Bring a Loupe: A Cartier London Tank L.C., A Roger Smith Series 2 Open Dial, And A Eddie Bauer-Signed Favre-Leuba
It’s Friday, welcome back to Bring A Loupe! The vintage watch world eagerly awaits Geneva’s November auctions, set to start in just two weeks. In the meantime, let’s stick to eBay, ShopGoodwill.com, and smaller auction houses in the UK for Bring A Loupe picks to hold us over.
To report on results from previous BAL columns, we saw the two privately listed picks find new homes – both the Van Cleef-signed Rolex Explorer II and the pre-acquisition Cartier Paris Tank L.C. have seemingly found new wrists; congrats to the new owners! Our Tiffany & Co.-signed Movado sold over on Everything But The House for the solid price of $2,650, and the Patek Philippe reference 1485 ended up at $11,220 on LoupeThis. The new owner of the Tiffany Movado sent me a wristshot just yesterday; glad to see that one found a good home. Rewinding a few weeks, Jean-Loup Chrétien’s Omega Speedmaster sold yesterday at RR Auction for $106,409.
Let’s get into this week’s picks!
1973 Cartier London Tank L.C. Extra-Plat
I will not apologize for leading this column with a great vintage Cartier Tank L.C. two weeks in a row – I cannot control this; I am at the liberty of the market, okay? This is a very interesting Tank L.C. variant to see surface at Fellows in the UK, one that I have not seen before, in fact. If you know vintage Cartier, you know how unique the watches from London in the 1960s and early 1970s are. Jean-Jacques Cartier assumed the position of his father, running Cartier London, after WWII, and by the early 1960s, he decided to start producing wristwatches in London rather than continue to import Paris-made pieces. The watches were made by hand, one by one, and the designs are uniquely “Swinging Sixties” London.
To simplify a complicated story, Cartier re-unified in 1972. When I spoke about “pre-acquisition” Cartier in reference to last week’s Tank L.C., this 1972 re-unification is the same acquisition. This is important to note because the watch we are looking at here is stamped with London hallmarks dating production to 1973. And to that, I say a big “huh, that’s strange.” But everything I can see from the photos, both on the listing and separately provided to me by the Fellows team, checks out. The watch looks correct, as do the hallmarks.
Further intriguing me is the case construction of this Tank L.C. With no screws in the case sides or caseback, this case style of the Tank L.C. Extra-Plat is very uncommon and has come to be known by collectors as a “hidden screw” case.
While the production year is a slight mystery, the condition here looks to be bulletproof. Given the condition, serial number-matching London-hallmarked deployant clasp, and “large” 23x30mm case size, I assume this auction will run. The £2,000 to £3,000 estimate has long been surpassed by pre-bidding.
This 1973 Cartier London Tank L.C. is lot 29 of Fellows’s Watches auction on Thursday, October 31, at 5:00 AM ET. At the time of publication, bidding was at £15,500.
2010s Roger W. Smith Series 2 Open Dial Number 00
When putting together this week’s picks, everything was shaping up to be fun and, frankly, low-dollar. Then, this Roger Smith happened. Similar to my inclusion of a Philippe Dufour Duality last month (still available, by the way), if Bring A Loupe is a round-up of the “best” watches for sale around the internet, I am forced to include this watch. Twist my arm; I guess I will write about Roger Smith’s Series 2 for a few paragraphs; what a pity!
Hodinkee readers should be familiar with Roger Smith by now. The apprentice of the late Dr George Daniels and recognized as one of the greatest watchmakers of the modern era, Smith has spent the last 20+ years producing watches on the Isle of Man and perfecting the Co-Axial escapement that Daniels obsessively pushed forward before him. The Series 2 Open Dial was introduced in 2008, with the first examples, presumably including this watch, being delivered to clients in 2010. In total, less than a dozen Series 2 Open Dials have been produced. Offered by former Bring A Loupe columnist Eric Wind at Wind Vintage, this particular Series 2 Open Dial is number 00 and is housed in a 40mm platinum case.
Interestingly, this is not the first time a “prototype-esque” Series 2 Open Dial has come to market. Just last year, Wristcheck in Hong Kong offered number 02 which had some unique quirks like the lack of a “R W Smith” signed plate on the “dial” side and a 40mm white gold case. That’s the thing about this particular run of Smith’s watches, each has slight differences – somewhat unsurprisingly for watches produced entirely by hand, the traditional English way.
The stated price of number 02 at Wristcheck “started” at $1.15 million. I bring up the price so directly because, relatively, today’s example seems to be a bargain! The only public sale of a Series 2 Open Dial was at Phillips New York in 2022, where number 09, with a 40mm platinum case, sold for $840,700 all-in. Worth noting as well is that A Collected Man in London also has one for sale currently; the number is unknown but assumed to be more standard. The asking price for ACM’s example is £645,000.
Wind Vintage is asking $599,000 for this Roger Smith Series 2 Open Dial, number 00. Check it out right here.
