Bring a Loupe A Breguet's Breguet, A LIP Chronograph, An IWC Aquatimer & A Boucheron Carree

Scorekeeping last week's picks: the Orvis Solunagraph auctions next Thursday, the Patek 5107 sold for €13,500, and the Omega DeVille Emerald sold for US$650.

Your affordable vintage diver of the week is from that least-loved of brands, Invicta. Yes, Invicta is a punchline now, but their vintage stuff can offer surprises. Here's Alan Bean's personal BA 145.022-69, for all you space cadets, and here's a trio of early electronic Wittnauers that will be 'fun' for someone, depending on how capacious their definition of fun is, given that the watches are listed as not currently running. This gold chronograph from Juvenia felt, on first seeing it, like the most charming watch I'd find this week, but then there's this incredible Zenith purse watch, which takes the cake charm-wise.

For all you Pogue heads (the watch/astronaut, not the band), neither of these are 'true' pogues, in that they're both 6139-6002s, but both look great, and Seiko 6139s are great fun. Finally, I covered a circular gold Gubelin triple-date moonphase a while back, and my desire not to bore you precludes me from a full write-up of this outrageously clean rectangular stainless steel iteration of a watch with the same complications, but please, someone, pull that trigger.

Stainless steel Breguet triple-date chronographs with moon phase aren't direly uncommon, but they're pretty scarce. A similar example, offered by Phillips in 2018, was covered here and sold then for CHF 131,250. Christie's sold another the next year for CHF 300,000, then sold another in 2022 for CHF 176,400.

The difference between those watches and this one, aside from the fact that all those had cleaner dials, is provenance: the present watch comes from the collection of Emmanuel Breguet himself, VP and head of patrimony at Montres Breguet and a relative of the inventor of the tourbillon itself. In terms of pedigree, it'd be hard to get more horologically significant.

The dream would be a flawless, collector-grade watch, which this one is not. The dial's flaws, while not overwhelming, are a detraction. That said, as noted above, this particular watch is, in and of itself, uncommon enough to merit overlooking small issues, and then there's the provenance to consider, meaning how one comes down on this one feels like a Rubin vase.

Beyond the dial and unlumed dauphine hands, the case itself looks to be in fairly good shape, with clear caseback etching. Given how prominently the lineage of the watch is noted in the listing (and, in fairness, in this write-up), it's hard to know what the watch, as a watch, is worth. What's the value of owning a Breguet's Breguet? This watch comes up for auction next Friday, on the 23rd, with an estimate of €80,000-160,000, so we will all find out then.

This specific reference was covered in some depth here in 2017, which does nothing but complicate whatever anyone might think about this example. While Mr Westphalen adroitly covered the reference and the specifics of his research, the watch under consideration doesn't quite align with either of the examples he wrote about owning.

I'll leave intrepid readers to go deeper into the weeds, though it's worth recalling that, as mentioned last week, LIP was struggling existentially in the 1970s. Given those struggles, I suspect any desire for clarity regarding specific details denoting various marks of various models is probably a bit of a lost cause. I'd be willing to bet this watch is original and was made with the parts available, with little consideration that it would, someday, merit such coverage and consideration.

The watch itself is, I'd argue, worth a look regardless of the history of LIP and its fluidity regarding hands and cases. The plated case measures 36mm and has sharp, defined lugs, and while there's a ding at the bottom of the bezel between 5 and 6, the case otherwise presents well. Still, you're really here for the dial and hands, which ultimately complicate everything even more. Specifically, that subdial for the running seconds at 9 and the LIP logo are both smudgy, as if the dial was originally overprinted poorly.

The black hand on the 9 o'clock subdial doesn't feel like it should be correct given Mr Westphalen's article above, but examples with similar hand configurations have sold. The correct blue hour and minute hands look great, and the chronograph second and minute hands have faded to a very light orange. The Valjoux 7733 powering the watch is in need of care, given the chronograph isn't functioning, but those movements are common enough that a competent watchmaker should be able to have this running fairly easily.

The watch sells next Thursday with a laughable €500-800 estimate, and if this LIP chronograph doesn't quite do it for you, here's an even less common LIP ref. 765, a Breitling in all but name.

That the IWC Aquatimer is still a model in the contemporary lineup makes it worth looking at the reference that began it all, but the truth is this watch is worth covering simply for its beauty. First things first, yes, it is a classic ESPA-cased super compressor from the 1960s, and such watches are plentiful and, on average, pretty great. If you love the looks of this but want a more reasonable option, plenty of brands, including Hamilton and Bulova, have made watches that are strikingly similar.

The Aquatimer reference 812 was the first dive watch made by IWC, and came fairly late in the game, dive-watch-wise, introduced in 1967. With water resistance up to 20 ATM, the watch kept up with most of the rest of the dive market then. The 37mm case is, like many of the compressor-cased watches of the time, a bit on the stubby side given the short lugs, but this example looks clean, and the original IWC crown should offer comfort that this has neither a) lived too rough a life nor b) had much work done.

This specific Aquatimer's selling point, however, is the dial, hands, and internal rotating bezel. While IWC eventually offered four different dial and bezel configurations, this is the earliest and purest: a black bezel on a black dial. The lume is of particular note, not just for how evenly it's aged across plots and hands, but that the hands, which have a lot of the stuff, seem to show no cracks in the lume. I know of no official record of Coolest Hands on Watches, but certainly the paddle-ended seconds hand on the IWC 812 would rank somewhere toward the top twenty or so.

While the listing doesn't note the movement, the watch should be powered by an IWC calibre 8541, an excellent automatic with a Breguet overcoil and the same movement you'll find in Ingenieurs of the same time. The watch doesn't come on its original bracelet, which is a shame, but that fact also may help keep this slightly more affordable. With an estimate of €5,000-5,500, the watch auctions next Thursday in Spain.

Let's finish with a real mystery watch. You've read about Boucheron in the past, but they remain an understudied brand, meaning it's anything but easy to find comparisons or to ascertain quite what you're even looking at, sometimes. Plus, there's the fact that Boucheron watches are principally jewellery watches. Whatever horological heft they're packing, they are style/design forward.

Here is a mid-60s white gold Boucheron Carree with a huge stylized hand-painted B at the center of the dial. Coming upon this watch, it's fair to want to find other examples as confirmation of its authenticity, and that's where things get tricky. There's another Carree—this one yellow gold—with the same style dial, but it's being offered by the same dealer. I found one other white gold Boucheron with the same style dial, which made me somewhat more confident, but it wasn't till I messaged Mr Fordon himself (author of the Boucheron article above) and he showed his own example of a Boucheron with a similar dial that I felt (mostly) comfortable.

Okay, preamble stuff aside, this is just a legitimately cool watch. Even overlooking the un-overlookable B at the centre of the dial, the applied hour markers are lovely, especially the XII up top. The case is tiny, only 24x28mm, but it's white gold, unpolished, and looks fantastic, and the caseback etching is clear. Unsurprisingly, this Carree uses a similar mechanism for changing the strap as you'd find on other Reflets of the time, in which a post slides out from the top and bottom of the watch.

Available from High End Time for US$9,150, this is what you buy when you really, truly want to own a watch you're unlikely to ever find on anyone else's wrist, and there's something pretty fetching about a watch that somehow manages to look and feel extraordinarily refined with just a dash of the hand-made.