Is It The Brand or The Movement
Part 3 of 3

by Watchking

Cartier, Turler, Bucherer, Bulgari, Tourneau, Krigel, Roberge, Bailey Banks & Biddle, Birks, Eatons, Chaumet, Harry Winston, and Tiffany are just a few of the watch brands that are also the trade names of stores or store groups whose watches are eminently collectible. These companies and those like them have had watches of various quality levels made for them, for years. Some of these companies have purchased or even started watch manufacturing plants, and a few have had proprietary watches made for them. These brands of watches are famous not only as timepieces on their own but also because the myth and mystique of the parent company is an important factor in the value of many of the watches with these brands.

While it has been common for jewelry stores to sell watches of their own "house" brand of watches for many hundreds of years, these store brands listed above really came into their own during the early 20th Century. In many ways it was the Ball Watch Company that helped push this trend along. At the beginning of the 1900s a railroad entrepreneur named Webb C. Ball decided to "create" a brand of watches that would be as good as any manufacturers' brand on the market and it was a well known fact that he also promoted the fact that Ball watches were made by other companies in the watch business, while emphasizing that his company's watches were made to "Ball Standards". Webb Ball was instrumental in developing the US National standards for railroad approved timepieces after a huge train crash caused many casualties, all because one trainman's watch was 3 minutes different from another trainman's watch on an oncoming train. Ball railroad watches were almost immediately accepted as being of the highest quality and as good as any other watch available at the time.

At about the same time Tiffany was promoting the sale of their own brand of pocket watches made by such world renowned manufacturers as Koehn, Audemars & Piguet, Vacheron Constantine and Ulysses Nardin. Now-a-days many of these manufacturers are makers of the most highly respected watches in the world, but in this era they were much less known outside their own small corners of Europe. The buyers and merchandisers at Tiffany recognized these companies as being superlative manufacturers but the buying public were less aware of this fact in North and South America and Asia. At this time the brand name of the jewelry store often enhanced the value of a high grade watch in the eyes of a buyer because these retailers were known to be selling fine goods and there was also the added benefit of local repair service at a time when many watch companies still offered warranty service only if their watches were shipped back to the factories.

Cartier was one of the most prominent of the "house" brand retailers. This company even went to the extent of designing their own signature watch models. Cartier has a very large manufacturing and assembly plant in Fribourg, Switzerland where jewelry and watches are made, so today Cartier has succeeded in becoming a vertically integrated distribution company, making and then selling its own designs of products. While many of Cartier's own brand of watches were produced for them by other companies like European Watch Company, their success has allowed Cartier's to found an atelier capable of producing every grade of watch from the most basic to the most complicated. Cartier has been careful to emphasize its own brand and very high standards of quality during the last 100 years that it has been marketing wristwatches and so its brand has retained its cache`.

Cartier also designed the watch that can rightly claim to be the longest produced "sport" watch of all time, the "Santos". Named after a sportsman whose name was synonymous with "adventure" in his day, the Cartier Santos watch has stood the test of time. A solidly made watch that is water resistant and shockproof, the Santos is eminently collectible as an automatic wind watch. This watch has perhaps inspired as many or more copies than any other watch in history. It was also a sports watch that was available in both steel and precious metal. Cartier has always stood by their watches but the Santos was always a flagship model and so Cartier made a special effort to keep Santos owners happy even though many adventurers purchased this model of watch to take on their "adventures". Today people don't think of the Santos as being as much a sports watch as a luxury watch in spite of the solidity of it's construction and the generally heavy weight of this watch. Modern super waterproof or shockproof watches in steel, graphite and plastics dominate the sports watch market today. But the Santos was a special watch that was a true sports watch in an era when most wrist watches were delicate and prone to failure. The fact that today the Cartier Santos is recognized as a luxury watch is an indication of just how collectible this watch is. If you can ever find an automatic wind Santos in good condition at a reasonable price, it is a great investment.

Eatons of Canada is also an interesting company brand. This department store was successful in the 19th and 20th centuries while Canada developed as a nation. Although currently defunct, there were many high quality Eatons brand watches sold through its stores. One of the most famous Eatons watches and one with a huge collector following is the Eaton(Rolex) Quarter Century watches. This watch was made by Rolex for Eaton's employees who had worked 25 or more years for the company. Produced for a number of decades, these watches are now highly collectible and they bring high prices on the open market. In fact this model of watch is considered an important part of both Eatons and Rolex product history.

Although many of the retail watch brands mentioned above (like Cartier, Tiffany, Bulgari and Chaumet) have become synonymous with very expensive high end watches and are thus eminently collectible, it is often the less know retail brand of watch that can present the vintage watch collector with the opportunity to obtain a super high quality watch for a reasonable price. In this market niche Bucherer stands out (and to a lesser extent Turler or Tourneau) as a retail company that has sold thousands and thousands of collectible watches. Bucherer is a chain of jewelry and gift stores headquartered in Geneve, Switzerland. They sell the highest quality music boxes, spectacular jewelry, china and most of all, watches. Being in Geneve puts Bucherer right in the middle of the watch industry. For many years Bucherer was one of Rolex' largest retail sellers.

But Bucherer also sold its own brand of watches all through the 20th century. While many of it's watches were typical manual wind or automatic watches Bucherer was able to sell a very large number of its own brand of COSC certified chronometers. The fact that they were reasonably priced does not take away from their quality. In fact this often made Bucherer certified chronometers the best value and the largest selling brand to tourists who came to visit Geneve, hoping to buy a fine watch at a reasonable price. Bucherer also sold many of their certified chronometers in solid gold cases with a much lower markup than the elite watch brands. This is a great boon for collectors who want to build a collection of certified chronometers. The fact that there are many, many Bucherer chronometers still available on the market after 30-40 years use is both a tribute the quality of their manufacture and a benefit to collectors because these watches are not scarce.

Collectors seeking super complicated watches will again benefit from the retail store brand name on the dial of a watch that may have been produced by Rolex, Audemars, Patek Philippe, IWC, Lemania or Ulysses Nardin. Many collectors would like to own certified chronometer watches, or triple date moonphase models, or mechanical alarm watches or even repeaters, but can never justify the extremely high prices that many of the elite brands bring at auction or in vintage watch shops. But these same kind of high end watches can sometimes be purchased less expensively with retail store brand names on the dial, even if they were made by an elite watch company for these retailers. This is especially true if you want to collect complicated European pocket watches. A special example of this is the triple date, moonphase chronograph, automatic wind watch with the Tourneau brand on the dial. Tourneau is one of the world's largest watch retailers and their own brand of watches are every bit as good as many of the more well known watch brand products they sell with the same features for substantially more. Look at the watch itself, check the movement, consider the warranty service on a retailer's own brand when you visit that store. In many cases you will find the retailer's "house" brand is a much better value.

So while in some cases a watch may be more or less collectible depending on which brand markets a certain movement, in other cases it can be the movement that makes all the difference. And in the case of watches marketed by retailers, some watches can represent a special value if the watch's value is enhanced by the retailers brand (like it is with Cartier) or if the retailer's brand name makes the watch substantially more affordable than it might have been with the maker's brand name on the dial (like it is with Bucherer or Tourneau). So it is a good idea for collectors to become familiar with the movements which have proven to be of very high precision and reliability, so if they find one of these movements in a watch with a less well know brand name they can recognize its value. Sometimes when the same basic movement is in two different branded watches one model may be worth substantially more if the movements are rebuilt or enhancements are added. Sometimes it's the brand and sometimes it's the movement. Good luck and have fun collecting watches.