Any thoughts on the quality of the brand? The 1948 Legacy GMT's look great, but I'm completely clueless about the brand. A forum search turned up a bunch of posts about vintage examples, which seem to be very well respected around here.

EDIT: I'm fairly new around here and just realized this should be in the "Other Watches" forum and not here. I tried to delete the thread but didn't see an ability to do so. Excuse my newbie mistake please.

 

I know Eterna was bought by a Chinese company a number of years ago but don't have personal experience dealing with the company or owning their contemporary watches. The Eterna of today bears little resemblance to the historic Eterna because, for example, the ETA movement division they created was sold already decades ago. It would be interesting to know what in-house capabilities the company has and what vintage intellectual property they still own besides the obvious things such as the Kontiki name.

 

Yeah, I think I'm going to pass. A little googling seems to find the opinion that they're essentially Chinese watches with the bare minimum of assembly and finishing to allow "swiss made" to go on the dial.

 

Eterna is Chinese owned but still are based in Switzerland. Their in house movement Calibre 39 is interesting but I don't have any experience with that. The company is in trouble though but grey market prices are great so it seems a lot of value for money.

 

you have a nice sum up of the movements on the net. I've always liked Eterna. Very underated brand.
https://eterna-movement.com/en/calibres/
I love the 3030

 

speaking of grey market pricing - you can get an Eterna Eternity automatic for $359 from ashford right now:

https://slickdeals.net/f/13522003-e...ee-shipping?src=SiteSearchV2_SearchBarV2Algo1

 

yes but it's not very insteresting because it has an sw200 I think. The legacy GMT is at 1400 (euros)? The Vaughan big date is at 1995 which is a very nice price for an in hous movement
pic :

 

I like the vintage and some modern Eternas but most of the modern are too big at 42mm+. Styling is suspect on quite a few imho but quality looks great. Reveil and 1948 granges all interesting but then I like dress watches. Royal kontiki non pvd finish might be a good tool watch. Spherodrive movement w 65 hrs pwr reserve is great but also militates to a thicker watch. Will be interesting to see if it is easy and cheap to service . Those w sw movements are less interesting to me.

Eterna Adventic w spherodrive is often a good deal.

 

i'm not up on the modern Eternas but I recall Eternas had a huge following back in the day in Israel as well as with some of my relatives on my mom's side. for some reason my older relatives as well as other Jewish friends and members of our community seemed to prefer that brand. mostly dress style watches from what I remember. I don't know why I remember this sort of stuff