Collecting Archives - Watch Journal

Style & Substance

For all his devotion to timekeeping, the 18^th-century master watchmaker Abraham-Louis Breguet created watches best known for their timelessness. Between pocket watches built in the late 1700s by Breguet himself, wristwatches manufactured 50 years ago by the company he founded, and contemporary dress styles bearing the name of the brand that is furthering his legacy, timepieces produced by Breguet are synonymous with elegant models for the sophisticated gentleman.

And yet when the French horologist opened his shop on the Quai de l’Horloge in Paris in 1775, he was considered a maverick.

“Breguet was not only a watchmaker and inventor who revolutionized watchmaking, he was also an artist who introduced a style that ended the tradition of baroque exuberance of the 18th century,” says historian Emmanuel Breguet, a seventh-generation descendant of the Breguet founder and the head of patrimony for Montres Breguet. “At the time this design was seen as completely new and disruptive. Today we could call it ‘minimalist’ and ‘functional,’ and also timeless and iconic. Every element of it was chosen not only for its beauty, but also to better serve the readability of the watch, its reliability and the comfort of the owner.”

ABOVE: The extra-thin Classique wristwatch in yellow gold, Ref. 5157, a clear descendant to the Phillips reference sold in November. Photo courtesy of Breguet.

More remarkable than Breguet’s unconventional ideas about 18^th-century watchmaking is the fact that his inimitable style has endured nearly 250 years of trends, fads, and fickle tastes. The visual continuity that links Breguet timepieces past and present is a testament to the watchmaker’s monumental reputation as history’s finest watchmaker.

Consider the yellow gold Breguet wristwatch (Ref. 3229), manufactured in 1957, that sold in November, at Phillips’ Geneva Watch Auction X, for $40,500. Not counting its dainty (for modern wrists) 34 mm case or its seductive yellow gold dial, the piece has a doppelgänger in the current collection: the 38 mm Classique 5157, an extra-thin yellow gold dress watch with a silvered gold guilloché dial that retails for $17,800.

“The similarities are very clearly visible,” says Emmanuel Breguet. “The main difference would be that today we equip our watches with escapements using the latest silicon technology that makes them anti-magnetic, and we introduced sapphire crystal casebacks to showcase the beautifully crafted movements. We also tend to use white or rose gold for the cases and silvered gold dials instead of yellow gold dials.”

ABOVE: A portrait of Abraham Louis Breguet. Image courtesy of Breguet.

Besides these modern-day flourishes, the 1957 piece—which, according to the auction notes, was sold in 1962 “to a French gentleman for the sum of 1,600 new French Francs,” and returned to Breguet in 1970, when its owner, Monsieur Combescot, wanted to replace the silver guilloché dial originally fitted to the watch, with a flashier gold guilloché version—has all the hallmarks of a Breguet original: an engine-turned dial, satin-brushed hour chapters with Roman numerals, a fluted case, and hollowed out hands made of gold or blued steel (arguably the watchmaker’s most recognizable and widely borrowed feature).

Not visible but equally as important are all the features that distinguish the interior of a Breguet timepiece, such as a balance spring endowed with what’s known as a “Breguet overcoil,” a 1795 innovation that continues to be used today. (A.L. Breguet was responsible for no fewer than ten horological inventions, from the gong springs that give striking watches their harmonious tones to the showy tourbillon mechanism, a staple of high-end watchmaking.)

Alex Ghotbi, head of watches for Continental Europe and the Middle East at Phillips, says the Ref. 3229 is unusual for two reasons: One, it was manufactured at a time when Breguet was still a French firm (the Biel, Switzerland-based Swatch Group acquired the watchmaker in 1999), lending the watch “a very cool, Parisian design,” he says. And two: “It has an amazing Peseux observatory movement: It’s like having a Formula 1 engine in your car. The best, most accurate movement you could hope for.”

ABOVE: A rare gold Breguet pocketwatch, part of Breguet’s historical collection acquired for their museum in 2014. Photo courtesy of Breguet.

The vintage wristwatch also boasts another, harder-to-pinpoint allure: “It’s the rarity,” says Ghotbi. “They were hardly making any wristwatches around that time, just a few handfuls every year. They were mostly doing repair work on older pocket watches. So Breguet wristwatches from the 1920s to the ’60s are ultra-rare. When they pop up, you have to pay the price.”

Guilloche, engined-turned decorative finishing, first used in watchmaking in 1786 by Abraham Louis Breguet, has become a signature trademark of the house. All roads lead to Breguet, some of the most essential and lasting watchmaking innovations are traceable to Breguet’s remarkable ingenuity. Photo courtesy of Breguet.

