Photo Report Jaeger-LeCoultre Arrives In London For The Collectibles Capsule VI

Photos courtesy of Georgia Griffiths.

This week, Jaeger-LeCoultre has pulled the covers off its latest The Collectibles capsule drop, including 12 vintage references dating from 1931 onwards, and most importantly, all certified and serviced by the maison itself. 

Now in its sixth edition, Jaeger-LeCoultre's The Collectibles capsule is one of the most interesting ways that a large watch brand is interacting with its heritage today (alongside Vacheron Constantin’s Les Collectionneurs and a similar program by Longines). The maison sources the watches, on the open market from both auctions and dealers, before bringing them back to its workshops in the Vallée de Joux, where each piece is sympathetically serviced. JLC have made an especially considered effort to not restore the watches by polishing cases or refinishing dials, but simply to certify their origins and get them running correctly, only adding replacement parts where necessary. These watches have kept their battle scars, patina, and heritage, and they’re much better for it.

It’s the celebration of heritage that makes Jaeger-LeCoultre such a treasure in the watch world, and while there are plenty of reasons a brand might hesitate to fully engage with its own past, I think that’s why The Collectibles program (and others like it) is such a great case study of how to educate collectors who have only experienced the modern catalogue, in a format where they can dip their toes into vintage without getting burnt. Given that each drop features a small number of pieces, I’d assume it’s not the most financially lucrative aspect of JLC’s business, but I think it only makes collectors appreciate JLC’s heritage even more.

Following the last Collectibles capsule that focused purely on the Reverso, this latest drop traces a broader lineage through JLC's archive to include the worlds of Memovoxes, Duoplans, and more complicated references. For Reverso fans, don’t worry, as there are still plenty of incredible Reversos included in the line-up.

We sat down at the Jaeger-LeCoultre flagship boutique on London’s Bond St – where the collection is currently on display – to chat with Arthur Courtois, JLC’s Product Manager, who walked us through the collection. Courtois is one of the team members who worked on putting this Collectibles capsule together, and explained how the brand treats The Collectibles as a labour of love to authenticate and service the pieces before offering them for sale. Included in this process is the team of watchmakers who work on these watches, who all require a minimum of seven years of experience within the maison to ensure the right balance of expertise and judgement required.

Let's get into it. 

This is where it all began for the Reverso: two first-year examples of the rectangular design from 1931, both with black dials that were highly unusual at the time. The larger 1931 Reverso wears quite beautifully on the wrist, while the 1931 Reverso Dame is sized down slightly. Despite looking like identical his and hers black dial Reversos at first, closer inspection of the dials and cases reveals a few scratches as remnants of a life well-lived. 

There are also subtle differences to the handsets and hour markers, with blued and radium-applied hands and a radium dial on the men's example, while the Dame has gilt hands. Looking closely at the Dame’s dial, I also noticed the faint outline of what looks like a retailer's signature at 6 o’clock, and while I wasn’t able to make it out clearly, the bottom line appears to say “Rome”, pointing towards it being an Italian-retailed piece. Flipping the caseback, we found the Reverso Dame bearing its original owner's initials, beautifully engraved and enamelled.

This is probably my pick of this Collectibles drop, arriving as a stunning glossy-black dial Reverso that introduced a central seconds hand and graduated subdial. By 1938, Jaeger-LeCoultre had started signing their Reversos with the brand's name instead of simply “Reverso”, offering a differentiation detail compared to the 1931 examples.

With a highly legible dial, this reference made it particularly easy for doctors to take pulse readings using the seconds display, leading to its nickname as the Doctor's Reverso. The condition is sumptuous, and the dial is super glossy with some creamy aged radium, while other delightful details include the stepped central dial.

This is one of the first two-tone Reversos ever made, using a gold reversing case inside a steel frame. With a small seconds subdial on a white dial, it's a departure from what the Reverso was born as, but it shows how JLC was evolving the Reverso in new directions with new materials.

So this one’s got quite the story. JLC discontinued the Reverso in the 1940s as rectangular watches fell out of favour with shifting tastes, leaving the Reverso as one of many chapters in JLC's history. Right as the quartz crisis was carving its way through the Swiss watch industry, JLC’s agent for Italy, Giorgio Corvo, stumbled across 200 unused Reverso cases from the final days of the model and decided it was time for one more Reverso. Fitting a movement holder to cradle the Calibre 840, Corvo made a hundred of both a white and a silver dial version, before managing to sell all 200 in less than three months. This runaway sales success is what revitalised JLC's appetite to reintroduce the Reverso into the permanent collection, where it remains today.

