What period do most of them come from?

The dated field runs from 1870 to 1960, but it leans hard to the late end. Ninety-six of the 147 clean years fall in the 1960s, 1950s and 1940s. Pocket-watch decades are thinner: seventeen listings in the 1900s, ten in the 1920s and 1930s each, nine in the 1910s. A handful are filed only as 19th Century or Victorian, which are era labels rather than years.

Why do titles name a movement instead of a brand?

Swiss chronographs of this era were built on bought-in ébauches, so the movement often says more about the watch than the name on the dial does. Landeron appears in twelve titles and the word calibre in nine. On less familiar names, the calibre is what places the watch. Venus 188, Valjoux 61, Lemania and Omega 320 and 321 all get named outright.

Are military chronographs a big part of the category?

About a dozen listings, but they sit at the top of the range. The issuing authorities are unusually varied: the RCAF, the French Air Force, the Luftwaffe, the Kriegsmarine, the Bundeswehr, the Japanese Navy and the Admiralty have all turned up. Civil issue runs alongside them. GPO, British Railways and Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway pieces have appeared.

How large are the wristwatches?

Case sizes are stated only rarely. Where they are given, they're small by modern taste. A 37mm square case and a 36mm round case are among the largest wristwatch measurements recorded across the run.

Which complications turn up?

Split-seconds rattrapante appears in three titles, triple date or triple calendar in five, quarter repeating in two, and there is a single minute repeater and a single moonphase. That's the whole complicated tier. These sit in the upper half of the range wherever they appear.

Do unusual one-off pieces come up?

They do. A 1920s regatta yachting chronograph retailed at Cowes, a doctor's chronograph with a pulsation scale, and an oversized silver pocket piece hung with a mining tug-of-war fob have all been listed on Sellingantiques. Soviet Strela cosmonaut chronographs have appeared in several examples. English work shows through the Lancashire Watch Company, Thomas Russell, J W Benson, W. Ehrhardt and S. Smith & Son, the last a pocket chronograph made for early automobile speed testing.

Home > Watches > Chronographs > Page 2

Antique Chronographs

34 items · page 2 of 3

← Page 2 of 3 →

A chronograph is a watch with a seconds hand you can start, stop and return to zero, built for timing races, aviation, motoring and military work alongside the ordinary business of telling the time.