12 Vintage Watches — But I’d Only Choose One

Every Thursday we release 12 new watches and normally when I look through a new drop I have a pretty good idea which watch is going to become my personal favorite. Sometimes you see it immediately, sometimes it takes a little bit longer, but this week something happened that I genuinely didn't expect. Because if you look at the watches sitting here in front of me, there are at least five or six pieces that should on paper have absolutely no problem winning this little competition. I mean just look at what we have here. There's an Omega Constellation Deluxe from the 1950s with those beautiful arrowhead hour markers. And if you watch this channel for a while you probably know that this is already slightly unfair because vintage constellations are one of my biggest weaknesses. Then we have got this wonderfully shaped Vacheron Constantin. We've got not one, not two, but three Patek Philips including an ellipse and a gondola. There is another Omega Constellation C-shape from the 1970s. And then sitting over here is a white gold Rolex Day-Date, which isn't exactly the kind of watch you normally ignore when it's lying on the table. And then we are still not done because there is an Audemars Piguet Cobra. There is an ultra-thin AP. There is an IWC caliber 89. And just to make this whole thing slightly more ridiculous, there is even a Royal Oak in the drop. So when I first saw all of these watches and I started going through them one by one I would have happily bet money on that my favorite watch going to be the one of the obvious ones. But somehow it wasn't. In fact the watch I kept coming back to is probably one of the smallest watches on this table. And it's actually the least expensive watch in the entire drop. And that's the one I've kept turned around this whole time. Because for some reason this little thing completely got me. This is a 31 millimeter Jaeger LeCoultre from the 1950s in 18 karat rose gold. And yes, I know what some of you are probably thinking right now. That's it? I mean there's a white gold Day-Date sitting next to it. There are three Patek Philippes on the table. Their lily is a Royal Oak about 30 centimeters away from my hand. And I'm sitting here and talking about a tiny 31 millimeter dress watch. But that's exactly why I wanted to make this video. Because the more watches I handle the more I realize that the watches which stay in my head are very rarely the ones that make the most sense on paper. Sometimes it's not the biggest name. It's not the most expensive reference. And it's certainly not the watch that everybody else in the room would pick first. Sometimes you put a watch on your wrist and look at it for a few seconds. And something about the proportions, the case, the dial, the way the whole thing comes together just feels right. And this little Jaeger LeCoultre did exactly that to me. So forget about the Royal Oak for a few minutes. Forget about the Pateks. Forget about the Day-Date. And I can't believe I'm saying this. Even forget the constellation with the arrowhead markers. Because I want to show you why this tiny Rose Gold Jaeger LeCoultre became my favorite watch of the entire drop. And I think the easiest way to explain why I like this watch so much is just to look at it. Because on paper there really isn't anything particularly crazy about it. It is 31 millimeters. It's made from 18 karat Rose Gold. It has a silver dial, small seconds. And that's basically it. But then you start looking a little closer. And suddenly there are all these tiny details that make the whole thing so much more interesting than those specifications would ever suggest. The first thing I noticed after picking it up were actually the lugs. Because they are absolutely beautiful. They are not just four simple pieces of gold sticking out of a round case. They have this almost scalloped sculptural shape to them. Where the surfaces catch the light differently depending on how you move the watch. And I think that's quite important on a watch this small. Because at 31 millimeters you obviously don't have a lot of space to work with. So the proportions and these little details have to do all the work. And somehow they give the watch much more presence than you would expect from something this size. But for me the real magic starts with the dial. I mean just look at the condition of the thing. We are talking about a watch that's more than 70 years old. And the dial is just ridiculously crisp. You have this very clean silver background. And then instead of using the same hour marker all the way around, Giselle Coultre mixed these applied rosé gold arabic numerals at 12, 3, 6 and 9 with these tiny rose gold dots in between. And because they are applied rather than simply printed onto the dial, they have a little bit of hide to them. So when you move the watch around they start catching the light together with the case. And then you have those dauphine hands in the center. Again in rose gold. And this is probably one of my favorite little details on the entire watch. They are beautifully faced. So one half of the hand can almost disappear into the dial, while the other half catches the light. And then you move your wrist slightly and the whole thing reverses. It's such a simple detail. But in real life it gives the dial so much more depth. Around all of that you've got this very fine railroad minute track, which gives an otherwise quite elegant and almost minimal dial a little bit of structure. And then down at six o'clock there's a small sentence, slightly recessed into the dial with its own tiny track around the outside. And that's basically the entire design. There isn't much here. But I think that's exactly why it works. Nothing is fighting for attention. The rose gold of the case continues onto the dial, into the numbers, the markers, the hands. While that silver dial keeps the whole thing from becoming too warm or too dressy. And the more I look at it, the more I think that's probably what got me in the first place. It's just incredibly well balanced. And I think that's really all I wanted to say about this watch. Because sometimes you don't need an incredible complication, a famous reference or a huge price tag for a watch to stick with you. Sometimes the proportions are right, the details are right. And for whatever reason you just keep picking it up. And that's exactly what happened here. Out of all the watches in this week's drop, the Pateks, the Vacherons, the Royal Oak, the Day-Date, even that Constellation, which should have been the completely obvious choice for me. Somehow it's this tiny 31 millimeter that I would take home. Unfortunately I can't because apparently failing watches instead of keeping all of them is quite an important part of running a watch business. But I think that's also what makes collecting interesting. Your favorite watch isn't always the one you expect it to be. And this week it definitely wasn't mine.