Everything You Need To Know About The JLC Reverso

Hey everybody. Welcome back to the channel. Adam here from mental watches today. We're going to do things a little bit differently. If you notice, I have a book in front of me. I have a computer in front of me and I have a couple trays of watches in front of me today. We are going to talk one specific watch, the iconic JLC Reverso. So why do I have a computer in front of me? Well, because it's always better to include friends. And as much as I would love to have this individual I'm looking at right now on the screen, who I'll introduce in a moment here with me in Miami, he is in Virginia at home. He is none other than Mr. At they did on Instagram, Kevin Odell. He is a specialist in Reverso, or I don't know if I'd call you a specialist, but you're somebody who sincerely loves them. The Reverso holds a dear place in my heart. Cause it was the watch that set off this journey for me. I was gifted one by my father upon graduating from graduate school. And it was the watch that really got me into watches. I would be wearing it right now, but it's at my house because I keep it at my house to wear on the weekends. And this book, I just wanted to give a quick shout out to Zaf Basha for putting together everything JLC and a lot of the information that I've learned over the years has been because of him specifically on the Reverso. If you haven't checked out his books before, I highly recommend it. We'll link in the description below where you can find more information. But he's put together, this came out last year, an updated version on his everything collector JLC. And there is a great section on the Reverso in here. So Kevin, welcome to the channel or welcome back to the channel. Cause this is not your first time. I don't believe how's it going good, man. Just chilling at home. So Kevin and I have a mutual, very, very close friend slash client who happens to also love the Reverso. He happened to be in Miami with most of his collection, which comprises about quick guess around 20 reversos, a couple earlier, you know, before the Reverso, but similar design language. So I have them all in one place. He's a little camera shy. So I figured I'd call upon my dear friend, Kevin, to help out with this video. Let's jump in before we start looking at the actual watches and talk a little bit of the history of the Reverso. I know a little bit about the history from what I've read. My understanding is that a gentleman by the name of, I think it was like Caesar Detroit was watching a polo match in India in the late twenties. And he was already been involved. Correct me if I'm wrong in the watch world, creating like the Atmos clock and I think the Movado purse watch. So you already had some experience and he saw a polo player, get his watch smashed into pieces and thought there had to be a better mousetrap for that design. And so he contacted somebody who we'd already worked with before LeCoultre to set out to design this watch who agreed to do it and did not have the case design and movement ready to go. So they contracted other people, namely Jaeger and got the cases kind of ordered, fit with, uh, they started with Tevanis movements, right? The earliest ones. Yeah. The earliest ones had Tevanis movements that for whatever reason are are signed Liska. And I don't know if that was just a distributing thing, but they were produced by Tevanis. It was a caliber 64. Right. There actually was a ladies one too. What's interesting is that the ladies one appears to only be first series. So I, I don't see any ladies ones after that first series, which is between 1931 and 1933. Right. It wasn't a big market having female polo players. Uh, they did make a ladies one, which is a smaller Tevanis caliber, but yeah, they started out that way. They started out with that way. Cause they didn't have their own in-house, their round case movements weren't going to fit. Obviously they didn't have, they didn't have a movement for it. And I think it was more just like, is this going to be a thing or not? You know, like why put all this R and D into something that may just fizzle out? I mean, I'm speculating, but that makes a lot of sense. Right. And the, the watch ended up being wildly successful. In fact, even in the USA, Hamilton actually, they licensed to the design to sell under their name. I mean, they were a little bit different. It's called the Otis, the Hamilton Otis, but it's very, very popular watch and extremely iconic watch. It's still an important watch today. And this thing came out in 1931. It's not like people are buying these for polo. Well, yeah. So, but for people at home who might not be familiar with the model, I assume most of you guys watching this channel will have some familiarity with the model. The whole idea was that it had this case, I had hinges that you could then flip around the dial of the watch and kind of close it in so that when you're playing polo, the crystal is not going to get smashed and the watch stays somewhat intact, which was, you know, kind of, you know, solving a actual use case back in the late twenties, early thirties, something pretty innovative for the time. I like the fact that also these cases were designed by a very famous case maker in Wenger back in the day, who's designed for a lot of other brands as well. We know Patek, et cetera. So let's jump right in now to the watches. So our mutual friend here has two of the early Tavonis and I was reading up on it cause actually I didn't know myself, but