Goof morning from South Africa everybody.
I'm a lifelong watch collector and although I've watched and read many, many other threads here over the years this is my very first post, so please bear with me.
Thirty years ago this June I bought my first 'serious' watch, a Rolex sub-mariner, and since then many fine pieces have come my way but nothing compares with this "one of a kind" - I love it to bits and 'bought' it blind...here's the story....
Have lived and worked here in South Africa since 2005 and, since my so-called retirement two years ago, have scoured the country in search of rare books and rare watches. In November last year, whilst rummaging around in an antique shop in the rural Eastern Cape town of Uitenhage, the owner's son, a pawnbroker, showed me something quite extraordinary. It was, he said, a sad victim of the Covid-19 pandemic; a movement from a solid gold Omega De Ville co-axial chronometer, the body from which, due to a financial crisis, had been sold to him by the unhappy owner for scrap - yes scrap !
The movement, hands and crown were in a small ziplock plastic bag, he made no guarantee that it would ever work again but offered it to me for one thousand Rand - approx £50/$65. How could I refuse - but what to do next ?
Wind the clock back over thirty years and it seems there was, and maybe still is, a watch-making degree course in Switzerland a sort of degree-apprenticeship if I have understood things correctly.
Apparently upon enrollment the student submits a design for a watch that, over the next 5 years, he will make piece by piece and submit at the end of his course for final approval and graduation.
The student might start off learning how to make hands, a dial, crown etc and slowly make his way over the next 5 years through each and every department assembling the various parts for his final submission along the way.
Low and behold I found such a graduate not far from where I live - and he agreed to make me a one-off to be proud of on condition that I left the design entirely in his capable hands. That was a risk, of course, but he asked for no money upfront and merely said that if I didn't like the end result I didn't need to pay for it and he would reimburse me for the cost of the movement. We struck a compromise wherein I sent him an image of how I'd like the final result to turn out and he got back to me the same day saying, words to the effect of, "You can obviously read minds because this is almost precisely the way I have been thinking myself"....
10 weeks later, a month ago now more or less, he called me up to come and collect it.
And I have been loving every moment of owning and wearing it ever since.
To my humble eye, it is indeed a masterpiece, he has nailed it.
Perhaps not to everyone's taste, so I'd like to share some images now and let you, my peers decide....
Edited by a mod Jul 10, 2021