Longines 3T(Tre Tacche) coming up on Phillips HK - BEWARE

vujen

Of course mine was just a comparison between important "things" (watches and cars) that have a different nature.

At no level anyway, I think it's a good move to put "new rules" in a thing (watches collecting) that was born when none of these companies cared about heritage (this is the reason why some companies don't have archives, some don't care, some just started to do something with their infos) and that basically grow up only with the passion of collectors.

Plus, I think it's quite naif to put rules on items that after 90 years were trades possibly hundreds of times.

I try to explain myself better:
If you buy a 3T in 2017 with its extract, or without it (and you ask it later), you buy a watch that was "correct", now in 2025 you ask Longines an extract and they said it's not.
So they are not reliable anymore, from my point of view.

Because the first thing we as collectors are thinking is: this is a built watch, put together from parts.
But maybe this watch was fixed 50 years ago from a local watchmaker, maybe this watch was serviced in Longines after 1 year of its original sale because water entered in it, maybe the original owner asked for a dial change, who knows. We definitely don't know. The problem is that now, a Longines watch without extract looks like a zero value watch. And I think this is not the correct way to see these items.

The only thing we know is that NOW Longines is saying that their old extracts are no longer valid. So basically they are saying they are not reliable anymore.
Question is: who tells us that 2025 extracts will be valid in 2030, at this point?

I think they are trying to make some money with people passion, instead of trying to build something new, they are putting themself as "referee", even if for 30-40 years of watches collecting, they didn't care at all.
I guess new model sales are not growing up so much....

vujen

this is the answer they gave me for a 4270 (mushroom 13zn) I asked for, a year ago.

1) they don't know exactly what dial style the watch must have - now, will they know in the future?
2) this watch SHOULD or MUST have "3 stars and 18 jewels" on the dial? The difference is fundamental, IMHO, and they are not giving us this information NOW. Maybe in the future?

Because if they know the dial style now, they knew it in the past too, and why did they decide not to share it with collectors?

So I, as a collector, have to think that maybe what you are saying now to me, will be not valid anymore in a couple of years.

And who will be the only category of people who will be harmed by this attitude? The dealers who sell watches or collectors who keep them in their collections?

SWmania

4) Longines changing policies - may hurt some people's feelings, but I still think that their old extract was demonstrating just the fact that movement and case matched, and people needed to understand this from the start, yet I think that some were led to believe that a watch with an extract was kosher and all good. I think this needed to be amended.