Bring a Loupe: A Fresh To Market Rolex ‘King Sub,’ A Cartier Purse Watch, And A Neo-Vintage Vacheron
Welcome back to Bring A Loupe, and happy Friday! After a laser focus and a small opening rant on the idea of rare last week, today’s selection is a bit more all over the place – sometimes it’s just like that, okay!
To recap our last edition of BAL, we have two auction results to cover. First off, the Cartier London Decagon at Clars sold for $40,000 – a somewhat surprisingly strong result given the service dial, but that’s Cartier London for you! Secondly, the Gubelin white gold dress watch went the distance on eBay for a final price of $2,425. Our Borgel-cased Universal Genève did not go the distance. It was ended by the seller “because the item was lost or broken.” Likely story. I assume someone made a nice offer via messages and got the deal done privately.
Let’s get into this week’s picks!
1954 Rolex Submariner Ref. 6200 ‘Explorer Dial’
Leading off this week’s edition is a big one. The reference 6200 Submariner has garnered the nickname of “King Sub” over the years, and for good reason. It is the first Submariner with an 8mm “Big Crown” and thanks to a slightly larger and thicker case, it is also the first Submariner with water resistance of 200 meters. I’m burying the lede a bit here. The case and crown details matter, but the “King Sub” nickname is largely thanks to the dial. We all love an Explorer-dial Submariner, right?
In total, it is believed that about 300 examples of the reference were produced. Drilling down further, we see two different dial variants in the 6200, a big logo and a small logo – more big logos are observed in the known market than small logos. Furthermore, most small logos do not have “Submariner” on the dial. You can see where I’m going here, right? The small logo with “Submariner” at six o’clock, like the one we have here, is really, really uncommon. The last public sale of a “King Sub” with this dial was at Christie’s in 2007 (!) when one sold for $156,191, more than double its high estimate.
This King Sub’s original owner.
The folks over at Subdial, the selling party, have tipped me off early to this one – BAL first access! Even beyond the uncommon dial variant, it’s a special one. The watch is fresh to market, coming via the family of the original owner, a late Royal Navy officer, and features an all-original dial and handset. The lume on the dial and hands is original and matches. The seller rightly discloses that the bezel and bracelet are Rolex service replacements. To my eye, the case looks full and strong.
This Rolex Submariner ref. 6200 is for sale via Subdial in London. The price is available upon application. If you are interested in learning more, please reach out to support@subdial.com.
1930s Cartier Shutter Purse Watch
The watch hunting gods work in mysterious ways. Be it a rare gemset Patek Nautilus in a government auction of seized assets or a Cartier London watch at a small auction house in California, the best can be found in the strangest places. While Bonhams is a name we should all know on the watch auction scene, I did not expect to find a 1930s Cartier purse watch snuck into a weekly online sale. Yet, here we are.
These Shutter, or sometimes called “Eclipse,” purse watches don’t come up for sale too often. As an object, they are quite fun. Similar to the Cartier-signed Movado Ermeto from a few BALs ago, the idea here is to carry this watch in a bag. While knocking around with your other belongings, the watch face and crystal are covered by a spring-loaded shutter. When you want to know the time, pull your chic little watch from your bag, squeeze the two outer buttons towards the center, and the shutter magically reveals the time via a perfectly traditional Cartier dial. Throw it back in your bag and off you go.
With the market’s raging appetite for everything and anything vintage Cartier, particularly the oddball watches, this purse watch should still get plenty of attention even in an online sale. But in the grand scheme of things, these odd purse watches are one of the best ways to collect true vintage Cartier without breaking the bank. I mean, this watch was made, handmade in fact, in the 1930s!
This Cartier Shutter purse watch is lot 2071 of Bonhams’s Weekly Watches New York sale ending on Wednesday, September 25, at 12:00 PM ET. Bidding is at $420 at the time of publishing, with an estimate of $1,000 to $2,000.
1990s Vacheron Constantin Historiques Ref. 48100/000R-3 ‘Tour de L’ile’
Here’s another quick hidden gem from an online auction. This time, we’re at Christie’s in Hong Kong, looking at a neo-vintage Vacheron with tons of charm. I am continually impressed with everything from the Vacheron Historiques line, particularly the watches made in the 1990s. At an event last year, I was speaking with Christian Selmoni, Vacheron’s style and heritage director, about this specific part of the brand’s history, and the gist of the conversation was that Vacheron did not produce many examples of these historic references. It seems as though the brand’s archive information backs up my hunch that a good number of different references were made, but the quantity of each was quite low.
This specific neo-vintage Historiques collection watch is a reference 48100/000R-3 Tour de L’ile. Stick with me here. The name of this model comes from a tower in Geneva that is the last remaining portion of a castle built in 1219 and that Vacheron occupied as a workshop from 1842 to 1875. Pretty cool, right? You can still visit the tower today.
Anyway, the watch itself is a 31.5mm diameter rose-gold dress watch with cornes de vache lugs. The dial is quite simple yet really well designed to feature a power reserve and date complication in such a small area. The subdials for those complications are decorated with a guilloché pattern, which is a nice little touch.
