The Unusual Style Icon Watch of the 1940’s | Goes to Auction

Jonathan, your roll was very good at showing us things we've never seen before, so go on, what is it? Well, this is called a Gruen Curve-X. Look at the curve on it. I can see the curve on it, yeah. Got to go back to the 1940s, early 50s, when elegance was something that we don't think about now, do we? We wear these great big boots, but... We've lost elegance. We have. We've lost elegance. Look at the advert for it. Let's have a look. Oh look, hey, which artist am I thinking about? You'd probably be thinking about Dali, I would think. I'm thinking very much about Dali. Yeah, but it's just emphasising the curve, the elegance. And so this was basically a new invention at the time, a new fashion. They just, everybody at that time was trying to make these lovely rectangular watches and make them look as curved as possible, whereas Gruen developed a way of setting the movement in three sort of parts that is completely curved, so you get a true curve with this. Oh, I see. You know, in the 1990s, these were hugely desirable again as vintage watches. Yeah. And now, that's probably going to sell as a ladies' watch now, even though it is a really man's watch. Is that the thing? I'm just not used to wearing that sort of watch. I'm with you. So the 90s, these were a couple of grand, two or three grand? Yeah, yeah. Okay. And is it because... The quality, it's a gold-filled case, not what we think is rolled gold, but in America, they'd have two sheets of white gold with metal in between and it's rolled onto it, and that's much thicker than any rolled gold that we would think of. So the quality is there. It would have been an expensive, very expensive watch in its day. Okay, so the price has dipped since the 90s, probably because of the size. Yeah, because of fashion. Yes, yeah, absolutely, which is a bit of a frustration. But a good buy now, because I think watches are actually getting a bit small. Yeah, they are, and there's a new generation coming in looking at smaller watches now, so... Okay, well, let's see how it does. That's just a lovely one with its original Bakelite box. The original advert can go with it.