The trip was one I have wanted to do for a while and after speaking to a few different vintage people in London they suggested Bond Street as most vintage guys are only around at weekend.
I called WEMPE the watch shop and spoke to Lynn Schroeder and managed to get an appointment for a few of us to look around her show room, ok 3pm was on..... a few months earlier I had popped in to Marcus on Bond Street where I met Dean Harding the assistant manager.... I explained who I was and how sad I was and he allowed me to take some pics.... they turned out bad so dare I call him again.... I called and although it was his day off the Manager of Marcus Chris said we would be welcome to pop in.... say 4pm after WEMPE...........
Ok now e had a plan of action.... Bond Street top to bottom, WEMPE and Marcus 3 - 4 pm the down to the South Bank before getting out of town.
So Thursday morning I grab Gary (agentorange - left below) and I drive the 120 miles to the outskirts of London, from there we jump a tube and make it to South Molten street, near Bond street for noon ish........
Now I organised this trip initially a few months ago and from the beginning Gary Steed is in.... he lives on the South Coast near Dover so came up by train for the day......
Sunny day turns in to tremendous downpour..... we meet up with Gary Steed (right below) and have a civilised coffee outside while the monsoon comes down. Being true Brits we get our watches out on the table of the street Cafe and get acquainted....
PORSCHE DESIGN
Finally the rain stops and we wander down to Bond Street.....
our first stop is Porsche Design
the two Garys try not to look suspicious standing outside....
First Watch of the day is - PD World Timer in 'black' PVD coated Titanium - what a cool watch and huge too.... at least 46mm and maybe 25 mm deep. Great design and such a simple watch to operate. Un Screw the top crown and twist the clicking cities in the right window while the left window shows you the hour of the day in the relevant timezone..... all very cool!
Thank you to James Morris- Manager of the Porsche Design Shop for letting us have a look at such cool watches.............. Porsche Design - Bond Street, London 0207 495 2938
Here it is next to my 43mm Bremont
The shop manager seemed to like teh 'cut of our jib' after we explained out fascination with all things clock work..... he offered to get 'From the Safe' a very rare Porsche Watch indeed.....
PD Indicator........ something like £75,000 ordered by a good customer who could not live with it when it arrived....and handed it back....... cool watch and absolutely massive...
back of the World Timer
Well pretty much blown away by our first visit we stumbled out of the shop to our first vintage shop only to be confronted by a load of custom PVD Rolex watches........
Daytona here.....
a Navitimer 806 there....
an Omega Seamaster and a Blancpain Fifty......not watches you see every day......
they even had a Laco Buhr watch on the floor in teh window hardly displayed so I guess military was not their thing....
Moving down Bond Street something caught my eye in Watches of Switzerland..... now this isn't your average Watches of Switzerland....... Zenith, UN, Bregeut, JLC, IWC, A. Lange, GP, Blancpain all nestled together with a couple of vintage pieces.
A Heuer Carrera from the very early 70's in great condition with a very cool looking vintage strap....
Hold on a minute... that's an ATG strap..... well if it's good enough for you guys then it is obviously good enough for Bond Street... LOL!!!!!
2.50pm time to call Lynn Schroeder at Wempe, she is waiting for us and we trott back up Bond street passing a loveley Miro in the window of a Gallery opposite Christies.
oh and a qick stop outside Breguet to see their truly amazing looking complications......
WEMPE
Thank you to Lynn Schroeder - Manager of WEMPE - LONDON for giving us so much of her time and for being such a nice person.
WEMPE - Bond Street, London 0207 493 2299
Lynn gives us a great welcome at the door...... welcomes us to her show room...... shows us around and gives us a tour of the new WEMPE shop..... very swish and very welcoming.
We are introduced to their in house watchmaker and Lynn encourages us to show our vintage collections to him.... he is very interested in the old Omegas from Gary and the military watches from me...
Then he sposts my business card and logo..... to both our na dhis surprise he tells us in faltering English that he already has a watch for sale on the ATG Sales Forum and that he hasn't had a sniff yet.... well, well small world eh?
We have a great talk with Lynn who tells us about here experience in the watch trade in New York at the WEMPE shop there and we chat about up and coming brands...... shw admires my Bremont at says she has heard good things about the new British brand.
After making us feel right at home she asks us what we would like to view and I have to admit I was thinking Glashutte Original but I settled for A Lange & Sohne and boy were we ever mpressed by the watches Lynn brought over........
Lange 1 in platinum, Datograph yellow gold and their 'Debut' watch this year. The 'Grande' Lange 1
We were stuck for words..... what absolutely beautiful timepieces... what craftsmanship.... the technical aspect of their dials, the technical aspect of their movements married with the absolute dedication to taking a beautiful mechanical movement and making it even more so with incredible engraving........
and making the case back as open and clear as possible so as to view the work below.......quite an extraordinary watch I think............ the Grande Lange 1
Here is a shot of the Datograph...... I read recently in QP magazine that thsi would be the watch one of their journalists would buy if he had £25,000 to spend. I have to say in the magazine the watch looked the best choice and in real life it is even better..........
Here I took a shot with my Heuer Bund in shot for scale... the Bund is 43mm
We had a great time and Lynn Schroeder of WEMPE was very welcoming and understanding of our disease...... I have to say that it was one of the best shopping experiences I have had and I would like to thank Lynn and WEMPE for being so acommodating and generous with her time and for the Wempe Complications book she gave to each of us explaining many of the complicated features of WEMPE'S watches.
One day I may walk in and actually spend some money there.....Lol!
