Anyone know anything about the Baylor brand? Anyone own one? I just won this one on eBay but can't seem to find anything about this reference online. Would love to learn more about it if anyone has any information.
All I've found is they where the inhouse brand for Zales a large Jewelry store chain from the 50's-79ish. A rumor states at some point they purchased alot of non chrono watches from Heuer, when Heuer decided to focus on chronohraphs. There are some Heuer/Baylor dual branded watches out there. https://www.tradesy.com/accessories...-automatic-1950-swiss-made-watch-q2-16076251/ ZOA was the code for Baylor watches, and means little to nothing. But the movement is an AS 1581 or one of the very closely related like a 1628/1641/1665/1701 http://www.ranfft.de/cgi-bin/bidfun-db.cgi?10&ranfft&&2uswk&AS_1581 which is also in some of the co branded
I've only ever found links to the Zales story and possible Heuer connections too. I remember things got rather heated on TZ-UK a few years ago about the Heuer / Baylor (non?) connection. Old pictures of my 'Camaro-esque' Baylor.
Pretty cool thanks for the information everyone. Nice watch @Emeister. That Heuer connection is pretty cool. Hopefully this watch will make a nice beater to rest the Omegas.
I have a Baylor alarm watch which belonged to my grandfather. Has an AS 1475 movement and looks pretty groovy! I love the squiggly alarm hand. The movement looks great despite being stored in a humid basement in Hawai'i for god knows how long
Seems like a solid piece for general wear and definitely not something seen every day. I seem to recall many Zales personnel back in that era were career employees, akin to Tiffany’s, Macy’s, etc; so if you can find one they might have more info as well.
Baylor made some interesting designs....I picked up this "Neptune" a couple months ago....compressor case....AS-1903 movement....keeps good time.
I bought a nice Baylor around 1970 at a Zale's jewelers that had a half price sale. I'd gone there to buy my mom a gold Timex electric watch for her birthday. IIRC the Baylor had a GMT bezel. I removed it , which apparently was not uncommon to owners at the time. I found that George C Scott removed a GMT bezel from the watch he wore in Dr Strangelove. The watch looked so much better without it I never thought about putting it back on. I may still have it somewhere. I sold the watch to a friend about twelve years later for $25. Been meaning to look him up to see if he still has it. Was just now trying to find an image of the exact model I had with no luck.
Picked up my own Baylor from my local watch shop. Manual wind. It won out over an old Benrus automatic. Case size a little too small. Oh well.