Phillips ‘Reloaded: The Rebirth of Mechanical Watchmaking, 1980-1999’ Showcases Neo-Vintage Masterpieces

The term “neo-vintage” is a relatively new one in watch collecting, although it seems to be older than you might think or maybe I should say I found out it’s older than I thought; the earliest example I have been able to find for the term is from a poll on Timezone.com (which at this point is old enough to be called vintage itself) in which it was applied to pre-Vendôme Group Panerai (specifically, anything made between 1993 and the acquisition of Panerai by the Group in 1997).

Neo-vintage watches are usually defined as watches that are too old to be contemporary but too new to be vintage, but given how nebulous the meaning of the word “vintage” is – some people say that it means anything older than twenty years, and that it is derived from the pseudo-French “vingt-age” which is totally untrue – it seems unlikely that we will nail down any consensus on the term any time soon. Indeed the overlap between neo-vintage, vintage, and antique is considerable, although with “antique” at least we have guidance from the US Customs and Border Protection agency that for something to be an “antique” it must be at least 100 years old at the time of its importation.

Unproductive attempts to specify what “neo-vintage” means aside, the term I think can certainly be applied without much argument to watches made in the period 1980-1999, and this was a time when mechanical watchmaking really rediscovered itself after coming too close for comfort to extinction thanks to the advent of quartz watches. This period represented something of a dead zone for many collectors until a relatively recent resurgence of interest in watches made over that twenty year period, partly driven by renewed curiosity about the equally nebulously defined group of watches known as “geezer” watches (although one of the co-founders of the expression “geezer watch” Mr. Phil Toledano, has made the pungent observation that like pornography, you know it when you see it). Phillips’ Geneva Auction 8, coming up in November, shows just why this was such a uniquely formative era in watchmaking, as it was a time when modern high precision manufacturing and fabrication as well as a really unprecedented rebirth of the public fascination with mechanical watches, made some incredible watchmaking possible. A few quick picks to illustrate the point.

An IWC Portofino Ref. 5251 Purchased By Günter Blümlein

This is lot no. 1 and if you are doing a neo-vintage themed auction it is hard to imagine a stronger start. The 5251 was launched in 1984 and it was at the time, an extraordinary watch both in terms of size and in terms of design; watches in that year were still striving for thin and relatively small (with some exceptions; the first G-Shock had already launched, in 1983 and the Citizen Aqualand was only a couple of years away).

The Ref. 5251 was a statement of faith in a certain old-school approach to watchmaking that really had seemed on its last legs – the movement, caliber 9521, was a pocket watch movement with moonphase, which was produced from 1981 to 1989; the 9521 was in turn based on one of IWC’s most important pocket watch calibers, the cal. 95, which was a sweet piece of work – a thin, full-bridge pocket watch movement, produced between 1927 and 1962, when an antishock system was added, creating the ref. 952 which ceased production in 1973.

IWC’s Kurt Klaus, who just celebrated his 90th birthday, decided to bring the movement into IWC’s current production again and this was one of several watches which adhered to the notion of a “pocket watch for the wrist,” the most famous of which is still probably IWC’s Big Pilot Watch. The 5251 is remarkably beautiful and represents an important moment in the history of IWC, and it has the added cachet of having been purchased by none other than Günter Blümlein – the man who was along with Walter Lange, responsible for the rebirth of Lange & Söhne and the revival of IWC and Jaeger-LeCoultre.

An Audemars Piguet John Shaeffer Starwheel Minute Repeater, In Platinum

This is lot No. 6, and a rare bird by any measure. John Shaeffer was an Audemars Piguet client who according to AP’s archives, was “the vice-chairman of the Allied Chemical and Dye Corporation, a major U.S. company founded in 1920 that operated in the chemicals, automotive, oil and gas sectors.” At some point, he asked AP to customize a minute repeater they’d sold him with the twelve letters of his name in place of numerals, and AP obliged – the John Shaeffer minute repeater is now in AP’s museum in Le Brassus. It’s unusual on a couple of counts; in addition to the customized dial, the case is platinum and gold, with the bezel and case middle in platinum, but the repeater slide and the caseback in gold and I have always wondered why. It’s possible this was done in order to improve the sound of the gongs, since platinum is a dense, heavy metal and it’s a challenge to make repeaters out of platinum that can approach the volume and musicality of repeaters cased in gold.

The John Shaeffer Starwheel Minute Repeater is part of the larger John Shaeffer Collection, which AP launched in the 1990s and which was an unusual move for AP in that creating an entire collection around a single piece named for a specific collector isn’t something that happens every day. The collection used the John Shaeffer case shape and included repeaters, wandering hour repeaters and perpetual calendars.

This particular JS Starwheel repeater is cased in platinum with an open caseback, and is one of twelve made in this particular configuration. There is really nothing like it in AP’s catalog today and there has not been for many years, although of course Audemars Piguet does continue to make repeating watches. The starwheel complication was originally created in the mid-17th century by the Campani brothers in Italy for Pope Alexander VII and was intended to allow him to tell the time at night without being disturbed by ringing gongs – the clock was lit with an oil lamp from inside, which illuminated the dial. The wandering hours were adapted by AP for their Starwheel watches, so named for the star-shaped wheels on which the hour disks are mounted, which are fixed in place by jumper springs.

