A mechanical watch needs regular service which is usually just cleaning, lubricating, replacing seals and springs. Eventually it will need replacement parts and that is probably the end of life for the watch.
There are a some brands that will service every watch they've ever made, fabricating new parts as needed. Few of us can afford one of those.
To that point - yes, but it's less expensive than many people think. I got a vintage 1970 Omega Seamaster in very good condition some time ago, paid less than £1000 for it. It kept very good time, no issues with it, but I decided that since it turned 50 recently I'm going to treat it to a full Omega service with an authorized workshop, paid £495 - that included replacement original parts from Omega, which of course they still stock and make for this watch, because well - it's Omega.
I asked them how this works, and they said anything younger than 80 years Omega just sends them parts without any issue, anything older they have to send back to Switzerland for service, and yes, then Omega might have to manufacture the parts required on the spot - and yes, that then turns really expensive.
Do be careful having your vintage watches serviced.
I was lucky enough to inherit my grandfather's pre-COMEX 5513 in very good condition - one or two tiny specks on the dial and a light scratch on the case. The appraiser gave me the warning that I should never send it to a Rolex repair center for servicing under any circumstance. If I did, I'd likely end up having the original acrylic bubble being replaced with crystal, the case polished high heaven, new tritium applied, and it'd probably be worth $15k less.
Collectors want a watch that shows signs of life; they value a nice patina. Many watch manufacturers service things to "modern spec" and try to make a watch look new. For a watch that old, I'd strongly suggest you find an independent watchmaker or two and get them to give you an estimate before you do anything.
>>Collectors want a watch that shows signs of life; they value a nice patina.
Yeah, but I don't. I don't have this watch as an investment - hopefully I'll use it for another 50 years and then someone else can use it again for 50 more years. In fact in addition to the service I paid £300 to have the dial replaced with a brand "new"(old stock) identical dial, because mine was showing very minor signs of corrosion. If a collector somewhere has an issue with that.....tough? Also I have no idea how anyone could ever even tell the dial was replaced, the new one is original Omega, just......flawless.
>> If I did, I'd likely end up having the original acrylic bubble being replaced with crystal, the case polished high heaven, new tritium applied, and it'd probably be worth $15k less.
That sounds perfect, if it were my watch I'd absolutely do that. Who cares how much it's worth at the end? If it's your grandfather's watch, then you probably won't ever sell it, will you?
Either way, I understand this is a personal choice.
>>for a watch that old, I'd strongly suggest you find an independent watchmaker or two and get them to give you an estimate before you do anything.
I did, both of them went "oh it's an omega, it's going to be about £400 for a full service mate" - so servicing it with Omega wasn't that much more expensive and it was a much better shout in my book, I know that whatever parts they replaced are original and brand new.
edit: just to add to the above - sorry, I realized I came across as very defensive. Yes of course your advice applies 100% if someone cares about maintaining the value of a vintage watch. Identical advice applies to maintaining vintage cars as well. But if you buy a vintage watch like me, to use it as....a watch....then just keep that in mind too.
No worries – and ultimately, you are absolutely right, it's all down to what you want out of it.
The two things I wanted to flag were
1) watches can have surprising value fluctuations, so they're worth being appraised professionally: just because you have "a model X from company Y dating back to Z" doesn't mean you'll get the valuation right if you try. If Papa were a desk diver at COMEX instead of Arthur Andersen I'd have likely ended up with a 5514 instead, and my six figure watch would be in a safe somewhere, not on my wrist.
2) many companies, when repairing, will not hesitate to add modern components. Rolex is apparently notorious for this, but others do it as well. In the opinion of Rolex, a watch is a watch: your GMT-Master with a Bakelite bezel is no different from a GMT-Master from 2022, it's just out of spec and needs a refresh.
The combination of this has lead to horror stories where people send their watch in for what they expect to be a fairly routine service (cleaning, oiling, etc.) and end up with an entirely different watch.
They last longer if you wear them, say, several times a month - i.e. if you have a rotation with several quartz watches and several mechanical ones. They definitely will last decades that way.
As others have noted, if you own a well-known brand like a Seiko you can easily purchase an entirely new movement for $50-$75 and this should take a watchmaker no more than one hour of labor or you can DIY. (Many non-Seiko brands use NH35/36 movements, which are made by Seiko)
Will Seiko provide parts for older watches? I just got stuck with a bricked Swiss Army quartz watch because no one can get parts for it (it's 20 years old). I'm very tempted by some of the more affordable Seiko mechanical/automatic models, but I'd like the watch to last at least a decade or so.
Sadly, I'm not aware of any specific "we will continue to manufacture parts for X years" guarantees from Seiko.
Still, though - keep in mind that entire Seiko movement can be bought for like $50-75. And many of their most common movements are interchangeable. For example, an older 7S26 can be replaced with a new NH36 that sells for about $50. https://chronometercheck.com/seiko-7s26-movement/
It's not entirely unfeasible to imagine buying a spare movement or three if you were, say, planning on doing sort of a heirloom thing and wanted to ensure a supply of parts N decades into the future.
My grandma has a mechanical watch she only wears on sundays - to the church. Whenever I was visiting her she asks me to wind it up for her before the mass. She uses this same watch for over 30 years with minimal maintenance, and it's not an expansive brand, just a good noname watch.
