The Watch Enthusiast March 2005
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1. Welcome to the March, 2005 issue of The Watch Enthusiast. The Watch Enthusiast is a free monthly newsletter (my intent, at least) about watch collecting. Our goal is to provide:
Original articles about the enjoyment of collecting and wearing wrist and pocket watches.
Up to date information based on reliable sources.
In this issue is my latest report on market conditions and a short article on another top Swiss watchmakers whose major markets have not been the U.S. Please let me know if there is a particular watch or style of watch that you would like to see discussed in future articles.
With the dollar still being weak, the dollar prices are climbing on quality pieces. The Florida watch shows had heavy attendance by overseas collectors, who were able to enjoyed both the weather and the weak dollar. Quality and rare pieces were in short supply so do not expect to find any bargains. I’ll do a real update next month after the first major regional and international auction of the year. However, I expect the trend to continue of increasing prices for unique pieces and I’ll pinpoint specific areas that have jumped more than the regular market.
I’ve had several questions regarding repeaters over the last six months and now that I actually have a couple available, I can respond. A repeater is a watch that allows you to sound the time with the best having hammers striking a wonderfully sounding chime. (see example to right) To me the worst are the “dumb” repeaters where the hammer merely strikes the case and give you a dull “thud.”
There are several levels of repeaters with the top mechanical ones being minute repeaters which would sound the hour with one hammer, sound the quarter hour with two hammers and then sound the minutes after the quarter hour. Without the final minutes being chimes there were also quarter hour repeaters and five minute repeaters and there was even a demi-quarter hour repeater which would sound an extra chime if the time was more than half-way through the quarter hour.
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The height of repeater making was the late 1800s through the early 1900s (see right). Many small Swiss repeater makers went out of business after that probably due to a combination of events. World War I which saw the introduction of the wrist watch as getting to one’s pocket watch in the trenches was not easy and the electrification of the world which gave light throughout the night and there was little need to hear what time it was. Thus, the repeater industry appears to have been a victim of the march of progress(?) and changing habits.
4. Doxa Watch Company
Georges Durammun founded Doxa in 1889. Durammun grew up in the Jura mountains and founded his watch business in La Chaux-de Fond. Durammun’s house is now the home of the Le Locle Horological Museum.
Durammun was one of the first individuals in the Locle area to own a motor car which led him to work with both the automotive and aircraft industry to produce the 8-day clocks designed for the dashboard, including the dashboard of the Bugatti.
Doxa is little known in the U.S. as it primarily marketed to Eastern and Southern Europe as well as South America. It has produced quality pieces with a design flair. It is currently reissuing some of its best known pieces. Doxa is one of those quality makers that should be looked into when creating a wrist watch collection. It’s pieces are mechanically sound with some wonderful designs and when found here in the U.S. are generally priced below pieces of similar quality from companies that primarily marketed to the U.S.
Perhaps the only Americans to be familiar with the Doxa name are Divers or readers of Clive Cussler’s adventure hero Dirk Pitt who wears the orange dialed Doxa diver’s watch that now is being reissued as the Dirk Pitt model. It really looks like fun, but since I only snorkel a couple times a year, seems silly to buy a top end diver’s watch for the occasional foray into the shallow end.
5. Musings...Once again life intervened and put another temporary hiatus for the Watch Enthusiast and the Cuff Linker. Hopefully, nothing else happens this year that would get me off the schedule of publishing both of these newsletters every month for the remainder of the year. Please provide your comments about this newsletter and let me know if there is any watch collecting area you would like to see explored in this newsletter. Also, if you enjoy reading this, please let all you friends know about it.
Once again life intervened and put another temporary hiatus for the Watch Enthusiast and the Cuff Linker. Hopefully, nothing else happens this year that would get me off the schedule of publishing both of these newsletters every month for the remainder of the year.
Please provide your comments about this newsletter and let me know if there is any watch collecting area you would like to see explored in this newsletter. Also, if you enjoy reading this, please let all you friends know about it.
6. Helpful Resources If you wish to find out more about Doxa’s history, or see what they are currently producing, check out their website at http://www.doxawatch.com
Also, if you want to see a review of the Doxa diver’s watch, check out http://www.doxa300t.com/review.htm It appears that Dr. Peter McClean Millar likes it.
Answer:
It was not uncommon for even major British watchmakers (Arnold, Dent and Benson, etc) to supplement the pieces they completely made with Swiss movement that they would have cased and would sign their name. To a British collector, a true Dent is far more valuable than a piece signed Dent that contains a generic Swiss movement.
This is not just a British issue as there are numerous Breguets out there that were made by other makers to be sold in the Paris Breguet shop (that Breguet signed) which are worth only a fraction of the piece that was actually produced by Abraham-Louis Breguet.
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Thank you for reading!
If you have questions about watches or watch collecting, please forward to huck@tias.com. We will not respond to questions solely about value of a particular watch. For an estimate, discuss with watch friends, check with a local appraiser or auction houses or, on the web, try http://www.kovel.com for a price book or http://www.whatsitworthtoyou.com/tias.htm for an online appraisal.
Please e-mail Huck@Tias.com with any comments or if you would like to write a short note for this newsletter. Also, please let me know if there are any items that you would like me to search for free to forward this to a friend. To subscribe to this or other TIAS newsletters, especially The Cuff Linker for which I'm also the editor and primary author, go to http://www.tias.com/subscribe
Please let me know your thoughts on how my store or our mall can be adjusted to make finding the type of cuff links that you are searching for easier and your overall browsing experience more pleasurable!
I'm still hopeful that some of you will write in with your own collectors' creeds. If you have particular rules that you have followed to a fun collection, please write in so they can be passed on to everyone. Thank you for reading! Please feel free to forward this to a friend. Paul G. Huck email: Huck@Tias.comwebsite: http://captainhucksbooty.com
