Pocket watch

[colinderksen]

Looking for a vintage working pocket watch. Does anywhere local have these? Not really sure where to look, ebay seems a bit sketchy. Other than hitting up every vintage store, I'm not to sure where to go?

Any help would be great

[flipstah]

I found mine in Kijiji but it took a lot of searching and hunting

[XylathaneGTR]

Anything specific that you're looking for? Do you want actual vintage or just 'vintage looking?'
When I was looking, I just started hitting up antique stores and such. that will be your best bet for a vintage watch if you don't want to do anything online. Regardless of the case, you're probably going to have to put in some effort if you want to find something actually vintage.

Every estate sale I've been to has had at least a few pocket watches, so that's another option for you, too.

For what it's worth, I found mine at a random antique shop in Brussels.

[LionelMartin]

It all depends on what you would define vintage to mean and what kind of pocket watch you want.

Here are a few suggestions:

As put forth in an earlier post, vintage could mean pre-1920's or just the "vintage" look.

I own a few vintage pocket watches (pre-1920) and to be frank they are not cheap to buy or cheap to own. A good one will run you $600-$2000 (multiply that by 10 if you want a repeater).

I do own one that I purchased from ebay. To do that I would suggest being very well researched in terms of what you are buying. The particular piece that I purchased was a le coultre of the jaeger and le coultre fame.

I knew the particular movement the watch ran very well and I knew where in Calgary I could have it serviced.

If you do decide to go the ebay route, research your time piece very well (there are a multitude of horological geeks out on the internet that will help).

For example, during that time period in which I purchased my piece: le coultre, a lange and sohne, and patek all had particular in house movements which meant that they didn't outsource any of their movements or components which means continuity and most likely a singular watchmaker put it together. Quality would be high.

Also movements have numbers and calibres associated with them to differenciate complexity. The same would be a Ford V8 vs a Ferarri V8. I don't need to tell you which one is more engineered. Know which movement or calibre of watch you want to buy and read up on it.

The second thing to think about when buying a vintage pocket watch would be servicing. This needs to be done every year or two or you risk damaging components that in some cases are not replaceable.

Yes you read that right.. in some cases with vintage pocket watches components are not replaceable.

They need to be made from scratch or another similar component finessed in. That being said, that is why you research your pocket watch well. For example Jaegar has and always will have a vast catalog of components for every timepiece they have ever made.

Patek is rumored to have a similar back catalog as well but I have never been able to have anyone confirm it.

Servicing is not cheap.. an average service can run upwards of $300. With vintage pocket watches comes complexity whether it is running 17 jewels or 26 Jewels or even 5 jewels there will be friction and after 100 years parts will wear out.

If you have any questions by all means PM me or post a question here. I've been through the trials and tribulations of vintage timepiece ownership and am more than willing to give any advice that I can.

Good luck..