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Time is of the essence

Alex Bilmes

Wednesday, 10th September 2008

Alex Bilmes says vintage watches have come of age

Deep under the Royal Arcade in Mayfair, in a tiny room reached by a death-trap staircase, I’m holding a pretty but, to the untrained eye, rather unremarkable old stainless-steel wristwatch. It’s very nice, as wristwatches go. But it’s not especially flash. It doesn’t have whiz-bang techie features. It can’t tell you the time in Tokyo and New York simultaneously. It’s not diamond-studded. There’s none of that business with the moon becoming fuller as the month develops. It doesn’t even display the date. Granted, it’s a bit bigger than your average timepiece, but not by much.

Having said all that, it’s a Rolex, and you don’t have to be an accomplished horologist to know that that means big bucks and terrific snob value. Still, ‘If you didn’t know it,’ concedes its owner, Danny Pizzigoni of Royal Arcade Watches, ‘it could just be your bog standard, fifteen-hundred-quid Rolex.’

But it isn’t. It’s a late Sixties model Rolex Milgauss. Notice the little red arrow at the tip of the second hand. See how the minute and hour hands are slightly fatter than on other Rolexes. ‘It’s subtle,’ says Pizzigoni. ‘It’s stealth wealth.’ And it’s yours for upwards of £30,000. A solid investment, according to Pizzigoni, in an item far too rare to be affected by Mr Darling’s nose-diving economy. If you can afford it, and you keep it ‘mint’ — in other words, don’t wear it — you can expect its value slowly to increase over the years.

What is it about the Milgauss that makes it special? ‘The most sought-after vintage watches are those that were unpopular at the time they were first on sale, because fewer were made,’ explains Pizzigoni. ‘The Milgauss was designed for people working in areas with high magnetic energy — scientists, maybe. It has an iron inner case, which is why it’s so heavy. And why it was so expensive for the time.’ Now, because the proportions of fashionable watches have increased since the Sixties, resulting in the gigantic sparklers on sale round the corner at Watches of Switzerland, the Milgauss’s time has come again. For those who already own the Belgravia townhouse, the contemporary art-collecting second wife and the Rolls-Royce Phantom, it almost qualifies as a must-have.

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