The movement of the repeater is AP caliber 2867, which I think is a star wheel/wandering hour variation of the Blancpain/F. Piguet caliber 33; in any case, the jewel count, bridge layout, and regulator are identical (Blancpain also makes a center seconds version of the cal. 33). F. Piguet became Manufacture Blancpain in 2010, following the acquisition of both brands by Swatch Group in 1992. It’s a very traditionally laid out repeater, with an anchor-type regulator to control the speed of the chimes; you can see the regulator wheel at about 1:00.

This type of regulator produces a faint but distinct buzzing sound; nowadays most brands use silent, centrifugal regulators but the anchor type has on its side history if not silence. The movement is also of obvious high quality, jeweled at the hammers and at the regulator as well; not ostentatious, just top quality hand-work. An enormously impressive piece of watchmaking in a drop-dead elegant package and with an estimate almost shockingly low given the quality and history on display.

An Audemars Piguet Ref. 25643, The First Series Produced And First Automatic Tourbillon

This is another amazing piece from AP and it represents a couple of firsts in watchmaking history. Before we get to those, however, a little background on tourbillon wristwatches. For a number of reasons these were historically very rare; occasionally, brands would make wristwatch-sized tourbillon movements for the observatory chronometer trials, including Patek Philippe – one of their observatory tourbillon movements, no. 861115, was made by Bornand in 1945 and finally cased in 1983, for Patek’s president Phillipe Stern and designated 3699. Omega produced observatory tourbillon movements as well, and the earliest wristwatch tourbillon anyone seems to know of was made by Lip, in 1931 or 1932. The technical ability to make tourbillons small enough to fit into a wristwatch case was certainly there but the basic problem is that the tourbillon cage takes up extra room in the movement and as a result tourbillon watches were almost exclusively pocket watches.

This all changed in 1986, when Audemars Piguet released this watch, the reference 25643. The watch was the first series produced commercially available tourbillon wristwatch and it was also the first automatic tourbillon – and, on release, it was also the thinnest tourbillon, right up until Bulgari released the Octo Finissimo Tourbillon in 2014 and then the Octo Finissimo Tourbillon Automatique at just 3.95mm thick in 2018. The 25463 was at the time unique in mechanical horology for its construction; it had no conventional movement mainplate and instead, the back of the case was used as part of the movement plate – you can see the jewels for the train pivots right on the caseback. This is the construction that would go on to be used by a whole new generation of ultra-thin watches, including Piaget and Richard Mille.

In order to keep the cage as small and light as possible, it was made of titanium – another first – and the watch did not have a full diameter rotor. Instead, it used a hammer-type automatic winding system and since the crown on the back was only for setting the time, you wound the watch by gently swinging it.

This might be one of the most historically important wristwatches in history, from the standpoint of technical innovation, and it shows Audemars Piguet’s reputation is based on watchmaking much bigger than the Royal Oak alone. This is lot no. 43 and if you want something that represents not only a seminal moment in technical watchmaking, but which also encapsulates the design ethos of the neo-vintage era to a T, look no further.

Twenty Years That Shaped Today’s Watch World, And Just One More Thing

These three watches are just a few of the remarkable lots and the appeal overall is very broad – there are classics of daily wear designs from Ebel, for instance (in this case it helps if you like yellow gold) but there are also design icons of the era, including a Vianney Halter Antiqua and an URWERK UR-102 and, for those of you dying to fill in the gaps in your ultra-desirable damn-the-expense-full-speed-ahead watches, there are things like a Dufour Duality, and some very ritzy Pateks, including a 3979 repeater (and really, if we’re going to spend six figures on watches, shouldn’t we all be buying more repeaters?) And yes for sure, there is you bet, a very early (1994) Rainbow Daytona with an estimate to match its luxurious look.

If I had to pick just one watch out of all of them, though, it would probably be the oval pocket watch made by Derek Pratt, which he completed in 2005 and which most recently was in the collection of Dr. Helmut Crott. The watch got the full essay treatment from Logan Baker who I am guessing probably feels the same way I do about it; it is both technically impressive and exceedingly beautiful, with an unusual and very elegant shape and a lot going on under the hood.

The watch is a tourbillon with detent escapement and it was when it was completed the first watch to have a constant force remontoir inside the tourbillon cage itself, instead of on one of the train wheels; the watch also has a thermometer, moonphase, and power reserve indication. Estimate is in excess of a million bucks but it is hard to imagine regretting spending that much on this watch, if you happen to have a million to spend on a watch at all. The entire catalog is an education in how watchmaking evolved in the years 1980-1999 and even if you’re not currently in the market for anything, but you’d like to have your interest in watches get a major shot in the arm, I can’t recommend the catalog for “Reloaded: The Rebirth of Mechanical Watchmaking,” highly enough.