Bring a Loupe The Aussie Edit - A Railway-Issued Omega Admiralty, A Tudor Mini-Sub & A Cartier Pasha Desk Clock

In many ways, the Australian vintage watch market is reflective of our culture itself, imbued with a no-nonsense, love of hard yakka attitude that would probably smack me upside the head if it heard me use the word “imbued”. The watches we wore were equally straightforward and built for proper work, usually water-resistant to survive the inevitable swim at the end of a hot summer's day. As such, the market regularly serves up a bevy of beaten-up Seamasters, some extraordinary Seikos and lots of Enicars (which were sold in mail-order catalogues here).

Don’t get it twisted, though. Australian collectors have rich tastes also - a Patek Phillipe 1518 in steel lived in Australia for a number of years - but if you peruse our vintage watch shops, you’re much more likely to find a Nivada Grenchen Depthmaster than a Franck Muller Master Banker. Now you’ve got a taste for what the Australian vintage watch market is like, let’s check out some gems currently in need of new wrists (and desks).

What better place to kick off this Australian edition of Bring A Loupe than an Australian-issued watch? The Admiralty is an oft-forgotten pocket of Omega’s 1960s toolwatch lineup that was more affordable given its simple time-only manually-wound movement and simple 35mm case. As Omega had supplied pocket watches to Queensland Rail since 1947, the Admiralty became the perfect choice to issue timepieces once wristwatches were needed.

From late 1969 to the late 1970s, Queensland Rail issued their train drivers with Omega Admiralties engraved with the Queensland Rail 'QR' logo on the back and an individual issue number. They all featured standard-production brown dials marked with strong Arabic numerals and the Admiralty anchor in orange, matching an orange seconds hand in vein with Omega Chronostop or Speedmaster Ultramen from the same era. Whilst brown dials aren’t the most common Admiralty variants, they were standard production, so the only change that makes a Queensland Rail-issued Admiralty special is the caseback engraving.

However, if rarity is what you seek, then a Queensland Rail-issued Admiralty has it in spades. Noted Australian watchmaker Nicholas Hacko tracked one down for himself in 2019 and was able to find a total of just 3 of these watches surviving in private hands. Since then, another has popped up on the forums, and Vintage Watch Co sold another, the highest caseback number known being 451. How many survived daily service on the railroad is anyone's guess, though it's clear just a handful were smuggled out of Queensland Rail’s hands into private ownership, this example from Crown Vintage being one of them.

History lesson over: to get down into the nitty-gritty of this specific watch, its caseback engraving is still very strong and is marked number 343. The case has sharp edges and some hairline scratches, indicating it has not been heavily polished, and the listing mentions it comes with a bracelet, though it isn’t present in the listing photos. The listing also states the dial has gone slightly tropical, though judging by the listing photos, I can’t see a change in the dial's colour.

It's in good condition, presenting consistent lume patina with no damage. I’ve no doubt the harsh Queensland sun will cook a dial, so maybe in person the watch does have some tropical tones the photos haven’t captured. It’s priced at A$3,650, a touch over if not at parity with other good condition Admiralties that aren’t one of the very rare QR-issued pieces.

Honey, I shrunk the Submariner! That would have been a fresh reference when this Tudor Mini-Sub was made in 1993, so you can let me get away with it. The Mini-Sub is one of those watches that bends the mind a little, because we’re all so familiar with the size of a vintage Rolex or Tudor Submariner, so seeing a miniature one is a surprise at first.

Tudor introduced the Mini-Sub for the Asian market with a 33mm case in 1981, producing them until 2001 alongside an even more shrunken-down 26mm Lady-Sub. With the small watch revival in full swing, the Tudor Mini-Subs are finally seeing some appreciation and the ref. 73090 feels like the sweet spot, delivering all that collectors love about a vintage Tudor Submariner in a smaller package: a matte dial, aluminium bidirectional bezel, hollow endlink jingly-jangly bracelets, but still all the functionality of its bigger brother with a 200 metre water resistance rating.

Melbourne-based dealer Wristory have this Mini-Sub up for grabs at A$6,888. It's been recently serviced by Rolex, though judging by the photos, the case and bracelet appear to have seen a bit of a polish. Also worth noting is some light water damage to the dial around 1 o’clock and the 8 o’clock lume plot. Priced a tad on the higher side, it still represents quite a lot of watch for the money in a market that's continuing to appreciate the magic of smaller, previously unappreciated vintage tool watches like this one.

Since we’re all talking about pocket watches and desk clocks this week, let's take a look at another desk clock that packs a little more of a punch than that certain Swatch on everybody's lips. Following the Pasha de Cartier’s monumental rise as an object representative of 80s excess, Cartier built a table clock drawing design inspiration from the wrist-worn Pasha ref. 30002.

At 110mm, it's an imposing hunk of gold-plated steel for any desk or table, displaying the time, day, date, 24-hour indication and moonphase, powered by a quartz movement. I love the little details across this clock, like the concave bezel with inlaid blue numerals, the Pasha-style lugs at 6 and 12 and the fact that all five of the setting crowns feature the signature Cartier sapphire cabochon, only seen if you lift the clock up to view the underside.

Based in Melbourne, Mister Wolf Time has this example listed for A$2,250, and though it features some light pitting to the gold plating on the case, it’s well priced against comparable references currently on the market. Whilst an AP x Swatch desk clock would probably garner some attention in your office, whacking down this nearly 1kg Cartier Pasha clock on the desk at your co-working space would probably raise even more eyebrows. Pair it with a double-breasted suit with wide lapels and a fat cigar for full effect.

Here’s one you don’t see every day, though given the ultra-low production numbers, that's hardly surprising. Lemania have a long history of supplying chronographs to the military, including Royal Australian Air Force pilots and Royal Navy sailors. Black dials, white dials, as is expected with military-issued chronographs, it's all quite uniform, though this white-dialled Monopusher has a trick up its sleeve. Unlike the standard pilots and sailors' chronographs, this example is one of the minuscule number of Lemanias issued to Royal Navy nuclear submariners, destined for the bottom of the ocean during the height of the Cold War.

So what differentiates them? No lume. When you’re 20,000 leagues under the sea, and the only thing keeping you alive is a nuclear reactor, that reactor leaking is the last thing you want, so nuclear submarines are fitted with a vast array of radiation sensors keeping eyes and ears out for a leak. As such, no nuclear material was allowed onboard that would trigger the alarms, including the radium used for a standard Lemania's hands and numerals. This Lemania counteracts the lack of lume that would have come in handy in a dark and cramped nuclear sub by cranking the contrast up with a stark white dial and inky black hands and numerals, not forgetting the all-important broad-arrow denoting that it's property of The Crown (and we're not talking Rolex here).

Production numbers are uncertain, though you can rest assured that only the high-ranking members of a sub crew would have been issued a watch. Therefore, experts estimate no more than 50-75 were issued across series 2 or 3 Lemania Monopusher case designs, most in the longer-running Series 3 with an asymmetric case to protect the pusher and crown. Furthermore, many had dials swapped out or the all-important 3312 caseback marking (denoting non-radiation) scrubbed off. How many Series 2s survived intact? Probably around a dozen.

Vintage Watch Co have got this Series 2 Nuclear Sub Lemania up for grabs at A$15,000, and it's all pukka: correct unscrubbed caseback, correct dial and handset, all in really nice condition. The case looks like it may have seen a light polish at one stage, though the case lines are still nice and sharp. I’ve been lucky enough to handle a few of these in person and can tell you they wear seriously well on a vintage Bonklip bracelet, so whoever ends up with this chrono has an incredibly rare and very wearable piece of watchmaking history.