1960s Juvenia Architect For Gübelin
The Juvenia Architect is one of the best oddball watches in the vintage world. It is a simple, time-only watch with a manually-wound ETA movement inside, but the conventionality ends there. Juvenia made this unconventional-looking time-only wristwatch back in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s in extremely low numbers. As you can imagine, this is one of those designs that either becomes massively successful or never catches on. The latter seems to be the case for the Architect, also referred to as the Protractor or the Sextant. Slow sales back in the day mean rarity and cult status in today’s vintage market.
The brand had a penchant for creating these unconventional wristwatch designs. It also produced the Arithmo, a slide-rule equipped watch with a donut-shaped plexiglass crystal – the more you know. Another fun fact, Johnny Depp was pictured on the cover of Esquire in 2008 wearing a Juvenia Architect. While seemingly confusing, the watch can be easily read by focusing on the black triangle in the center of the “protractor” hand. That points to the hours, the gold arrow hand points to the minutes, and the red half of the, for lack of a better descriptor, other hand tracks seconds.
I’ve seen Juvenia Architects before, but never one that has been signed by the Lucerne-based, 170-year-old retailer Gübelin. As a huge fan of Gübelin and Gübelin-signed watches, this touch takes an already fascinating watch over the top (for me). There are worse ways to spend $6,500 on a watch. At the very least, you will likely never run into another person wearing the same watch as you.
An eBay seller located in “USA, United States” has listed this Gübelin-signed Juvenia Architect for a buy it now price of $6,450. The full listing is right here.
1960s Favre-Leuba Bivouac Ref. 53203 For Eddie Bauer
Sticking with strange vintage watches with retailer signatures I have never seen before; here we have a Favre-Leuba Bivouac co-signed by Eddie Bauer. That’s right, the same “American outdoor recreation brand and chain store headquartered in Seattle,” per Wikipedia, Eddie Bauer. You know, the one that collaborated with Ford, resulting in limited edition Broncos and Explorers. Anyway, not that I have been looking for them, but I have never come across a vintage watch with Eddie Bauer stamped on the dial. I would chalk that up to rarity more so than question if someone went so far as to stamp the name on this dial themselves and then donate it to Goodwill because why would anyone ever do that?
Part wristwatch and part meteorologist, the Bivouac was the first of its kind and a quirky innovation in 1960s watchmaking. Introduced in 1962, this was the world’s first wristwatch to include an aneroid barometer – a title I assume was contested similarly to the 4-minute mile or putting a man on the Moon. In all seriousness, this complication was quite useful to mountaineers of the time. The Bivouac actually solved an issue they encountered on their ascents. Pocket altimeters, the best alternative at the time, were extremely difficult to read and handle at high altitudes, especially in icy conditions – so having the function readable at a glance was immensely useful. Famous wearers of this watch were Italian mountaineer Walter Bonatti as he climbed the Grandes Jorasses, as well as on the wrist of Frenchman Paul-Émile Victor on his polar expeditions to Antarctica.
Listed on ShopGoodwill.com, this Bivouac is up for auction, ending Wednesday, October 30, at 10:55 PM ET. When this article was posted, the bidding had reached $1,752. Check out the full listing right here. The specific Goodwill that posted this watch for auction is located near Mount Rainier in Washington, which makes sense and adds some intrigue!
P.S. Look at all the dirt on this vintage Omega Seamaster 300, also listed on ShopGoodwill.com. At least we know they aren’t prepping the watches for sale!
1950s Heuer Autavia Dashboard Timer Set
There’s a reason preeminent vintage Heuer expert and former Talking Watches guest Jeff Stein named his Heuer-focused reference website OnTheDash.com. Of course, dashboard timers like these are the reason. Watch brands always attempt to tie themselves to interesting worlds via marketing, but Heuer’s ties to motorsport are very real, substantiated by the brand’s rich history of involvement and support of racing. That genuine heritage starts with dashboard timers, especially examples from the 1950s, like the set we see here.
While Heuer wristwatches had more prominent visibility when worn by iconic drivers, dashboard clocks have also gained a cult following. Production of timers like these started all the watch back in the 1930s! As with any tool watch, these were designed for functionality. Legibility and practicality were at the top of my mind. Just look at the liberal application of luminous material and the large ridges on the center crown/pusher, which allow for better grip while wearing driving gloves.
The Autavia timer was top of the line for heuer, offering a 12-hour chronograph function. It is interesting to see a set with two Autavias; more typical is an Autavia paired with a simple clock like the Hervue or Master-Time. With two Autavias, two cars could be timed simultaneously. This leads me to believe this set could have been for an official timer rather than being mounted on a dashboard; they would have been mounted to the timer’s clipboard or table.
An eBay seller located in Charlotte, North Carolina, has listed this set of Heuer Autavia Dashboard Timers for auction starting at $2,750. If you really don’t want to let these get away, you can choose to “buy it now” for $3,750. The full listing is right here.
Hodinkee