of our total stock is shown for sale on the site. Again, if having seen a variety of possible choices you can’t quite make a decision as to which to go for, you are most welcome to come along in person to East Yorkshire, where a selection of watches can be made available for your inspection.

Sadly, we’ve noticed recently that a number of dealers will rather bend the truth in order to clinch a sale to a customer looking for a watch from a specific year when in fact, they don’t actually have anything from the year in question. This is something we would never do under any circumstances and will always, without exception, supply movement and case dating serial numbers in full and close up photographs of hallmark date letters to confirm categorically that any piece is of the exact age stated. If we haven’t got a watch from the year you’re looking for, we’ll hold our hands up and admit it rather than try to pull the wool over your eyes, but so far, touch wood, we haven’t had to deal with this problem.

Just occasionally, we have been asked to engrave watch case backs for purchasers, typically with a romantic message tying in with a wedding or engagement. This is fine and can be performed in most instances without charge. We use a traditional hand engraver whose painstaking work is a world apart from the awfully crude machine engraving that is far more often encountered today. He isn’t fast, but the results are spectacular and worth the several weeks wait involved. If you require a more complex design, for instance an armorial crest or other family symbol, then, again, this can certainly be produced, but in some instances, a charge will be applied to cover the amount we have to pay the engraver at cost. The only stipulation we make is that before any engraving can be commenced, the watch must be paid for in full and once this personalisation has been carried out, we are unable to make a refund or exchange the piece for another in the future. Of course, having a case engraved doesn’t in any way diminish our post-sale customer service and we would always get involved to rectify things to your complete satisfaction in the event of any mechanical problems developing, exactly as we would with a watch on which the case had been left plain.