This is one of the 100 Corvo watches featuring a stunning white, ivory-toned dial with sparse, beautifully simple black hour markers and a single Jaeger-LeCoultre signature, while on the caseback is a gorgeous engraving with the phrase “there is hope in God” in Latin. Simply put, it’s one of the most important Reversos in existence.

This is a Reverso from the golden age when JLC was experimenting with complications in the Reverso line. Cased in white gold, inside is Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Calibre 823, a manually-wound movement with a power reserve, moonphase and 24-hour rotating aperture tracking the day-night cycle similar to an AM/PM indicator. The black dial is beautifully balanced in its layout, emblematic of 2000s design language, while mixed with a blend of Reverso Art-Deco flair. Plus, that gorgeous movement is on full display through a sapphire caseback.

To many collectors, this is the ultimate Reverso, yet most will struggle to tell you if they like the dial or display caseback more. Like the Sun Moon, it’s cased in white gold, but inside is the time-only Calibre 822 with a sub-second display and an extraordinarily finished salmon dial. We’re talking hand-guilloché vertical brushing mixed with circular patterns in the centre and even more guilloché in the subdial. To many, this is the most beautiful modern Reverso dial.

Flip it over, and things get even more impressive, with that Calibre 822 on display featuring blued screws and hand-engraved openwork bridges. This is some of the finest movement finishing anywhere, and so complex that JLC’s records show production capacity was 10 pieces per month.

Moving from Reversos to another watch equally emblematic of Jaeger-LeCoultre, let’s take a look at the Complete Calendar. As the inventors of the triple-calendar with moonphase, JLC produced these movements for a range of different watch brands, but in-house is where the complication began and was arguably perfected.

This 1946 example comes just two years after the complication first debuted and features a yellow gold case that was relatively large for its era, measuring 35mm in diameter. It was made exclusively for the French market, hence the French day and month, and the condition on this example is simply perfect, with just the right amount of patina that’s been preserved beautifully.

One area that JLC revolutionised through the Art-Deco period was cocktail watches, all thanks to its tiny Duoplan movements, which were first invented in 1925. The tiny movements allowed watch designers to experiment with combining watchmaking and jewellery in a totally new way, and this Duoplan Coulissante is an excellent example.

The tiny calibre is mounted in a yellow gold case with an integrated bracelet, and boasts a sliding mystery-cover over the dial and a backwind crown.

This is one of the most popular Memovox references, all down to that curious blue and white letter P on the Memovox alarm ring. Being alarm watches, Memovoxes provide a lot of utility, but that’s usually displayed quite subtly with a triangle pointing to the alarm time. What makes this Memovox interesting is its two-hour scale and big blue P on the alarm dial, which was designed for – you guessed it – saving owners from a parking fine.

The blue square and the P inside it really do interrupt the suave Memovox design, but that interruption is what makes this example such an alluring watch to collectors. I can only imagine what the Swiss designers were thinking when the parking meter brief landed on their desk from the Americans, especially when those designers, holed up in the Vallée de Joux, had probably scarcely seen a parking meter. This example really is a cracker, with great case condition and some lovely dial spotting and patina.

There’s nothing else quite like glossy vintage black dials, and this Memovox is one of the best out there. It’s over a decade younger than the Memovox Parking, and a lot had changed in that time, adding signatures to the twin crowns and a Calibre 825 automatic movement with date. It’s a little larger at 37mm and is fitted with an original Jaeger-LeCoultre Gay Frères bracelet.

In person, this one especially struck me because of how incredibly wearable it is. I love alarm watches, and with this nicely sized case and matching bracelet, it would be one hell of an addition to any collection.

This is one of the rarest of the Geomatics that JLC made, a watch line that set out to be one of the most advanced and accurate mechanical watches ever made. The Calibre K883S movement inside is one seriously impressive bit of kit, arriving with chronometer certification, automatic winding, 360 hours of power reserve (that's 15 days!), hacking seconds, shock resistance, and an instantaneously-jumping date.

It’s the follow-up to Jaeger-LeCoultre’s first chronometer-certified movement, which debuted in the Geophysic, which lived a short life of three years before the Geomatic was introduced. This example is even rarer than a Geophysic thanks to the yellow gold cushion case, of which just 200 examples were produced. It’s beautifully proportioned and shows some nice patina, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off that incredible caseback.

This Collectibles drop is currently on display in the brand’s flagship London boutique on Bond Street until July 18th, alongside an incredible display of Reversos, and is free to see. The watches in The Collectibles capsule are available for purchase worldwide; however, at the time of writing, they’re nearly all spoken for. The 1931 Reverso Dame is the lone piece still available, but don’t expect it to be hanging around for long.

You can learn more about The Collectibles here.