you'll be able to help fill in the gaps. The easiest way to tell that is because these have no subsidiary seconds and they're just simply signed Reverso. They're not signed with any branding at that point. So we're talking the earliest years of production, right? So like 31 to like you said, 33, 34. Yes. 1931 to 1933, these were available and they did not have any running seconds. So they just, they just said, it just told you the hours and the minutes. And yeah, they were just branded Reverso on the, on the dial. And then even on the case, it actually doesn't say Jaeger LeCoultre anywhere. Sometimes you'll find Liska on the movement. Sometimes you'll see Tavonis on the movement. They were branded Reverso. It wasn't until 1933 that JLC came out with a model that actually had their own movement in it. And they actually came up with two. They had one with sub seconds at six o'clock, and then they had one with center seconds. We have, we have some of the examples here for both to show everybody. And that was the caliber 11, but I'm assuming deviations of the same caliber for both of those. Is that correct? Or am I wrong? Well, originally it was the caliber 410 and then 411. And then there was many variants after that because the Reverso would go on to be made until 1947 before it was initially discontinued. I'm looking at some of his watches here. We have two that are center seconds and then four, two white, two black dials that have subsidiary seconds. And I'm starting to see already, obviously the design language changed a little bit of the dials. And I'm also seeing now is when you start seeing them branded. So I have one in my hand here. That's signed Reverso LeCoultre, one that's signed Jaeger, is a Gublin signed one here as well. But all of these are branded. There's actually three Gublins. He's got a nice collection of Gublin signed ones, but we're already seeing now where the brand or whoever the retailers is actually signing the dial as opposed to just signing the case or the movement or whatever. So there is some more kind of familiarity for the public as to who's producing these watches. Based on your knowledge, is that when like the kind of model exploded and people wanted to know what they were buying? It seems to me that the model was kind of an instant hit considering the period they actually produced quite a bit of these watches. And so that tells me that it was very popular. Seemingly, they went right into development of this movement because, you know, 31 to 33, you know, that's only two years, you know, it takes a long time to develop a movement. So it seems like almost immediately they started working on, you know, the caliber 410, caliber 411. And then once they had their own movement, that's when they started branding the watches with their name on the dial. And of course, in the period, you know, all these brands, they had no way to sell direct. There was no direct to consumer. They relied on retailers like Gublin to purchase the products. And it was a big enough retailer that did a big enough order from them. They would sign them with their name on it as well. You also see other brands. Like we've seen Patek Philippe signed reversos. We see Vacheron Constantin. There was one sold at the recent Monaco auction that was signed Vacheron Constantin, absolutely stunning watch. And then later on in the fifties, you see some Cartier branded ones as well. So, yeah. And of all, interesting to point out is of all of the Gublin signed ones, most of them that he has here are just signed Gublin with nothing else on the dial. Except for one, there's one that's signed Reverso Lux. And then at the bottom, the signature actually has Gublin, which is interesting. And I think he purchased recently. Yeah. He purchased this recently in a Sotheby's sale and it was fantastic watch. What I've noticed with Gublin is Gublin, they must've been very big retailer at the time, and they had a lot of influence on the brands. They must've done big orders. Cause I've seen this with Audemars Piguet as well as many other brands where they would just get rid of the retailer signature and sign Gublin. But even the movements sometimes are signed Gublin. That's how picky Gublin was. And listen, if Gublin called you up and said, Hey, I'll take 20 of them. That was a huge order for them. They were like, we'll do whatever you want. You know, even back in the pre-Jaeger signed dials, they, you know, there's one there that's Reverso Lux, which, you know, we could get into that too. There was a couple of variations of the Reverso. There was the Reverso, and then there was a Reverso Standard and Reverso Lux. And the Reverso Lux had some upgrades, including a Sapphire crystal, which may have been the first time a Sapphire crystal was actually used in a wristwatch. It's arguable that it was the first time. And it was the first time that like, it was like a specific mineral type of Sapphire that was used is what I read as well. Yeah. Cause that was another reason. The reason these broke back in the day is because they were mineral glass. And that glass would shatter really easily. Acrylic wasn't really used as widely until the 1940s. Right. So most stuff, even old Longines, round watches had glass crystals originally back then, so JLC was no different. So I have a question for you, you know, moving aside from the history, you know, cause I'm assuming there's a lot more we could get into. I want to transition for a second before we talk about some of the watches and then transition