About

We help people buy a vintage Swiss watch without getting burned. Name the watch you’re after, like a Speedmaster 145.022, a Constellation, an IWC Mark XI, a Zenith El Primero or a Tissot Visodate, and there’s a page for it. Each one tells you the watch’s story, the caliber that should be inside and what to check in a listing before you buy.

What collectors know about these watches is scattered across forum threads, maker archives and decades of trial and error, and a raw eBay search gives you none of it. So we keep 32 watch pages in one place, write down the tells that usually take years to learn (refinished dials, swapped movements, relumed hands and polished cases) and pick the listings we’d buy.

We don’t sell watches. No affiliate links. We earn nothing. We’re not affiliated with any of the watchmakers we cover. See how we work for how the pages are researched and our disclosure for how links, picks and photos work.

The Observatory is part of allbutnew, a set of shops for secondhand gear. Got a watch to sell? The “Get an offer” link on every watch page sends it to our watch expert, who replies by email.