The Vintage Watch Collection of a Coin Shop Owner (over $60,000?!)

My friend owns a coin store and he has a huge insane watch collection. There is such a crazy variety of watches with here so come with me stick around and we'll go through everything that we can within the video. Now I know I said I'm going to talk about wristwatches but I thought I'd take a break and show you this really cool Lange & Sohn ships chronometer. When you were traveling on sea latitude could be determined using a sextant and the location of celestial bodies but in order to calculate longitude you actually needed a really precise chronometer. So you can find these from time to time. You can see me winding the key a little bit right here. These chronometers had to be handcrafted in order to deal with the tough elements at sea. You'll see me moving around the gimbal here. The purpose of this device is to deal with the rocking and waning of waves while you are on the ship and keeping the clock in an upright position along with a box outside to try and limit the amount of water that this could be exposed to. Lange is a brand with tons of history and their modern watches are worth well over ten thousand dollars. I've only seen one or two of these listed and they normally fall within the three to fifteen thousand dollar range. The first thing I happened upon was this ladies Rolex Datejust. The model number is a Rolex 17A341 and I feel like the asymmetry on this bezel is definitely something that you're not really used to in a Rolex. I hadn't actually seen anything like this so I thought it might have been aftermarket but it's actually completely original a watch from Rolex. This watch is worth about ten to fifteen thousand dollars and here's another small ladies Datejust. This one's a little more my speed a little less showy but and I think this dark blue color is one of the best colors you can have in a dress watch. It goes with a lot. A Rolex Datejust is pretty much the best starter Rolex you can get into. There's a couple of other options if you're looking for entry-level Rolexes. Things like an Oysterquartz or a Rolex Precision but I think the Datejust is a happy middle of you're not paying too much relatively for a Rolex and getting a good watch. He also had a good amount of solid gold Accutrons. Now these are a really cool relic of the past of watchmaking because of the tuning fork movement in the Accutrons. I pulled this one out a little early but don't worry there will be a ton more of these. My friend literally had to point this out to me because I completely skipped by it thinking it was in the wrong place but I found this Patek Philippe coin travel clock. These are so so cool. I've seen a couple of these before in the past. I've seen one by Movado that was converted into a wristwatch but this $20 coin with the hidden button to open into the clock was just such a cool find. I think this one's from about 1963 and a couple that I saw going for auction sold for $40,000 to $60,000. One like this that wasn't co-branded by Tiffany & Co would probably be worth about $40,000 to $50,000. The next tray that I looked to was an entire tray of vintage chronographs and there was a ton of great brands here like JLC, Audemars Piguet, Vacheron, Constantine, Patek Philippe. One of the things about me mostly hunting for watches at flea markets is I don't actually get to manipulate and be in front of a lot of the really higher end watches like this. So this was a really good opportunity for me to evaluate some of these really expensive watches and it's because of my inexperience that it's really hard to price things like this. This is an Audemars Piguet manual line triple register chronograph. Even though I don't handle a lot of APs I know the value of these watches can be pretty hyper specific to the specific model that you're looking at. The second I picked up this AP I knew for a fact that it was platinum just by the density of the watch and how heavy it felt. I think this is a thing you kind of pick up over the years when you work with a lot of jewelry and metals but you can really tell the difference between platinum, silver, aluminum. I'm no expert but I saw a similar Audemars Piguet in platinum for about $15,000 online. Just kind of manipulating the watch I turned it and saw what I expect to be a hallmark at least for very old silver hallmarks were used to help identify the metals, the makers, where they came from. The case could definitely use a little TLC but Minerva is actually a really good brand for chronograph. Minerva debuted its chronograph movement in around the early 1900s. They had excellent handmade craftsmanship and they were very detail oriented. Even now the brand Mont Blanc has a limited line of watches that they use Minerva chronograph movements in and those watches nowadays go for $20,000 to $60,000. These watches can be worth about $2,500 to $4,000 depending on condition. Making sure a chronograph is running before you buy it is also a really big deal because if you wanted to get one of these serviced it's going to cost you. I'm getting a chronograph serviced and it's about to cost me about $650 so just make sure you keep an eye out and add that in as a cost. Now this LeCoultre chronograph is also really really cool. So this chronograph is likely from around 1937 which was before the time that Edmund Jaeger and the watch maker LeCoultre fused to become JLC that we know today. Their style's in really good condition so I think this one would probably be