The parts last quite some time if properly maintained. If you're worried about replacement parts availability, stick with the most popular movements such as the ETA2824/SW200 series or Seiko's NH35 series.
For example, the size and fit of Seiko "calibers" are the same going back further than NH35, which means far older watches can accept NH35 as replacements. Even sub-assemblies and parts of NH35 fit straight onto 7s26s from the 90s.
NH35 can be serviced, but makes more sense an assembled replacement part. The same argument can probably made for the entire watch. The appeal of using one watch for 30 years is more in romantic fantasy than practicality.
A lot of watch fans are happy when they see a watch brand use an in-house movement. I’m exactly the opposite for the reason you say - the popular movements are going to be easily and inexpensively serviced for much longer.
That said, a lot of in-house movements are little more than tweaks and high end finishing applied to existing commodity movements.
Exactly. The flip side of the recent proliferation of "barely in-house" movements is that there's actually even less diversity of movements in the mid-range watch market than the brands would have you believe. So in the long term, it's going to be fairly easy to get any of them serviced. Just replace some springs and gears with compatible parts from a 2824/2892/7750/whatever and stick the brand's pretty rotor back on.
Ever since I picked the hobby of fixing old mechanical watch, in house movement is my number 1 criteria for not buying because of the availability of parts.
I'm with you on this. I see a ton of custom watches that end up using a Seiko automatic movement or an ETA. A bit like Lotus using Toyota Camry engines.
Not just custom - Seiko used to (still does maybe) provide manufacturers with bare movements, even with the company name on it. That means you'll find "no name" watches from the 60s onward with Seiko movements. That makes servicing, repairing and replacing them much easier and cheaper. Same with ETA.
The solar Casio I bought as a teenager stopped holding a usable charge after a few winters. Maybe it was just bad luck. I'll see if the new Citizen Eco-Drive in my collection lives up to the 40 years claim I saw elsewhere. :)
The first Eco-Drives came out in the mid 90s. If you look around you'll find quite a few reports from people who bought the very first ones, and which are still ticking away virtually maintenance-free for 25+ years and counting. My own, a dive watch with around 10 years, which has actually been used for its stated purpose, is also still problem-free and with zero maintenance so far.
The only thing you need to be mindful of with Eco-Drives is that you can't let it lose all charge. It can keep functioning in complete darkness for around 6 months, according to the specs, but if you do this enough times the battery will lose the ability to hold charge and will need to be replaced, and there are plenty of reports to this effect. If you're not planning on wearing it, just leave it somewhere that it can get natural light, instead of a drawer, and you should be good.
While mechanical watches are undoubtedly cool and elegant, they're not perfect timekeepers, and when they do need maintenance it's not something trivial which you can perform yourself. For my day-to-day watch I'll take an accurate quartz movement with virtually zero maintenance any day. In other words an Eco-Drive, or something similar.
My experience with a very high-end solar Casio was akin to yours, with the battery needing replacing after about five years. Perhaps gambiting is correct about the common nature of the battery, but multiple watch repair shops (both in a department store, and the "old man in a tiny room in an office building" type) refused to deal with it. I always had to mail it to an authorized Casio repair outlet.
I do not know whether this also applies to Eco-Drive.
I have seiko automatic which kept great time when I first bought it, but not long after, it slipped off my wrist and fell on the tile floor. Since then it has been losing time but no so much as to be a huge problem. Would service easily fix this or is it just something to live with?
Seiko makes a huge range of watches so: it depends. If it's a cheaper one, just buy a new one. If it's a mid-range one, you can just buy a new movement for under $100 and toss it in with a few tools. Lots of tutorials on YouTube.
It may or may not be easy to fix properly, but if it's an inexpensive Seiko it may not be worth doing that, just replacing the movement when it wears out completely.
That said, simply adjusting the tick rate to regulate timekeeping is very easy and if you've got steady hands and a sharp eye then you can do it yourself with a wooden toothpick, assuming you've got a tool to remove the watch back. Any shop (offering repair facilities) could do it as well in a matter of minutes.
Should be a simple fix. It might just need regulation on the balance wheel (super quick, no need to disassemble the whole movement), or one of the pinions might be bent (just replace that wheel).
Take it to a watchmaker, a fix like this would be pretty straightforward.
Parts rarely fail on watches from the 50's on, especially the better made watches that are sealed. Even those that arn't sealed very well, the parts seem to last.
If a part does fail, it's usually the old blue steel mainsprings.
They can be replaced with modern White-Alloy springs. (That is just a brand name.)
Watches are my thing. I don't know why I like them so much, but do.
Servicing does take awhile to learn though. That whole 10,000 hrs probally. Servicing a watch does not take that long to learn. I'm talking about making parts with a Jeweler's lathe. And getting to the point where you know those parts well enough to visualize exactly what's wrong with a timepiece by looking at it.
If you did learn to clean/oil your mechanical watch, it's something that will be passed down to loved ones.
Oh yea, Service a mechanical watch when it stops keeping good time. That is unless you take it in the water.
I know a watchmaker who told his father he needed to Service his gifted wristwatch. His father got it 30 years ago as a present, and just wore it daily. The watchmaker was expecting dried up oil, but to his astonishment, the oil was still there. It was hermetically sealed. Oils do breakdown, but he couldn't find any damage to parts using a 40x stereoscope.
There are a some brands that will service every watch they've ever made, fabricating new parts as needed. Few of us can afford one of those.