Fratello On Air: Vintage Watches, Auctions, And Heritage Departments

Assessing the state of affairs and what the future may hold

June 27, 2023

comments 2

Fratello On Air returns, and we talk about recent controversies related to vintage watches, auctions, and heritage departments. We spare our usual chit-chat in the beginning and loop in a watch-related sighting in an upcoming Christopher Nolan movie. If you like candid talk, we hope you enjoy today’s episode!

Handgelenks Kontrolle

Before talking about auctions and other related topics, we kick off with some discussion on Oppenheimer. The upcoming Christopher Nolan film about the atomic bomb looks fantastic. Balazs, however, has done some sleuthing and noticed that Robert Downey Jr. is wearing an interesting vintage chronograph. Could it be a Gallet? We’ll try to find out. For the Handgelenks Kontrolle, Mike has unearthed a ’60s chronometer-certified Omega Constellation 168.005. It’s a watch that will need to go into the regular rotation. Balazs, on the other wrist, is sporting his Benrus Sky Chief chronograph.

Vintage watches, auctions, and heritage departments

We kick off our discussion on auctions concerning the recent Omega announcement about a fraudulent Speedmaster sold in 2021. Then we discuss the effects on the vintage-watch market and what it could mean for collectors, auction houses, and heritage departments going forward. We also discuss transparency and the need for more of it during vintage-watch sales. As for help, the old-school forums are still a great place to ask questions. Finally, we also hope that questionable pieces in auction catalogs gain more coverage going forward to help warn would-be buyers.

We hope you enjoy today’s episode. If you have ideas for future shows, feel free to let us know!

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Fratello On Air: Vintage Watches, Auctions, And Heritage Departments

Transparency is definitely key going forward.
But I also think that the auction houses should be held more accountable, since as a buyer I put some trust in them.
After you mentioned that these cases should also raise questions around less valuable second hand watches, I started wondering how good a certified preowned program (not just the one by Rolex) can be. If a watch like that Omega gets so much coverage and only then it is uncovered that some parts are devious, how good are the people assessing the CPO watches at spotting inconsistencies?
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve a couple of Bucherer CPO watches with wrong labels or descriptions…

PhilGraves says:

Jun 29, 2023 at 13:48

On one hand if it is the top 0.01% screwing each other over with dodgy watches at auction why should I care? But then again, the fish rots from the head so this sort of bad practice should be called out.

What sticks in my throat it is the hypocrisy of a clique of self-proclaimed watch experts and auction houses peddling a veneer of respectability and expertise but then pleading ignorance and caveat emptor when they get caught out.

The idea of a big showy auction is simply to hype up the selling price and if auctioneer is going to take risk something like 20% of the hammer price then better not look to closely…

Was it not the case that J. Perez had a job at an auction house but was “let go” when he kept finding bad lots? So I might as well buy my Unicorn on the far more humble EBaY – at least they try to offer an authenticity guarantee.