Left to right, Aistair owner ATG Vintage Watches, Gary (agent-orange) Gary (onespeed)
MARCUS
Thank you to Dean Harding - Asistant Manager of MARCUS - LONDON
Again for allowing us to indulge our passion for watches and to his Manager Chris who we missed on the day but who was also very nice to me when i called to arrange a visit.
MARCUS - Bond Street, London 0207 290 6500
Looking in the window of MARCUS Watches London Bond Street ...........................
.....................................................gave me a new appreciation of Hublot watches
Audemars Piguet - Dual Time Millenary Maserati in Platinum
Celebrating 90 years of Maserati......
Red Gold Pierre Kunz Tourbillon - Deco case with a square exposed Tourbillon in a cage
Pierre Kunz Minute Repeater with diamond studed case (onespeed crusises in the background)
ALAIN SILBERSTEIN - Marine Tourbillon
VOGARD - World timer
HUBLOT - Chronos and crushed diamonds
Now this was the scary time for me......
Dean saw me looking at this very watch...... Frank Muller Revolution Triple Tourbillon yes that is 3 exacting forms of (anti gravity) regulation working against each other to deliver accuracy..... he took it out and handed it to me...... white gold..... I can't even think how much it is worth.....look at the engraving on the case back........ really love the look of this watch..........great workmanship............
URWERK 103
....................the dial of the Frank Muller Revolution Triple
Dean took us down to one of the viewing rooms at Marcus and I am sorry but it was straight out of .......... The Spy Who loved me........................
Glass cases with diamond studded watches next to glass cases with vintage wines next to brushed steel doors... oooh it was all very coool...........................
By now we had been joined by Ian Clifford (Cliffy) on the Forum ...................................we were all equally .............................'gob smaked' by this experience.................................................
Frank Muller tastic
The famous wall of Burben & Zorweg watch winders
Just a moment, I would like to sincerely thank Dean Harding and his manager Chris who were incredibly nice to us........ again another Bond street retailer allowing these lowly fools to grace their hallowed halls to stare and marvel at what serious wealth can buy you.......... thank you very much indeed gentlemen for the experience.............
VINTAGE
Well we were now running late to catch up with everyone else...... so we said our goodbyes to Dean at Marcus and trundled our way off to the Vintage Omega Shop in Burlington Arcade......
From the outside only.....a whoop of .861 and 1040 Seamasters
I squadron of issued pieces....including a Ranchero and Museum Pilot...... not very common .....
A shoal of Deep Dive Seamasters
A gaggle of Chronostops..........Gary wasn't even tempted to go in and dissolve his whole Omega collection that was in my bag in one go either............
Further on down into the arcade we came across David Duggan
Pre owned specialist with a few classic Rolex Sport watches in the very nice window......
1680 what do you need the date for ?........
Oh yes and a few Red Subs....
Just across from there is the vintage Rolex shop with about 300 vintage Rolexes all listed by date........ largely precisions... date justs....date oysters and some early enamel dial watches with nice matching NOS dials....'wink'.....Rolex Prince tanks in gold and two tone and some very nice Daytonas.....
Very rare those ones....... indeed.......
Now this one is very rare.....
Oh I like this one ever so much.... Cliffy and I became all sad when we saw this one......
No need to be sad though as at the bottom of the arcade is a shop that sells biscuits and chocoklate taht appears to be made entirely of gold nuggets......
So off we popped out of the arcade and down Picadilly away from the Ritz, past the Royal Academy and on down through the west end to meet up with a couple of others on teh South Bank.
and on our right we have Trafalgar Square with Nelson's Column
and on our left crossing Hungerford foot bridge at The Embankment we have the best view of the City of London I think there is......
So we made it to the South Bank of the River Thames..... Cliffy took us on a little detour to find a place to eat.... which was nice........ and then we finally took a table in one of the restaurants that have now sprung up there where no one could eat or enjoy themselves for 40 years.......
Looking down the Southbank towards the National Theatre
Neal Skelding (Skelding-shocker) from the forum arrived wearing his IWC St. Exupery Flieger chrono - great watch that............. I passe around my offerings..... Heuer bund..... Bremont ............Lemania....... Hanahrt.......and as Martin was not there a couple of his pieces including a Farve-Leuba Sea Sky GMT almost felt like he was there... sniff!
By this time we had been joined by Mat one of the Bremont enthusiasts and new meber to out Motley crew.........Cliffy suddenly produced a 'highly polished case' of great looking Gallet watches with a few Movado looking things thrown in.......... everyone was suitably impressed although the food had just arrived and seeing as we hadn't eaten since 12 ish we were starving...............
Mat inspecting my Bremont ALT1-C
Neal Skelding checking out the Farve-Leuba Sea Sky GMT and dreaming of a PloProf
So soon it was time to leave...... a long journey ahead I took one last shot of the London Eye and we skipped up thos steps to cath out train home............
Thank you to Gary and Gary (you know who you are) who accomplanied me to the shops, couldn't have thought of two better crazy WIS collectors to enjoy those Lange watches at WEMPE with... great day gentlemen....... Thanks also for Ian Clifford making it down and being gregarious enough for me to be a shrinking violet...........................
Thanks to Mat for turning up and actually enjoying himself even though we could have all been very, very mad............. oh and we owe you £10--paid his way that man........ and finally to Neal Skelding for popping over late and getting in teh swing straight away..... great day gents I for one had a great time........
Big thanks to WEMPE and MARCUS for being such great sports and letting us annoy them at work.
Thank you all very much!
Alistair Gibbons @ www.atgvintagewatches.com