What time is it? Watches and horology

Yup. Once you’ve established that a vintage watch is correct (ie. dial, movement and case were originally sold as one watch) and the hands, crystal and crown are original (or correct replacements), dial and case condition is everything. Unfortunately dials get refinished or lume disintegrates and cases get polished. What I’ve seen is that if a collector’s grade piece would fetch for example £10k, an authentic but well worn watch eg. refinished dial, replaced crystal and heavily polished case) might sell for around 25% - 30% of a perfect example. The trouble is that amateur sellers and buyers see a mint example for sale and get over excited about the value of their own watch, which is usually nowhere near as good.

By way of illustration, this a decent example showing what the case on that fifa should look like. Notice the sharpness of the bevelling and the overall case shape. By contrast the former looks like a half-sucked lozenge.