into some of the later eighties and nineties stuff that he has. You're, you know, obviously a collector, but you're also a dealer of vintage wristwatches. And you have sold quite a few more of these than I have. What are you looking for? What can you educate the public when they're looking for one of these? What are the things you want to be aware of, you know, take notice of, you know, cause these are very specific watches and we're talking about watches that are now approaching a hundred years old, you know, absolutely. And these are very tricky. And so I want to stress to people that when buying a vintage Reverso, it's not one of those things where you just can stumble upon one and just assume that it's all correct because these are many, many years old. And unlike most watches, these JLC watches, particularly the Reverso, they have the serial number repeated four times because this, this, these cases, they come apart into many different pieces. You have the top piece, you have the back piece, you have the inside of the case back, and then you have the movement and there's a top part of the bezel, the top bezel too, as well. Right. Yeah. If all of the numbers do not match, JLC will not extract this. Okay. And they will ask you for all four pictures of all four serials. And if they don't all match, you're out. And so I've had this happen to me in the past. First and foremost, tip number one, make sure all serial numbers are matching. All serial numbers. And don't let somebody tell you that there's only three because there is one on the backside of the bezel as well. There's one on the movement holder. There's like a, uh, an inner case that holds the movement in place. So one on that, and then there's one on the inside of the case back. And then there's one on the case back that you can see. So this is the only one you can actually see the other three. You have to completely take the watch, completely disassemble the watch in order to see them. Yeah. And Zach has pictures of all that in the book. So we'll put it as B roll so that everybody can see exactly what Kevin's talking about to get a better idea in case you're interested in buying one of these in the future. So essentially that's the question you asked to all the serial numbers match. And if the person can't answer the question, I wouldn't buy the watch. If you're buying one of these in auction, you have to make sure that it's not just a couple of days before the auction. You want to make sure it's a couple of weeks before. So you have the in-house watchmaker have time to take it apart and show you all the parts. If he cannot do that, or if they cannot do that, I would just say, don't take the risk because you don't want to be stuck with something that doesn't, that doesn't match. So you want to buy these from a trusted seller and somebody who knows what they're talking about. So that's first and foremost, what would you say is the, is the next thing you're looking for? I miss, maybe let's talk about dials movements, you know, crowns et cetera, uh, what's originality. Yeah, that's, I mean, that's the main thing is like, listen, the crown is not as, as, as not as important. These, these original crowns were very standard. They're very flat. So the crown is not that important, but look for originality. Look for, look for hands that match. Like a lot of times I see these mixed mismatched with luminous dials and non-luminous hands. That doesn't make any sense. So you want to make sure these match because over time, you know, people lose a part and then the watchmaker will just source whatever party can get, you know, off eBay or something like that. And they really do have to have to add up. So I would just look for originality. And again, you have to go to an expert for that to determine if something's original. In your opinion, how important, because I know obviously a lot of watches, it's very make or break reverses might be a little different because a lot of these dials were refinished in the past because you know, they didn't hold very well over time or just were used properly. And you know, sometimes that humidity or moisture damage or whatever it is, and we're refinished. A lot of them are repainted and a lot of them are relumed as well. Cause it's really old radium that might've been redone for purposes of getting rid of the radium or chipped off or whatever, how important is it to you? Obviously there's going to be a bigger premium attached to all original, but are you touching, are you touching any of these with maybe a refinished dial or relume dial or et cetera? It would depend on the, on the use case. I will say as a general rule, I am less particular when it comes to dials from watches of this period, just because they're already rare enough as it is, if the dial was refinished professionally, it may, maybe it looks like it could have been done by JLC themselves or simply relumed, but the watch is still attractive. It's not something I would completely dismiss. However, the price would have to reflect that. So kind of like vintage Cartier from the era. It's very case dependent and a little more forgiving, you know? Exactly. It's a little more forgiving. I mean, you know, again, I mean, Cartier is a good example because they were also made by Jaeger, right? Louis Cartier came up with the design. Edmund Jaeger was making the cases and Jaeger was making the movements. Again, a lot of people, a lot of this comes from the Rolex sphere, um, or where originality is everything, but you have