On Vintage Watch Collecting: When Is A Watch Still The Same Watch?
The Ship of Theseus problem, applied to vintage watch collecting and the uneasy line between preservation and transformation.
For centuries, the Athenians preserved the ship said to have carried Theseus, the mythical king of Athens, home from Crete. As the years passed and the wood aged, individual planks were replaced one by one. The ship remained afloat, intact, recognizable. Eventually, none of the original material remained.
The question followed naturally. Was it still the same ship?
Some philosophers, specifically Thomas Hobbes, complicated the problem further. If the discarded planks were gathered and reassembled into a second vessel, which one, if either, could truly claim the name Ship of Theseus? The one that endured through continuous repair, or the one made of the original parts?
There was never a definitive answer. Only a deeper unease about where identity actually lives. In the materials themselves, or in the story we tell about them.
How This Applies To Watches
I am a bit of a vintage fanatic I suppose. I like what vintage watches represent in what feels like a very sterile environment of new releases. However, knowing what you should buy, what holds value, what is original, creates not just a minefield wrought with much needed research and scholarship, but one where you need to take a personal stance. It is a bit like hitting 16 on the blackjack table. You have to decide, are you someone who hits, or are you someone who stays, there is no in-between.
Vintage watches live inside this paradox. Do you care if a crown is replaced, if it was polished a little too much, if not every piece of the movement is original? Often, dials are refinished, hands are replaced, movements are serviced with new components to keep these old machines alive. But the question remains, at what point does a watch stop being “original”?
A watch that has survived decades of use, repair, and care may share no untouched parts with the moment it left the factory, yet we still recognize it as the same object. It remains the same reference so technically it is the same watch.
In that sense, vintage watch collecting is less about preservation in amber and more about preservation of the story. When you concede to the understanding that survival requires change, you will find that authenticity is not in untouched perfection, but in honest evolution.
When we talk about vintage watch repair, we’re rarely talking about wholesale transformation. More often, we’re talking about quiet substitutions made in the name of survival — parts that wear, parts that fail, and parts that were never meant to last forever.
The Crystal
This is the easiest place to start. Acrylic crystals scratch, crack, and cloud with age. They were designed to be replaced, not preserved indefinitely. Many vintage watches have had multiple crystals over their lives, sometimes original in profile, sometimes not. Few collectors lose sleep over this, unless the replacement dramatically alters the watch’s character. Perhaps the best example of this is vintage Omega Speedmaster Professionals with the Hesalite acrylic. Acrylic crystals scratch and crack constantly, and they’re straightforward to replace, so you see crystal swaps all the time on Speedmasters.
The Crown
Crowns wear out as the threads strip, seals fail and in many cases water gets in. In many cases, replacing a crown isn’t optional, it’s preventative. The tension here is originality versus protection. An unsigned or incorrect crown can hurt value, but a compromised crown can destroy a dial or movement. Most collectors accept crown replacement as necessary, even if they quietly hunt for the “right” one later. The best example I can come up with is the vintage Rolex Submariner ref. 5513. Service history on 5513s often includes a crown “upgrade” (Twinlock to Triplock) for better water resistance, so incorrect or later crowns are a common find.
Gaskets and Seals
These are almost always replaced during service and almost never discussed. Rubber and synthetic materials degrade over time, even if the watch is never worn. No one considers this controversial. It’s simply maintenance, even though it means the watch is no longer materially identical to its former self. This is a problem with generally any early waterproof or dive watches. The “skindivers” of the 60’s are great examples of watches that always need gasket and seal replacements.
Mainspring
This is one of the most commonly replaced internal components, and one of the least visible. Mainsprings fatigue. They lose elasticity and eventually break. Replacing a mainspring is often the difference between a watch that limps along and one that runs properly. From a philosophical standpoint, this is where the Ship of Theseus starts to feel uncomfortably relevant. The watch still runs, but the force that drives it is no longer original. A personal favorite, the vintage Jaeger-LeCoultre Memovox watches have a long history of worn out mainsprings. Mainsprings fatigue or break with age, and replacing them is one of the most common “make it run correctly again” repairs on older watches. You’ll see this come up constantly in Memovox services.
Balance Staff
If a vintage watch has suffered a hard shock at any point in its life, the balance staff is a prime candidate for replacement. This is a more serious intervention, and one that requires real skill. It also introduces a line many collectors pay attention to. An original balance assembly carries weight. A replaced staff is accepted. A fully replaced balance wheel can raise eyebrows. According to Omega Watch Forums, this can be commonly found in Omega watches in the 30T2 family. A bent/broken balance staff is a classic shock-damage issue, and vintage repair discussions around the 30T2 regularly center on staff replacement rather than replacing the whole balance.
Hands
Hands are fragile and will corrode with time, especially those with early lume. They bend, crack, or are swapped during earlier services without much thought. Finding a watch with perfectly matching, untouched hands is increasingly rare. Replacement hands are often period-correct, but not original to the watch. This is one of the most visible changes and one of the hardest to ignore once you notice it. This comes up a lot in vintage watches, and documentation can be spotty for many brands as to which hands should be the original. You find it a lot with early Panerai pieces with tritium (“T”) hands. The tritium causes the hands to corrode as the lume degrades (beta particles cause oxidation), and some brand services have historically pushed replacement of hands during full service, which is why “service hands” are a recurring Panerai topic among collectors.
Dial
This is the line most collectors draw hardest.
Dials are refinished, relumed, cleaned, stabilized, or outright replaced. Once this happens, opinions diverge quickly. Some see refinishing as restoration. Others see it as erasure. The dial is the face of the watch, and altering it can feel like altering identity itself. This is where the Ship of Theseus stops being abstract and becomes emotional. Moisture damage is one of the biggest drivers of dial replacement/restoration in vintage watches, and Seamaster 300 collectors frequently discuss either restoring water-damaged dials or sourcing period-correct replacements while keeping the original.
Movement Components
Wheels, jewels, screws, and setting parts are occasionally replaced due to wear or damage. These changes are often invisible unless documented, and many watches have lived long lives with a mix of original and replacement internals. The movement continues, even if every gear has not. Unless you get the watch checked out from a trained watchmaker it is a bit of a minefield trying to figure out what has been replaced when it comes to vintage watch buying.
Where This Leaves Us
Very few vintage watches are entirely original in the strictest sense. Fewer still could function if they were. What survives instead is continuity: the watch as a working object, carried forward through care, compromise, and informed intervention.
Which brings us back, once again, to the Ship of Theseus. If a watch has had its crystal replaced, its crown swapped, its mainspring renewed, and a handful of internal parts exchanged along the way, is it still the same watch?
Most of us, I think, would answer yes without hesitation. A hip replacement does not make someone a different person. A pacemaker does not erase identity. Repair, when done with intent and respect, is not erasure. It is survival.
What we are really preserving isn’t a frozen moment in time, but a living object, one that continues to do the job it was designed to do. The story remains intact even if some of the materials do not.
Just don’t touch the dial.