worth about $3,000. A lot of these vintage watches are very clean and to the point. They have very similar styles but there's a lot of watchmaking history that goes into these. My dad's a huge fan of world time watches and so I picked up this Wittenauer chronograph with a world time bezel just to show him as well. Now the brand Wittenauer is one that I frequently recommend as one of the most affordable entry-level vintage watches but we forget that the brand has some bangers out there. The Wittenauer professional line of chronographs are pretty expensive. This one is probably worth about $1,000 to $3,000 and the professional line of chronographs was also tested with NASA as their space program candidate before the Omega Speedmaster ended up being chosen. A little bit of a bigger watch for my wrist as you can tell in comparison to my Omega Chronostop. This next watch is a really good one to highlight the value of chronographs. The watch is by Nautilus Watch Company which is a relatively lesser known watch brand. That being said this watch is still probably worth around $500 to $1,000 but that would be only if this watch was gold filled and this case is solid gold so you now add on the value of the solid gold case to the inherent value of the chronograph itself. I wanted to point out this Crawford chronograph not only because the dial has an interesting patina but because this one has a different setup for the sub-dials being set up more vertical instead of triple register or horizontal. You can see that it's on sort of a mesh bracelet and I think it works really well for this watch because chronographs are tools essentially and can be used for a function. A lot of them have these extra dials you see these rings on the outside of the watch that can be used to tell different things but you should know this brand so these are two very old Breitlings. One of these is a Cosmonaut while the other is a Breitling Chronomat. Depending on condition the Breitling Chronomat can range from about $2,000 to $5,000. Breitling initially made the Chronomat after they combined a chronograph and a slide rule basically having a chronograph and mathematics all in one. I think for a while Breitling was known for its very complicated dials and this watch historically shows exactly why. Now the Breitling Cosmonaut is actually a modification of a Breitling Navitimer that was requested by astronaut Scott Carpenter so he could be able to tell the difference between day and night time while he was in space. Now the value of a Breitling Cosmonaut varies based on the year the condition just like every watch but I've seen these go from on the low end $2,500 to $4,000 to on the high end I see them listed for $10,000 so I don't have a lot of experience selling these watches or valuating them but I still think it's a cool watch with a lot of history not to mention everybody's a sucker for a space watch. One thing I like about that watch and the Chronomat is this kind of coin edge bezel on the side I think is a really unique design type that I don't see in a lot of watches and the Chronomat being solid gold just kind of adds more value on top of everything. Now while the modern watches from Movado have become a little more contentious their vintage ones were much higher quality they had movements that were made by high quality brands like Zenith and a bunch of interesting examples of pointer dates and triple calendars. Movado also worked watch companies like Tiffany and Cartier to supply movements for them so you don't want to knock their vintage examples. These fluto chronographs were examples of companies that didn't survive the course crisis they were around for I think like 30-40 years and had some makers like Ernest Burrell who made movements for them. Now of course these have value as both of these are solid gold chronographs but not as much as some of the more reputable brands. Because some of these smaller watch companies have such a wide variety of people who made movements for them it can be really hard to just know all of them off the top of your head. I mostly do a lot of discovering with those watches on the fly by taking them home and popping open the back. But next I wanted to show you all these really cool solid gold cased watches. Solid gold watches because there were a lot of them by a bunch of different brands didn't always make it over the years so I'm going to kind of classify the different tiers of them. Starting off with these these are all Bulova Accutron. Now the Bulova Accutron used a tuning fork movement and the problem with these is that a lot of the times I find that they are broken and it can be very hard to repair them and they eat through batteries. So good examples are going to be ones like this. This has a shield style case. It's definitely more unique compared to some of the other normal cased ones. My recommendation on Accutrons is if you really wanted one is to go for one of the more unique ones like a Bulova Accutron Spaceview or a Bulova Astronaut. Some of these just plain regular solid gold Accutrons are worth about what the gold is with a little extra on top if it's running. But if they're not running they are a super pain to get fixed and keep running. Now while Mido's modern watches can go for thousands their vintage options can be very affordable options. Now this is a solid gold example. It's a Mido Ocean Star Dado Day and it's also a chronometer. Now a gold filled version of this I would probably evaluate at around the $200 to $300 range but because this is solid gold you're probably selling these closer to the $1,000 range. But Mido is just highlighting the value and variety you can get at the $300 range in vintage watches. Now I'm a huge fan of Omega and so I really like this Black Dial Diamond Omega. I personally am a huge fan of gem set watches especially when they're done very minimally like this. Black Dial Omegas I think are a little more rare than the traditional kind of gray and tan variants and the fact that this is a solid gold just adds on to the value. Especially among a lot of younger collectors I've seen more popularity for Omega partially because their vintage options are so valuable but also because if you wanted a modern variant you're not putting yourself on a waiting list for 10 years in order to get it. I've bought numerous Omegas in the $200 to $300 range. Now this one being solid gold with the diamond set dial is going to be a little more valuable and probably about the $1,000 range. But if you want to talk about some high tier watch brands then of course JLC is going to be one of your go-tos. Now this example isn't as desirable as some other examples partially because it's a pendant watch likely a nurse's watch seeing as if you look that pendant is upside down and the watch face is faced downward. Now I haven't seen a lot of these but one that I did see was posted online for about $3,300 and that's something you'd expect with this being solid gold in the original case from a brand of a high quality maker like JLC. This watch here actually highlights a good example of watches as investment pieces. I normally don't recommend people just go buy watches as investment pieces but if you were going to the watch brands that tend to be most profitable are Vacheron Constantin, Audemars Piguet, Patek Philippe, Rolex, Cartier. Now one of the best ways that you can maximize a watch as an investment piece is if you don't pay full price for it. So that means getting it secondhand through estate sales, flea markets, and making sure you have a way to authenticate and evaluate your watches. The idea being is if you pay 60% to even 80% of the time of what that watch is actually worth and when you go to sell it one day if it's increased in value you'll make more back from it. I don't recommend watches as an investment for everybody it's more so if you just happen to be in an opportune place in order to get a lot of watches for good deal. Now this Gubolon watch I have here is actually a really good watch brand. I have a pocket watch from them in solid gold. I think this is a perfect example of a really high quality brand that can definitely get lost in a pile and you can find it one day. This LeCoultre watch is also very cool. They had some really cool examples using diamonds and other gemstones and a lot of unique case shapes from this time period. Now if you see a watch that has just LeCoultre instead of the full JLC on the dial then it likely came from the time period before Jaeger and LeCoultre combined into the same brand that we see today. I think black dial and diamonds is one of the best combos you can have so this Hamilton was also a really good example. This is another one of those watches that I expect to be probably in the $1,000 to $2,000 range although I saw a crazy one that sold for closer to $5,000. Some of these higher quality material mid-tier brands are the ones that I expect to become a little more rare over time as a lot of the times these cases were melted for scrap and the dials and movements sold separately. Especially nowadays with cold being sold so high some of these cases being scrapped is very common. Now the LeCoultre Memovox is a very unique design from JLC. The name Memovox comes from the combination of words memoir and vox which roughly translated to the voice of memory. This was JLC's first alarm watch meant to compete with the Vulcan Cricket. You can see the inner ring on the dial that was used to set the alarm and then the two crowns on the side one to set the watch, wind the watch, the other to power the alarm of this watch. Just a very cool example and now we have more of a traditional JLC. This is just a nice dress watch. You'll see this design in many many watches so one of my recommendations to kind of dress these up is to put these on brack or dark brown leather straps. The value of gold watches is always tricky as it fluctuates with the price of gold but I'd expect this to be worth about a thousand to three thousand dollars. Especially if you were to dress it up on a strap, replace the crystal. A little more variety of examples here. This one by Boucher and this one by Zodiac. Zodiac has that mason dial. Well again both valuable because these are solid gold. That free mason dial makes it a little more rare. Now while you might think that this solid gold cased Omega is pretty small and is likely classified as a ladies watch, square and rectangular watches actually wear a bit better on larger wrists as well. So this is definitely something that either a man or a woman could wear. And you know I had to stop and shout out the brand Baum and Mercier. One of my favorite brands. It's very quality. It's very affordable in the vintage models and they have such a unique design philosophy in a lot of their older models. This one of course is kind of a more standard dress watch but you'd be surprised about the different variety of examples you can find with this brand. Talking about value of this watch again we're talking solid