COLLECTING/STORIES

Collecting Vintage Guitars: What You Need to Know

by Jack Baruth

We have drawn all the venom from the phrase, painful drop by painful drop. We have applied it to presidents, cardiologists, weathermen. Crammed it into every help-wanted ad for a barista or programmer or call-center employee.

It’s easy to forget that there was once truly such a thing as a “rock star.”

Think back to the barbaric yawps of Robert Plant or Axl Rose, when the rock star occupied a particular apex not seen before or since in human society. Rich as Rockefeller, famous as any actor, and more desirable than either because he answered only to his own fearsomely rebellious and youthful self. He blazed fiercely but briefly, then he was replaced. Anybody could be next. All you needed was a guitar, preferably an electric one that could be cranked into an overdriven scream by a stack of Marshall amplifiers.

The first electric guitars appeared shortly after World War II, but the apogee of development and craftsmanship was realized in the latter half of the 1950s. “I opened my shop forty-eight years ago,” says George Gruhn, “and the guitars that I’m looking for now are the same ones I was looking for then.” Gruhn, widely considered to be the dean of the guitar-collecting hobby, operates Gruhn Guitars in Nashville, ground zero for the stratospheric high end of vintage-guitar deals.

He says that management and ownership changes at major American guitar makers, coupled with skyrocketing demand that could not be fulfilled building instruments the old-fashioned way, effectively killed the quality of guitars during the 1960s and 1970s. Musicians like Eric Clapton and Michael Bloomfield responded by walking into pawn shops and buying sunburst-finish Gibson Les Pauls made from 1958 through 1960. A blurry photograph of a “Burst” Gibson on the back of the 1964 album Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton launched the vintage-guitar craze.

By 2007, speculators had raised the price of those guitars into the low seven figures. The book Million Dollar Les Paul by Tony Bacon tells stories of cash-only transactions in dimly lit parking lots and a shadow industry devoted to the counterfeiting of Bursts. The market correction that occurred afterward returned some sanity to the hobby, but prices are still high enough to daunt all but the most committed players.

It only takes a few minutes with a genuine vintage Gibson to understand why. They were made with wood from old-growth forests, seasoned in open-air workrooms for decades. Give the body of a 1959 Les Paul a rap with your knuckle, and you can feel the sympathetic vibration at the top of the headstock. According to Gruhn, the guitars made today have largely returned to the standards of assembly quality found in the 1950, “but the wood isn’t there.”

“This is all newly grown wood, heavily restricted by import regulations, dried artificially in a kiln,” he says. “The tone isn’t the same.”

Unlike a vintage automobile or a piece of antique furniture, an old Les Paul is still capable of rocking as hard as it did in the hands of Keith Richards or Jimmy Page. Stored and handled correctly, that should be just as true fifty years from now as it was fifty years ago. Perhaps that explains why Gruhn is seeing sales increase, despite the fact that many older baby boomers are no longer actively adding to their collections.

Interested in getting one of your own? Guided by Mr. Gruhn, we’ve picked three top-shelf vintage electric guitars, covering the spectrum from classic to glam. All of them would be fine additions to an existing collection, or investment-grade pieces for the budding connoisseur. And any of them will make you feel like a rock star, regardless of your day job.

George Gruhn recommends…

THE STANDARD-BEARER: 1959 Les Paul “Burst”

Approximately 1,400 Sunburst Les Pauls were made between 1958 and 1960. Fewer than 650 of them were 1959 models, which had bigger, more playable frets than the 1958 “Lester” but a more comfortable neck than the 1960 version. Even the roughest examples now fetch well over $100,000, and convincing fakes outnumber originals, so take your time and find one with a few decades’ worth of ownership history.

THE ARTISAN: D’Angelico New Yorker

From 1932 to 1964, John D’Angelico made the world’s finest archtop guitars in his Manhattan shop. While archtops are not considered rock-music guitars, they were often used in the fusion-jazz that paralleled rock’s development in the 1970s. Figure $15,000 for a decent one, though some of D’Angelico’s more elaborate efforts can sell for significantly more.

THE WILD CARD: 1982 Charvel Van Halen

Guitar dealer and builder Wayne Charvel was the source of Eddie Van Halen’s touring guitars during the band’s salad years. He sold the name to Grover Jackson, who built high quality “Superstrats” in the 1980s before cashing out and sending production overseas. Gruhn estimates that a Charvel by Jackson could be worth as much as $20,000, but beware: As with Bursts, counterfeits abound. And if you want one actually played by Mr. Van Halen, however briefly, expect to pay up to five times more.

