Buy Best Affordable Vintage Watches
I?t used to be a case of “you get what you pay for” when it came to watches, both in terms of quality and kudos. Dropping a few thousand not only meant you’d get decent mechanics but also board room brownie points for sporting a reputable name on your wrist.
Blame the Japanese for flooding the market with timepieces that were cheap and battery-powered during the Quartz Crisis of the 1970s and early 1980s, but anything in the sub-£1000 bracket used to be treated with derision or even contempt. Thankfully, for your bank balance at least, this doesn’t hold true any more.
Whether it’s because quartz got cool or Watch Brands realised that not everyone with a interest in horology had the readies to fund their burgeoning obsession, some interesting things have started to happen in the Affordable Vintage Watches.
1.Tissot
This Swatch Group alumnus is pretty much the benchmark when it comes to both choice and bang for your buck. You could assemble your entire watch wardrobe from its sub-£300 collections and, since the brand has been innovating since 1853, you can be confidant that you’re buying into genuine horological heritage.
Want a Vintage Dress Watch? Try its Tradition range. I?n the market for a oversized chronograph? Look no further than the Chrono XL line. You can even get a automatic powered by Swatch Group’s entirely machine-made movement, the Swissmatic. Everything is of such a quality you don’t feel like you’re making compromises.
2. Seiko
Given that this Japanese brand grows its own quartz for its battery-powered timepieces and prides itself on making everything in-house, that you can get any of its timepieces for under £300 seems like a bonus. However, Seiko excels at this price point.
The movements being more reasonably priced than their Swiss Watches counterparts, you can secure stylish steel automatics for under £200, while its groundbreaking kinetic technology means owning a quartz watch that never needs a battery change. Each watch is also robustly made with a aesthetic sense way beyond its price tag.
3. Casio
You may know Casio for its gold-plated Digital Bracelet Watch that, for a period in the noughties, was the ironic wrist adornment of every fixie-bike riding, flat-white drinking Hackney dweller worth their E9 credentials. But to reduce it to that one signature is to seriously underestimate what this brand has to offer.
The retro nostalgia is still there – in its aptly named Retro collection – but you can also get your hands on world timers, Bluetooth hybrids and styles suitable for scuba diving. Think of the brand as a one-stop-shop for all your watch needs, from digital to dress.
Casio’s muscular cousin is over 30 years old but its charm certainly hasn’t diminished. When it was first created by Casio engineer Κikuo I?be, its selling point was that it had a 10-year battery life, was water resistant to 10 bar (100m) and would survive a 10m fall onto a hard surface (I?be tested this by dropping 200 prototypes from third-story windows and rooftops).
Three decades later, this is still a design that takes some beating when it comes to durability. But now it comes with a range of added extras, from the useful – world time, automatic calendar, and alarms – to the more specialist, such as moon data displays and yacht timers.