gold. It's going to be closer to the thousand dollar range. Keep an eye out for this brand for collaborations with Tiffany's. I've seen a bunch of dials that are stamped Tiffany & Co as well. Messed up a bit with my editing but let's take a closer look at that free mason dial for the Zodiac. I've seen work like this with a bunch of different brands including Hamilton but they tend to be a little more rare. So if you see something like this you probably want to add a little more value to if this was just a normal dress watch even if it wasn't your particular style. And now let's go with a heavy hitter one of the most famous watches of all time the Omega Speedmaster. This one's an example from the 1970s. This watch is called the moon watch because it's the first watch to be worn on the moon. The brand Omega is very happy about that and will not let you forget it anytime soon. But it's also just one of the best looking chronographs in my opinion especially one that has really nice patina like this example. Now I don't know the exact date of this watch it did not open and check the movement in the back but it is on the original bracelet and so the value of some of the vintage ones can actually go very very high. This one has the blue bezel around the outside probably around three to seven thousand dollars depending on the exact year because certain years are more valuable than others. There's that classic Omega logo on the back with the first watch worn on the moon engraving so you don't forget it. Let's keep the Omega love going with this other watch. This one is an Omega Flightmaster and it comes with the original directions and the original box. Similar to the Speedmaster this watch was developed in a time where tool watches were really big. You had Omega putting watches on the moon, you had Breitling Navitimers that were set for all these sailors whereas the Flightmaster was marketed more towards pilots. It's got a fully functioning chronograph and it has really bright unique colors on it which you'll see in many different varieties of Flightmasters. One of the big design elements that you get from all these features including just how big this watch is, is legibility. So they wanted it to be very easy for a pilot to use this as a tool. The GMT hand on this watch is also highlighted in color for maximum legibility and maximum versatility. Such a clean running example like this with the original bracelet and with the new box is definitely going to be closer to the four or five thousand dollar range. Both this and the Speedmaster are very iconic designs by Omega and these can be grail pieces for a lot of collectors. A little bit lesser known of a vintage model is the Omega Seamaster chronograph. I've seen examples of these sell anywhere in the two to six thousand dollar range and they're one of Omega's lesser known chronographs because there's so much hype behind the Speedmasters, the Flightmasters. The earliest examples of Seamaster chronographs started as early as 1958 which overlaps a little bit seeing as the Omega Speedmaster was started in 1957. The dial on this example is very clean and it's a very good condition which helps add to the value but I definitely haven't actually seen one of these before in the world so they seem a little more rare to me than a Speedmaster. One of the things contributing to this is the fact that they still make the Speedmaster to this day. Now this next brand Eberhard is a brand that I don't see too often but is very expensive if you look at their modern watches. In the bottom left of this photo you can see the Chrono 4, one of the watches they were most famous for. It's very complicated with four different sub registers and it's some of these continued innovations that they attempted in watchmaking which is one of the reasons these are so valuable. I don't expect a more simple version like this one to be worth probably around the one to two thousand dollar range but still a very cool example to see. Now if you want to talk about one of my weaknesses as a wristwatch collector it's definitely coin watches because I know there is value here but there's also sometimes where there's no value at all. All of these examples are solid gold coins and all three of these examples are from different brands including brands like Mathe Tissot and a very unique one right here. My favorite version of these watches are ones that are simply just coins that open up like this example. Personally I like this style better as it allows the item to keep more of an identity as a coin and a watch. It's just also a little more complicated as a mechanism. This example is from Krota. These flip open coin watches are so intricate and such rare finds I think this one's worth probably about five to ten thousand dollars. The craftsmanship on it is just amazing. Now I know that many of you are going to prefer the Patek Philippe from earlier that was like six to ten times the price of this one but the benefit of this Krota is that it actually has lugs and can be worn as a wristwatch. This is an amazing watch to flip open in front of somebody and stunt your style on them. Now Tiffany watches are tough because the movements were made by such a wide variety of different companies that it can change the value dramatically. On a side note I do love this triple H engraving on the back but you need to differentiate watches that were made by Tiffany with an outsourced movement versus a co-branded Tiffany watch but lumping them all together you