So my Stepfather knows I’m into watches (he is a fake gold Casio dress watch kind of guy), and mentioned he has a couple he hasn’t worn in years that he would love to have repaired- so my mother dropped them off today. The first one is a POS Seiko dress watch from the 80’s- I’ll humor him and see if it’s just a battery- but the second one....oh my.


It runs briefly when I shake it, then stops. Manually winding it feels like gravel so I didn’t push it. Setting the hands also feels rather gravely- again, not gonna push it. It needs to go to my watchmaker.
I could find very little out there on this watch- can anyone illuminate me on what it is, and what the potential value on the current market may be (just for my curiosity). I have no plans of having him sell it, but I surely will let him know I want it when he no longer wants or needs it.

 

Very nice, but bummer about the 11:00 lug being bent. There are a few posts here where folks have dealt with bent lugs. I've never looked into it, but I'd want to see if the lug could be fixed first before putting money into a service.

 

Didn’t even notice that! I’ll have to pull it back out and look at it again.

 

Yup- it’s bent! I’ll ask my watchmaker about that. He deals with several high end jewelry stores in the area, I assume a jeweler could get it back to shape without hurting anything.

 

Very nice dress watch. These are not very common, but I think you could put a rough value on it by comparing it to 18k dress watches from other good quality Swiss brands, e.g. Zenith, IWC, Longines, etc. Case size will have a big impact on value, and I don't think you mentioned that dimension.

 

34mm sans crown. And it is currently running just from me handling it....that’s a good sign

 

Here's another https://www.vesperco.com/soldwatches/universal-geneve-chronometer-28

The fact that it has a chronometre grade movement makes it more desirable. I would expect it to have a Cal 215 microtor movement with serial number.

The markings on the case back suggest that it was made for the US market.

 

Once we see 18K gold, other senses get dulled

 

Yup! I wasn’t looking beyond the fact that my stepfather who has questionable taste to begin with had an 18k UG sitting in his sock drawer...never would have thought with him...it must have been a gift.

 

Take this with a grain of salt, but given that it's a chronometer-grade piece, once it's all repaired and running, I'm going to say it could sell for something in the $1,000 range just based on the fact that it's a nice 18k UG chronometer. I have no idea if it's rare or special.

 

That’s about what I figured. As you had mentioned earlier, Longines, Zenith or even Omega in the same style typically hover around $800, I would think the chronometre grade would up it a notch- but not into Connie territory

 

Talked to my watchmaker today, he still has 4 of mine (2 done) in cue so will bring him the 28 when he gets done with them. He said when he has a bent lug like this he takes it to one of the jewlers he does service work for (one in particular that is very well respected here and has repair on premises ) and they do it for him.
He laughed when I mentioned it most likely has the micro-rotor movement. He said they have historically always had high wear when he gets them and parts are tough to source- but of course he won’t know what we are in for until he pulls it apart.
Can anyone recommend a source for UG parts?