This neo-vintage Vacheron is lot 159 of Christie’s Hong Kong’s Watches Online: Featuring “The Collectibles” Part 1 sale ending on Tuesday, September 24, at 4 AM ET. Bidding is at $4,491, with an estimate of $4,106 to $8,340.
1950s Abercrombie & Fitch Twin-Time By Heuer
Tying in to last week’s edition of this column, the Abercrombie Twin-Time is a truly rare watch. I follow Abercrombie watches from this era quite closely and can say that I know of two other examples (here and here). You can imagine my surprise and excitement when browsing the latest Jones & Horan auction catalog and immediately recognizing this watch, the third example “known” (by me).
As is the story with the Seafarer, a tide-tracking chronograph, the Twin-Time is likely a result of David T. Abercrombie’s product development with Heuer. Abercrombie, the man, was extremely dedicated to delivering the world’s best products to his outdoor-adventuring American clientele. To that end, he made regular trips to Switzerland to visit brands like Heuer and ask for specific functions in a wristwatch that either his clients were asking for, or he thought they would find useful. The Twin-Time’s internal rotating bezel allows the wearer to track a second time zone in a similar fashion to a vintage world timer.
This example at Jones & Horan is not perfect, but it does have a good look overall. I have handled one of the other examples in the metal; it had similar dial patina (although not quite as much as we see here) and honestly, it was quite charming. And, at the end of the day, given such limited supply in the market, condition can sometimes take a back seat.
This A&F Twin-Time is lot 146 of Jones & Horan Featured Auction w/LIVE CLOSE: Horology, Jewelry, & Coins sale on Thursday, October 10, 2024 at 11 AM ET. Pre-bidding is at $2,000 at the time of publishing, with an estimate of $3,000 to $6,000.
1960s Benrus Ultra-Deep Ref. 6086
I have a special place in my heart for vintage watch collectors who scour the pages of shopgoodwill.com. Thrift shops and particularly Goodwills have yielded some of the best finds in vintage watch collecting history, the LeCoultre Deep Sea Alarm comes to mind, as does a Blancpain Fifty Fathoms. Possibly because of stories similar to the above links, Goodwill has started listing donated vintage watches for auction online. Today’s Goodwill find will not be as legendary as those two, but is still a great watch in a seemingly unlikely place.
The Benrus Ultra-Deep was produced in the mid to late 1960s as a pure tool dive watch for the everyman. Around the same time that Benrus was supplying the U.S. Military with the Type 1 diver, the Ultra-Deep was available for commercial purchase. Housed in a Super Compressor case by Ervin Piquerez, S.A. (EPSA), the Ultra-Deep is high-tech. EPSA cases were cutting edge at this time and used by many brands like Heuer, Enicar, and, as featured in BAL a few weeks back, Lanco. These cases were designed to become more resistant to water ingress the deeper the watch was submerged. As outside pressure increases during a dive, the spring-loaded caseback pushes on the inside gaskets, creating a tighter seal.
A Goodwill store in Oregon has listed this Benrus Ultra-Deep for auction ending Saturday, September 21, at 9:03 PM ET. At the time of publication, bidding was at $802. Get all the details on Goodwill’s very Goodwill-feeling website right here.
1930s Mimo ‘Clamshell’ Retailed By Hermann Horrmann
I was first drawn to this watch on a casual eBay scroll due to the early “waterproof” case and interestingly aged dial, but as I dug below the surface, I found real intrigue. First off, the condition. This is what a “new old stock” watch from the 1930s should look like. You can learn a lot about the condition of vintage watches by viewing examples like this and, if at all possible, handling them in person. The sharpness of the case and its various finishes are what we should want in a watch that has not been worn, let alone polished. The cherry on top of this condition sundae is the original hangtag, stamped with the serial number from inside the case.
All that is enough to bid on the watch or at least follow the auction to the end, but it doesn’t even touch on who made the watch or the name on the dial. Starting with the former, Mimo made the watch. This case construction was nicknamed the “clamshell,” with a movement-holding caseback held by pressure inside of the upper case with four angled screws on the rear of the lugs. A few brands (Tavannes, Gallet, etc.) made watches with this style “waterproof” case, some rectangular and some round. Mimo might not ring a bell today but was very important in this era of watches, the Mimo-Meter was the first watch with a three o’clock date window (1930).
And the name on the dial? Hermann Horrmann was a watch retailer in Leipzig, Germany, founded around the turn of the 20th century. Wall clocks and watches of various brands, most signed solely by the retailer on the dial, can be found and collected today. Given the location, Hermann Horrmann-signed watches are not found after 1945. This rabbit hole led me to a crazy German watch forum post where the descendants of Horrmann started chiming in with info and family photos!
Anyway, the watch is in great condition and clearly has a fascinating backstory. For a “new old stock” watch, there is a lot of previous life to this piece.
An eBay seller in Blankenburg, Germany, has listed this Hermann Horrmann-signed Mimo as a pure auction ending Wednesday, September 19, at 1:49 PM ET. At the time of publishing, bidding was at $28.94. Check it out right here.
Hodinkee
