If You Ever (IYE) Decide to Collect Vintage Watches - Vol. II

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As I mentioned in Volume I of this series, my collection was focused on American watches from the 1920’s through the 1940’s. No watch collection in this timeframe is complete without a few Hamiltons. The Hamilton Watch Company of this earlier era wasn’t the same company that’s in existence today. Modern Hamilton’s are mass produced by the Swiss conglomerate, The Swatch Group LTD.

The Hamilton Watch Company of the earlier era was based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and they represented the pinnacle of American watchmaking. Hamilton was often referred to as the American equivalent of Patek Phillipe, the world’s premier Swiss watchmaker. Every piece of the watches Hamilton produced until the early-1960’s were handmade in their own factory.

Hamilton’s attention to detail was unrivaled and they were brilliant at marketing. Hamilton produced many of their higher-end models in low production numbers and in various precious metals (sterling silver, white gold, yellow gold, and even platinum) insuring their future collectability. Sadly, during the spike in the price of gold in the 1980’s, many of the solid gold watch cases were melted down for scrap gold making the survivors even more rare.

Part of the draw of collecting anything is being able to geek out on the minute details of the items in your collection and the thrill you feel in attaining that ultimate rarity. What you find after a few years of collecting is the search is never really over. I was lucky enough to own a couple “grail watches” in my years of active collecting. Grail watches are models that are so rare that you almost never see them come up for sale.

1935 Hamilton Rutledge

The Hamilton Rutledge was one of the most rare grail watches of them all and I was lucky enough to acquire one in 2006. The Rutledge was elegant but not overly showy and retailed for $175 during the height of the Great Depression. To put this price tag into perspective, the average annual income in 1935 was around $470. Clearly this was a watch for either the robber-barons or gangsters of the day.

One of the many things that attracted me to this watch was the stealthiness of it. The case was made of platinum but to someone who didn’t know this it could have easily passed for brushed stainless steel. Many of these were polished to a mirror shine after they were purchased to look like white gold, it makes me sad to see this because the matte brushed factory finish looks so much better in my opinion.

The Rutledge I found was flawless and still had the factory brush marks in the platinum. The applied numerals set on the sterling silver dial were stamped out of 18k White Gold.

The Rutledge was powered by Hamilton’s 19 jewel model 982 movement which kept amazingly accurate time and ran for almost a day and a half on one wind.

Unfortunately, financial setbacks associated with the Housing Crisis of 2008, which I detailed in my article -- Wall Street Failed Me, Crypto-Currency Set Me Free, forced me to sell this Rutledge and most of the grails in my collection. The watch, after just three years of ownership, nearly doubled in value. Ironically, a real estate profit allowed me to begin collecting and the same market forced me to stop. Reselling most of my watch collection played a major role in saving us from financial ruin during the Housing Crisis.

Even though I no longer collect, if I could own any vintage watch in existence it would be the Rutledge. One day I might be lucky enough to find one again. There are probably less than a dozen examples left on the planet so I’m sure that I’ll pay much more than I did for the first one in 2006.

Despite their rarity, if you could find a Rutledge on the market today it would probably retail for less than a new stainless steel Rolex Submariner. This is just an example of the value to be had in collecting vintage watches.

1949 Hamilton Donald

Since I ceased active collecting in 2011, I’ve only kept a few vintage watches from my original collection. One of them is a solid yellow gold 1949 Hamilton Donald with a 19 jewel model 982 medallion movement. Most of these Donald's were sold with silver dials similar to the Rutledge, making this black-faced model somewhat rare.

This medallion movement was an updated version of the 982 in the Rutledge. In my opinion, this movement represented the peak era of the company. Fierce competition from the Swiss in the 1950's and, later, the Japanese forced Hamilton to manufacture cheaper watches. As you can see from the picture below, the later version of the movement has the same parts but was just dressed up with vertical etching, the gold medallion inlay, and gold plating.

One thing that spoke to how much craftsmanship meant to this generation is how much work went into the esthetics of the watch movements even though they would only be seen every three to five years by a watchmaker doing a regular service which included cleaning, oiling, and retiming.

See the small oval in the upper right-hand corner of this movement? It's struck in 14k gold and countersunk into the movement plate.

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Stay tuned for Vol. III of (IYE) Decide to Collect Vintage Watches where I’ll delve ever deeper into the rabbit hole of watch collecting and share more of the timepieces in my collection.

Did you miss Volume I of this series? If so Click Here to catch up.

Do you have any questions about watch collecting? If so feel free to leave them in the comments below.

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