CARS/STORIES

The Biggest Little Car Shop in Texas

by Paul Underwood

Hot-rodders around the world trust Dave’s Perfection Automotive in Austin, Texas. The shop’s owner has some words of wisdom for budding car collectors.

Dave’s Perfection Automotive might be one of the planet’s leading shops for hot-rodders and vintage car collectors, but it doesn’t go out of its way to advertise. There’s no website. It’s identified by a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it street sign, and you get there by driving down an unassuming alley. Call and ask for the proprietor, and you might hear the following refrain: “We don’t call him ‘The Phantom’ for nothing.”

Step inside, however, and you’ll see why collectors worldwide track these guys down. In one corner is an International Harvester Scout II, the pinnacle of 1970s off-road cool, and the vehicle that reps Liz Lambert’s famed Hotel San Jose, which helped make Austin a hot spot two decades ago. There’s a plush Cadillac Eldorado and boat-tail Buick Riviera on the lot, both belonging to a Frenchman who sent the cars Stateside for repairs. And then there are the men running this place, including a mechanic who has worked here for 30 years, and Steve Wertheimer, the longtime Austin scenester who took over after the shop’s founder, Dave Geddes, passed away.

“I was always one of those guys who liked to take things apart,” Wertheimer says. “Sometimes I could get it back together, sometimes I couldn’t.”

He grew up reading car magazines, but didn’t get into collecting until after he bought the Continental Club, the legendary South Austin music venue, in 1987. He befriended Jimmie Vaughan, the iconic blues guitarist and older brother of Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Charlie Sexton, a singer-guitarist and frequent tour-mate of Bob Dylan’s. Both men collected cars, and encouraged Wertheimer to do the same.

One night, Sexton introduced him to a local car enthusiast named Mercury Charlie, who, perhaps unsurprisingly, declared that Wertheimer should own a Mercury. He just so happened to be selling one, a parts car that needed to be restored from the ground up.

“I went out to [Mercury] Charlie’s house every night for it seemed like eight months, and we worked on this 1951 Mercury,” Wertheimer says. “And we basically built the car, put it together, and I’ve been driving that thing for thirty years.” Indeed, the car—curvy, streamlined, jet-black, unmissable—is parked in front of Dave’s most days.

Later, after attending a car show in Paso Robles, Wertheimer caught the hot-rod bug. His first was a 1930 Ford Roadster, christened The Continental Kid, which he still owns, and is powered by an engine he built himself. He founded the Lonestar Hot Rod & Kustom Roundup, a massively popular spring car show, in 2001, and took over at Dave’s in 2012. Along the way, he picked up a few more hot rods (with names like The Black Dahlia and Goldenrod) and became something of a local impresario.

Accordingly, there’s typically a two-month wait just to get your car in the door at Dave’s. When you do, Wertheimer says, the mechanics will likely discover there’s more work to be done than you initially thought. (Original components on older cars wear quickly, and most of the frames and bodies were made from steel, which is susceptible to rust.) From there, it may take months for your car to be finished; it’s not easy to track down vintage parts, and once the team does, it takes time to get them sent to Austin and installed correctly. As Wertheimer notes, “Most of the stuff that we have to deal with, you can’t down to O’Reilly’s or Pep Boys.”

Thinking about getting into hot rods? Wertheimer has a few pieces of advice that will sound familiar to anyone who collects watches. First and foremost, find an expert who can examine your potential quarry and assess its condition. “Don’t get all hyped up over the shiny paint and chrome and all that stuff,” he says. “Local dealer auctions are notorious for putting lipstick on a pig. They wind up over here immediately afterward trying to fix all the stuff that those guys covered up. It’s worth spending a hundred bucks to take a friend or a professional with you to go check out the car. It’ll save you a hell of a lot more money in the long run.”

Once your purchase is sorted mechanically, Wertheimer has one final piece of advice to offer: Drive the thing. Not just for pleasure, though that will be considerable—but also to keep it in good shape. Many of the cars in Dave’s Perfection Automotive suffer from simple lack of use, because owners are too nervous about taking such a beautiful vehicle on the road. (Wertheimer drives more than 20,000 miles a year.) And hey, if you still wind up needing some help, you know who to call.

“Seeing someone drive off, saying this car runs better than ever—that’s where I get the most satisfaction,” Wertheimer says.

Perfection, you might call it.