to take into consideration the Rolexes that people are collecting from the sixties, particularly in the seventies, there were hundreds of thousands of those made annually. I mean, there was a few hundred a year maximum, and you're talking 30 years prior, and these are not even dustproof proof, let alone water proof. So, you know, you have to be realistic, right? Um, obviously if you have all the money and you have a big budget, sure, be a stickler, go for the all original example, but I don't think you should completely dismiss it as long as it's, um, a dial that looks like it was, you know, restored professionally. But for me personally, I would prefer an all original one, right? So Kevin's giving us some great advice. And as always, we'll link his information in the description of the video below. If you have any questions or interested in any reversos or just not sure, always talk to a guy like him, you know, secondarily guy like me, uh, as he definitely knows more about these than I do admittedly, and we'll, we'll link some information. So if you ever need to get in contact, uh, he's a great resource on these. So let's transition now into the second era of reversos much to our mutual friends, begrudgingly doesn't own one of these watches, but the reversal kind of fell out of favor. What would you say? Like the end of the forties and kind of, they stopped producing them for a long time, right? So we don't have one here to show you, but we'll put some images up in the video. So you know what we're talking about? Well, let's talk about the Corvo era. So walk us through the history here. So what happens, you know, watch explodes, reverso explodes in the forties, particularly we're in thirties, I should say. And then throughout the forties, and then it just kind of falls out of favor. No people like, you know, like, like now, like modern collecting now tastes change, you know, people went on. I mean, I will say they made a lot of these again, like I said before, they contracted not the Hamilton. So, you know, there was the Otis that was being made in the United States. And then of course they were shipping them into the United States. So the whole world was kind of getting flooded with these watches. When you look for a vintage reversal, most of the time, you're going to see a second series one with sub seconds or center seconds, very early ones that were made from 31 to 33 are much rarer to find with the, you know, Tavanis caliber 64. So from what I understand, it was about 1947, 1948, that they just discontinued the model. I don't know the exact history. We'll learn more, but I have seen some reversals from the fifties, particularly that were sold by Cartier and Cartier even has books that show that they sold them in the fifties. So I don't know if they were like privately talking to JLC on the side saying, Hey, we'll take some of these. If you put our name on it, what I would guess. And if somebody knows in the comments, you could correct us both is I would guess that kind of like with, you know, vintage Rolex, you'll have a watch that was produced in 69 that was sold in 82. And that's when they fill out the papers because not all these watches were so popular back then. So Cartier might've ordered a bunch of watches in the forties, but it might've taken them till the 1950s to sell them. You know, a lot of these retailers are required to have an MOQ, a minimum order quantity for a lot of this stuff. Cause they're not just going to deliver one or two watches a lot of times, because it doesn't make sense financially. So they'll require, like you were saying, Gooblin, if they wanted to order 20 watches, that was a big deal. So I would presume if I had to guess that a lot of these brands and a lot of these retailers were required to order a lot and they couldn't sell them all right away, you know? Yeah, that's possible. It's also possible that, you know, a customer walked into Cartier and said, Hey, I have a reverso. I would like another one. And at that point, Cartier just reached out to them and said, Hey, do you have any more reversos laying around that we can buy? We have a client looking for one. They ended up having about 200 leftover cases. I was going to say, perfect transition into what happened in the seventies. Tell us about that. After and after 1947. And the problem is they didn't have any more movements. Right. They just had a bunch of cases. So around 1970, 1971, there's a distributor in Italy, Corvo family. Still exists to this day, by the way, they're still around. They're still around to this day. I know Jacopo is still around. I actually met him for the first time at Geneva Watch Days last year. Great guy. Shout out to him. So anyways, I don't think they sell JLC anymore though, do they? No, they're doing mostly independents now. Right, right. They're hiring independents. They had gone to the factory and noticed that they had some cases from the reverse zone and said, Hey, we want to bring this model back. And JLC was like, well, we don't have any movements from, we have the cases, but we don't have any movements. So they said, well, show us what movements you have. And we'll take it back to our watchmakers and we'll see what we can come up with. And so Corvo's watchmakers came up with a kind of a case spacer that held the caliber 840, which was like a small oval, is also the movement that's found in the crash. Just for, you know, for those, uh, there's, you know, this, the crash originally comes out in the late sixties. This movement