Daaaang you all have some beautiful UG examples. Personally I don’t recall where or when, other than that the internet and digging into Gerald Genta’s history led me to discover Polerouters and micro rotors. It still took 10+ years after that for me to get my one UG watch: the Sub that was my grail for ages!
That is stunning 😲
Have had them for ten years. Waiting for the right donor watch...
edit. Mobile cameras has come a long way since then - pics ten years old.
This one?
Anyway, it's my turn to answer the original question. As some of you may know, I spend most of my time on TZ-UK and one event I remember at the beginning of my tenure was the way the collection belonging to a deceased forum member, Tom Gilham, was handled on behalf of the widow. It was this Golden Shadow that seized my attention but I stupidly hemmed and hawed and missed it.
You can read about it here:
https://forum.tz-uk.com/showthread.php?73863-Toms-18ct-Universal-Geneve-gt-OHPF-lt
I spent a couple of years begging the buyer to sell it to me but, apparently, his wife subsequently fell in love with it. Anyway, three and half years later I was able to fill the hole and obviously have picked up a few other UGs along the way.
https://forum.tz-uk.com/showthread....en-Shadow-end-of-a-three-and-a-half-year-wait
My road to UG was interesting. This is a longish story, but I think you’ll find it pretty neat also.
I was a few years into my vintage watch hobby, that started with my grandfather gifting me his old Rolex before his passing. This set me down a Rolex-centric vintage path.
One day, I bought an old garage sale lot of watchmaker stuff (naturally looking for old Rolex stuff, but I struck out on that brand). However, in a Rolex tin, was an old Omega. Even though I was “young” in my hobby and the only brand I had studied was vintage Rolex, I knew it would be special.
That night, I went to the omega forum to learn about my new find, which immediately exposed me to UGs.
I told one of my lifelong buddies (who had moved to a much larger city after college) about my find, and encouraged him to look in his own city.
Well, his third stop in his entire watch hunting life was at a little watchmaker storefront in his neighborhood (he drove past it every day for years). He sent me these pics and asked if he should buy:
Oddly, I had just -the day before- seen that same model on OF (omega forums 😉 ). I quickly calculated the risk that this neighborhood watchmaker would have a crazily rare, oddball niche brand, and clearly decades’ old, fake in his desk drawer. It had been sitting around for a long time. I immediately urged my friend to buy it. He did, and the watchmaker reassembled it, and sent them on their way.
He got it home, got some other photos, and called his dad to tell him about this crazy watch find. His dad, a retired manager at an enormous petrochemical refinery and decidedly NOT a watch guy, said “what brand is it? You know what, my parents gave me a watch from them years ago. I think I still have it, I’ll text you a photo when I find it.” He found it in his sock drawer, and sent this picture:
We sent them both off for service and here they are upon their return:
That was my intro to UG. About six months later, I found a nearly perfect evil Nina in a pawn shop.
No luck since then. I’m looking for a UG Chrono that is oversized—38-40mm? I didn’t really care for how the 36mm wore. The hunt continues.
My road to UG was interesting. This is a longish story, but I think you’ll find it pretty neat also.
I was a few years into my vintage watch hobby, that started with my grandfather gifting me his old Rolex before his passing. This set me down a Rolex-centric vintage path.
One day, I bought an old garage sale lot of watchmaker stuff (naturally looking for old Rolex stuff, but I struck out on that brand). However, in a Rolex tin, was an old Omega. Even though I was “young” in my hobby and the only brand I had studied was vintage Rolex, I knew it would be special.
That night, I went to the omega forum to learn about my new find, which immediately exposed me to UGs.
I told one of my lifelong buddies (who had moved to a much larger city after college) about my find, and encouraged him to look in his own city.
Well, his third stop in his entire watch hunting life was at a little watchmaker storefront in his neighborhood (he drove past it every day for years). He sent me these pics and asked if he should buy:
Oddly, I had just -the day before- seen that same model on OF (omega forums 😉 ). I quickly calculated the risk that this neighborhood watchmaker would have a crazily rare, oddball niche brand, and clearly decades’ old, fake in his desk drawer. It had been sitting around for a long time. I immediately urged my friend to buy it. He did, and the watchmaker reassembled it, and sent them on their way.
He got it home, got some other photos, and called his dad to tell him about this crazy watch find. His dad, a retired manager at an enormous petrochemical refinery and decidedly NOT a watch guy, said “what brand is it? You know what, my parents gave me a watch from them years ago. I think I still have it, I’ll text you a photo when I find it.” He found it in his sock drawer, and sent this picture:
We sent them both off for service and here they are upon their return:
That was my intro to UG. About six months later, I found a nearly perfect evil Nina in a pawn shop.
No luck since then. I’m looking for a UG Chrono that is oversized—38-40mm? I didn’t really care for how the 36mm wore. The hunt continues.
