Vintage Ultra-Chron blog post

[Neeb]

Am allowed to plug my (non-commercial) blog post here?
https://www.moonagewatches.com/post/the-longines-ultra-chron-jumbo-models-part-1-the-great-sleepers

 

[ken_hodson]

Nice blog @Neeb you write very well.
Looking forward to part 2!

 

[Neeb]

Thank you!

It's as much a way for me to collect together all of my thoughts in the one place as anything else. Very happy to receive constructive correction of any facts I've got wrong though.

 

[gatorcpa]

Thought you might like this one:





Ref. 8352. Very heavy gold case.

Looking forward to reading next installment.
gatorcpa

 

[Neeb]

gatorcpa

Thought you might like this one:





Ref. 8352. Very heavy gold case.

Looking forward to reading next installment.
gatorcpa

That's rather magnificent! I never know how to describe that style. There's another one that's very similar except that the lugs are smaller / stepped down from the rest of the case.

 

[Waltesefalcon]

Good read, thanks for sharing.

 

[LesXL]

Nice blog! Thank you for that

 

[Neeb]

Part 2 now out. I decided to split the discussion of the case references and the dial & hand variations, so the latter will be covered in a Part 3.
https://www.moonagewatches.com/post...ls-part-2-case-variants-and-reference-numbers

 

[TexOmega]

Where does this style slot into the lineage?

No logo
Front load/special wrench required
34mm


Did not see in part one or two.

 

[Neeb]

TexOmega

Where does this style slot into the lineage?

No logo
Front load/special wrench required
34mm


Did not see in part one or two.

Nice watch!

Just to be clear, my blog posts are just focussed one particular style of Ultra-Chron, the 37mm ones that have the specific design I mention in Part 1. There are loads of Ultra-Chrons! I couldn't begin to cover them all (not at this stage anyway). I think there are even one or two other 37mm "jumbo" Ultra-Chrons that have different designs to the ones I'm dealing with.

Yours is what I'd descibe as a "c-case" model. There are actually quite a few of these too... Researching all of the c-case Ultra-Chrons would be a task similar to researching the ones I've dealt with in my posts.

As I hint at in Part 1, I think one reason these watches are under appreciated is because there ARE so many styles... The Ultra-Chron isn't really a particular model or even a line (e.g. like the Rolex Datejust), it's really just the label that Longines put on all of the watches they made with the 431 36,000 bph movement (and the later ones with the 28,800 movement based on the 431).

Names are important - unfortunately most of these vintage designs don't have individual names, so it's difficult to talk about them. I'm hoping that by focussing on one particular style in my posts I'll help to create an identity for that style.