Whether they're fine and elegant, strange or weird, or just plain ugly, they're all nice...
Thanks for visiting. If you want to skip this intro, you can and just go to the watches. This site is dedicated to vintage wristwatches, mainly a display of interesting and unusual pictures of my watch 'collection' and accompanying text. What is vintage? Please see explanation of the term 'vintage.' Most are fine-looking watches with only a very few ugly ones. You will also find descriptions, diagrams, old watch ads, a little history, and maybe a few urban legends.The site is meant to be relaxing and pleasurable, and I encourage you to bookmark it so you can view the pages at your leisure. It is best to view the site as it is laid out in order, on the following pages. (But if you wish, you can go to the INDEX PAGE, which lists all the pages in the site. Here, you can search for watch brands or topics, but I don't recommend viewing the entire site in that manner.) Don't forget the Special Pages, and What's New Click the button above or below to just go to the beginning of the tour. Page order is linear, and at the bottom or top of each page you can click to go to the next numbered page. There are also many un-numbered offshoot pages from internal links in the site. These are end pages, and you need to use the browser back button.
Try to visit these additional pages, as you might find them interesting.
I'm Alan, from Chicago, and I like vintage wristwatches. While I like a fine watch movement, I can be persuaded to buy a watch based on its visual appeal if I really enjoy the dial and the overall look, even if the movement is nothing special. My interest is both aesthetic and technical. I buy watches to wear and enjoy them, and if I find that I don't wear a watch frequently enough it doesen't stay around long. I have tried to render and image my watches in ways I hope you find unique, interesting and enjoyable.
Please make sure to see the What's New ? section. This is a page with many pagelinks of watches, not incorporated into the main site pages yet. I recommend checking it out, as there are some of my better, and more unusual watches.
All of my watches are working mechanical wristwatches, manual wind or automatic. Most have conventional Swiss anchor escapements and movements; though I have Japanese, American and Russian watches as well. They're from the 1920s through the '70s. Most are from the '40s, '50s and '60s. Recently I have purchased a few new mechanical watches, but mostly my watches are older.
A few of my watches are 'no-name' or 'low-name' vintage watches, but they look great, run well, and have character. Some of my watches are military-inspired, having a look and design based on technical requirements, but I am not militaristic, I just like the watches. I just really like watches.
Many of the pictures were taken with a Sony DSC 70 digital camera; when I first started this site, all the pics were taken with a Nikon N70 camera, a 35-80 zoom lens, with three stacked Tiffen magnification lenses. I have since replaced some of the watch pictures with digital shots. If you have a standard film camera, you can get good results with mag lenses. These lenses are inexpensive, and achieve almost the same degree of clarity as a macro zoom lens. Improvised lighting was used, including sunlight and ordinary household lighting.
Thanks for visiting. I hope you will like it. Alan.
