Vintage watches are always extremely attractive to watch-enthusiasts, and high-valued like any other kind of antique. However, buying a good vintage watch is not easy, even when you have a high budget. In my opinion, this is not for beginners.
The battle with dealers – Even when you won, you didn’t win as much as you think!
When it comes to buying vintage watches, every transaction is a war between the purchaser and the dealer. Unfortunately, most of the times, you won’t win as much as you think, no matter how experienced and careful you are! Imperfection should be expected, after a short time of using, you might discover something about the watch that you didn’t know. Just make sure the most important parts of the watch are still in good condition, and ignore other tiny flaws!
Outdated technology – Is it an inconvenience to you?
Although horology didn’t rapidly evolved like other kinds of technologies, it has certainly made a lot of big steps over decades. Thus, a vintage watch may be inferior to a modern one in terms of accuracy, water resistance, power reserve, lume… No matter how well a vintage timepiece was made, inconvenience seems to be inevitable. Things would get even more complicated when you buy a vintage dive watch, because the standards & using purpose of this watch type have changed a lot overtime.
You have to re-lume it
Dive watches of previous decades used some kinds of radio-active substances to provide light in the dark. These substances couldn’t live forever, their half-life are usually over 10 years, which means a dive watch of decades ago cannot provide any lume now. You have to pay an extra money to re-lume it, a vintage diving piece now has something “new” on its dial.
Verdict
As mentioned above, buying a vintage dive watch is not so easy as it sounds, but if you got addicted to this type of watch, just buy it, I know the feeling of loving a watch, it’s hard to resist. Vintage timepieces are always very attractive to most of watch-enthusiasts. Their uniqueness make them even more valuable. Try to minimize the risk and collect as much information of the targeted watch as possible, and you will have a high chance of buying a right vintage dive watch!
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