came around, came out around the mid, the mid 1960s. And it was essentially a lady's movement, a very small oval shaped movement, caliber 840. Of course they had to have new hands to fit that movement. So the hands weren't as flared as the earlier ones. They were not quite straight, but they weren't as sword shaped, let's say. Design like has changed a little bit too, you know, they have these like big Roman numerals. For me, they're like the most elegant, beautiful, uh, reversals. The design was definitely more aesthetic for the 1970s, the early 1970s, where it was like exploding Roman numerals. Um, they did a gray dial. They did a white dial. You see a lot more of the gray dial and supposedly the Corvo family just said, we'll take 200 of them. Right. They sold all of them. Right. Reignited the interest in the Reverso. Yeah, it took ALC a bit of time to develop a new movement, but they did end up reintroducing the model in 1979 with a new movement. And what's great about this one, it kind of went from 1979 throughout the nineties. It was very slim. So even though it shared the same dimensions, as far as size goes to the original Reverso, which is about 23 by 37 millimeters, 38 millimeters, the new one was slightly longer. It was like 30, 38 and a half, almost 39 millimeters, but it was much, much slimmer because the new movement they developed was very slim. It also, they made a bigger crown that pokes out a little bit more to make it easier to wind. Yeah. Um, they, they also came, came out in precious metals. So they did yellow gold, white gold, and there were yellow gold and white gold original Reversos, but they're extremely rare. I think they were made like as custom orders for clients. Most of them were stainless steel, but when they reintroduced the Reverso, they were almost all in precious metal. Okay. So yeah, we don't have any of the Corvo ones here. We do have a couple from the eighties. So like early after JLC reignited. Our mutual friend was telling me, explaining the difference with our, myself again, didn't know. Cause my personal Reversos from the nineties and I've sold some vintage ones in the past, but I've never been a scholar on them. That the easiest way to tell is because the kajroons on the top have only two lines versus later on, they have three. So we have a few here from the eighties, all similar in size, obviously all yellow gold, but completely different dial aesthetic, you know, white dial, two-tone black guilt style dial, but it's not obviously a at this point anymore. And one that more resembles early kind of dial language from like the original Reversos from the thirties and forties, but you could tell right away when you were saying that I held them up and put them side by side. And you could tell right away how much longer the newer ones are to the original and kind of like feel immediately the size difference, you know, similar, but like you could tell that they've kind of, they kind of increased it a little bit for more modern sensibilities. If you put that up against the vintage one there, I mean, it's. It's so much slimmer. It feels more like that. This was, was purpose built for sporting activities. And this is more of like a dress watch at this point in this era. Yeah. But I really liked the eighties one. Like it, it feels like contemporary, but still has that, like that vintage feel to it. You know what I'm saying? Like, I guess like you can say neo vintage for lack of a better expression. Yeah, it is. So then we transitioned into the nineties, which is, I think where we'll end this video. He has a couple from the two thousands, one ladies and one on a cool bracelet as well, but I don't know if we'll have enough time to get into all of that, nor do we really want to, because I think probably for your and I taste, it starts in the thirties and ends in the nineties, you know, what can you tell us if anything about the nineties and then the transition, you know, from that like late seventies into the more modern era, or I guess you could say neo vintage era of these eighties, nineties reversos. They were modest updates. I mean, just as you would expect, like think of the difference between say a sub banner, a GMT from the eighties versus the nineties, very similar. But there are some, some, some nuanced differences. The quality was there. They did start doing courts in the nineties as well. So they did start offering courts models. They were kind of moving away from mechanical, but I mean, I would say they're, they're very similar. I mean, almost indistinguishable to the untrained eye. And I think these still pose a very great value in the market right now. Like the, these ones from the eighties and nineties, I mean, they're, it's because most of them are precious metal. They're really, really nice watches. And I think the value there is, is really strong. Well, before we signed off, that was what I wanted to like do. And I usually don't talk a lot about value in these kinds of videos just because it's not really the focal point, but it does present an interesting topic. And it was something actually that's been creeping in the back of my head, the entire video that I was sure if I wanted to bring up or not, because, well, you know, the early reversos we both know are up there in price, especially if you could find an untouched original example. I will say with, with the reverso, there is a huge difference between a subpar example versus a really beautiful, all original example. I mean, you're talking to the price could