Just for the record, a final note should be added to this paragraph saying that if a buyer wants to take a purist approach and source a vintage chronograph with an in-house movement, he would be well advised to take a look at the offerings of Longines, Zenith and Universal. So by all means criticise Breitling for using movements bought from external sources, but at the same time, don’t forget to apply the same harsh judgement to Jaeger LeCoultre, Rolex, IWC and Omega. The niche, relatively small market for watches with a stopwatch feature made it prohibitively expensive for these brands to have in-house chronograph mechanisms, so they took the logical route of buying them in raw form and then finishing them in their own facilities as required.
In fact, the sheer complexity of a chronograph movement makes it phenomenally expensive to design and manufacture. Because these other houses did produce most of their own movements, it is often assumed that they also manufactured the mechanisms in their chronograph models as well. The movements in Omega’s Speedmaster and Seamaster chronographs were supplied by Lemania, while Jaeger LeCoultre and Rolex bought their chronograph ebauches from Valjoux. While during the 1950s and ‘60s, Jaeger LeCoultre, Omega and Rolex manufactured their own time only movements ( those with hour, minute and second hands), none of these houses produced the chronograph mechanisms that they offered at the time. But if we look at this matter in detail, we quickly realise that to condemn Breitling for this method is ridiculous and those that do are speaking from an ignorant position without really appreciating the facts of the situation. This is absolutely correct and certainly, the models that we regard as the vintage Breitling legends today were built around third party movements. Just occasionally, one sometimes hears the criticism levied at Breitling that the company was never a maker of its own movements, but instead reworked ebauches ( movements in their most basic form, unfinished and without components) purchased from Venus and, following the closure of the former in 1964, Valjoux. The Breitling TopTime was very much the fashionable watch of its era, being worn very publicly by many celebrities at the time, including, in the second half of the 1960s, Beatle John Lennon. On a wider level, the use of a Breitling TopTime by actor Sean Connery for his leading role as James Bond in the 1965 film Thunderball also brought Breitling to the attention of the population at large.
#VINTAGE BREITLING SERIAL NUMBERS CHECK PROFESSIONAL#
In 1952, the Breitling Navitimer was officially recommended by the Aircraft Owners’ and Pilots’ Association ( AOPA) in the USA, which further cemented the link in the public’s perception between Breitling and professional instruments for flying. The company, still headed by Willy Breitling at this stage, realised in the 1940s that having an image linked to the glamorous world of flying would be beneficial and deliberately designed products, like the Chronomat and later the Navitimer, that would be useful to pilots when performing navigational calculations. If we were assembling a list of a dozen vintage watch models for a customer that could genuinely be classed as iconic in the strictest sense, then a Breitling chronograph, probably a second generation reference 806 Navitimer from the mid-1960s with silver registers on a contrasting black dial, would be among them.īreitling will be the natural first choice of vintage watch for anyone interested in aviation. Today, the vintage Breitling chronograph in its various 1940s, ‘50s and ‘60s incarnations is one of the most instantly recognisable classics of the wristwatch genre. Unlike at Rolex, Omega, Jaeger LeCoultre, Longines and almost all the other major houses, at Breitling, chronograph models, those that included a stopwatch function, were not a small offshoot of the main range but in fact the primary area in which the brand specialised. But these are not what collectors immediately think of as classic vintage Breitling material. There are some very appealing time only Breitling wristwatches from the 1940s and ‘50s, some of which appear now and then for sale on this website. Founded in 1846, it has a long history, initially as a maker of pocket watches and then, in common with the other brands that we recognise today as household names, after World War I, increasingly in association with fine wristwatches.ĭespite it having been in existence for almost a century before this point, we don’t tend to think today of Breitling in connection with anything produced before about 1940, which is rather ironic given that it was during this earlier period that it was actually still a manufacturer of its own in-house movements.
Breitling occupies an interesting position in the experienced vintage watch collector’s mind.
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