have makers like Patek Philippe, Rolex, Cartier, Movado so you can get a wide variety of examples. Now I talked a little bit earlier about how LeCoultre had some very unique designs in their watches especially in so this is more of a traditional dress style solid gold watch by LeCoultre in comparison to this. I've seen so many unique case shapes from LeCoultre and this is just another good example. The crystal needs to be resized on this one but this is something that they'll never make again and you won't see ever again. Again I talked a little bit about how easy square watches are to wear so this could be marketed towards men or women and the fact that it's solid gold just means that this watch will always retain value. Now let's take a look at some of the last categories of this wristwatch collection which is going to be the gold-filled watches. Now there are a lot of Omega here which you're not going to hear me complain about. This is actually a really good example of the variety of Omega Constellations in particular that you can see. So there's those threes on the left and these three on the right are actually Pie Pan which are some of my favorite Omega Constellations on the market. Now there's going to be some differences to all these watches. Some may have dates, some might not, some might have days, some might be chronometers. The Omega Constellation line has been around since the 1950s and has been in production since then so it has an insane amount of variety. The model that I think is probably one of the most recognizable and prominent would be the Pie Pan examples which are seen here. You can see that the center of these dials is raised upwards and that in conjunction with the spacing of the indices gives these dials a really unique shape. That raised middle part sort of being reminiscent of a Pie Pan which is why they're called that. For the Pie Pans themselves, gold-filled versions are worth around the $1,000 range, a little bit more than that. If they're in really good condition with the original straps, box, everything, the solid gold versions will go much more probably about the $4,000 to $6,000 range. But I love these they're definitely one on my list to get in the future. I would argue that vintage Omega is actually one of the best values in all of vintage watches. I've gotten many examples for under $300. You just have to be aware of the costs that go into repairing and maintaining a vintage watch. I've also found that Omegas tend to be faked less than other well-known watch brands like Cartier and Rolex. There are some things to look out for things like is your dial restored and is the movement original is the strap case original but that's something that we can go over in another video. Generally, I like to pay between two $400 for these but the actual value will depend on where they're being sold. They'll likely fall somewhere in the $500 to $1,000 range. I wanted to pick up this Seamaster in particular because I don't actually see Omegas being double signed that often and this one was double signed by Turler. Turler is a large European watch dealer similar to how Tiffany & Co double signs watches. Turler does the same. When a watch is double signed like this by a more reputable source it can increase the value in these watches just because of exclusivity. I point it out as Omegas I haven't seen very much be double signed in the past. I feel like I tend to see that a lot with brands like Rolex, Balmer, CA, Movado. So seeing an Omega that's double signed Turler was really cool. The Seamaster signed Turler is probably worth about $600 to $800. Here's another cool example which is an Omega Electronic. This has the same problems as a lot of the Accutrons. They're very hard to maintain and get serviced but they do come at an interesting point in watchmaking history when you know the world was deciding what the places of electronics and watches. Now this Constellation that was here earlier I wanted to point out not only because it's a chronometer but because of this black dial. So vintage Omega tends to be in that classic gray color and so when I see examples with a black dial I actually give it a little more value because I don't see them as often. This watch has the original crystal which I wanted to highlight for you here. If you look right over the second hand you can sort of see an Omega logo engraved into the crystal which shows that this is either a crystal that has been replaced from Omega or the original Omega crystal. One of the other things to keep in note of for these watches is this is the Omega Constellation insignia on the back but in other models there's actually a solid gold cap that can be removed off the watches. So I have actually seen a bunch of Constellations that have this solid gold cap on the back of the Constellation logo that's been removed and likely melted. But that's going to be this entire watch collection. I hope you enjoyed it. There's some really cool vintage examples here and I want to thank my friend so much for letting me go through and record all of these watches. I really love vintage watches and I think going through collections like this highlights the variety that you can have. I'm going to be working on another video covering his entire collection of pocket watches so that'll be in the works. And again I'm sorry for the delay on these videos coming out. I work a lot so it's tough to get them out in time but I appreciate you for enjoying my content and stick around and more to come.