be a hundred percent difference, right? You know, an average example could cost you six to eight grand and a really great example could be 20, 25, 25, 30 grand. Exactly. Whereas, but what you just said now is exactly as I stare at this trade, some really incredible looking reversos. And our friend has a collection of just like some interesting, interesting watches and different dials and different colors. The value proposition is absolutely incredible. Can't get these anymore. Right. I mean, JLC a couple of years ago, they just reissued a reverso in very close to the original size, about two millimeters bigger, but it's very close. And in stainless steel, you know, it's about $9,000 plus tax. Right. I mean, for not much more, you can get the ones from the eighties and nineties in precious metal with that slimmer for not much more money. Well, that's what, that was my question is like, what is the general market price people can expect for these eighties, nineties models? They range depending on dial variant and case material, obviously they made them in yellow gold. They made them in pink gold and they made them in white gold. And you know, as you can imagine, yellow gold would be, you know, the least expensive and then rose gold would be the second and then white gold would be the most. I'm seeing them trending now between the 10 and $15,000 range. So depending on a little bit under 10 grand, but they have moved up. And that's a lot of that's because gold has moved up. Right. They're really beautiful and I always enjoy having them and I always sell them really quickly. Yeah. I think this is like an, I hate to say this publicly on camera, but this is an underappreciated kind of untapped market in collecting spheres. And JLC is such a storied brand. That's like the watchmakers watchmaker, you know, where they've done some really incredible stuff horologically and historically, they're really important for a lot of their innovations, really, very well respected. And they make such fantastic watches, like high quality, high grade watches. The fact that like people kind of overlook and sleep on a lot of their watches has never made sense to me in the 20 years or so I've been around watches and collecting watches, you know, well, particularly the Reverso. And I think about it from this perspective, how many designs have stood that this long of a test of time, you know, the Reverso is still a very important watch. It's a still, it's still a very iconic watch and it was originally introduced in 1931. That was around the same time that Patek fleet 96 was released. What watch is made today that is still popular today that has its origin that far. The only one you could point to is Cartier Tank and the Santos. Right. I mean, think about even the Rolex watches that, you know, as we know them today, they didn't really start coming out to the fifties. Well, yeah, I was going to say like the most iconic model would have to be the Submariner, but that didn't start till, you know, a couple of decades later at this point. And while it's still recognizable and popular today, you know, the Reverso and some of the Cartier models that you mentioned in Calatrava have them beat in terms of longevity, but yeah, the Reverso remains an iconic watch. And even though it went out of production for a little bit and then came back with a renewed vigor, it still represents an important milestone in watchmaking. I think, and you know, where, you know, problems could be solved with watches, you know, kind of thing. Like there was a reason that this guy came up with this idea and had that light bulb and has stood the test of time, like talking a hundred years later, you know. That's thanks to the Corvo family, perhaps. I think it was Michel Corvo. I wonder if it, if it weren't for him with the Reverso ever have gotten re-released in 1979, I'm sure it would have eventually. Right. So it's kind of interesting. I feel like they don't really get the credit and those Corvos, there's only 200 of them that were ever made. So they're very rare. That's another one that I feel like is kind of a sleeper. Kevin sold his, he had one and he sold, I can't believe it. Well, I have a crazy story about that, but we can't get into it today. We'll save it for another video, dude. Thank you so much for joining me on this call. This has been a lot of fun. Guys, if you enjoyed this, let us know in the comments, we'll get Kevin on another video. We'll maybe talk about a different model. I thought this was a lot of fun and I think we could do a lot of other stuff. I'd be happy to hear your recommendations for other watches and other brands and models that we can speak about. And again, happy to have you on here again. This is a lot of fun. Hopefully next time we could do it in person again, but if not, we'll settle for zoom if this worked out and you know, the production was okay on it. But thank you so much for being here. Like I said before, we will link Kevin's information in the description below. He is a wealth of knowledge and such an awesome, awesome person. Follow him on Instagram as well at they did. We'll put that as well. He posts some incredible watches from his personal collection and also for sale. Guys, thank you so much as always for watching. Really hope you enjoyed this one as much as Kevin and I probably enjoyed making it and talking about it because this is what we would have done, even if the cameras weren't rolling, but as always, thank you guys so much. And we'll see you on the next one.