Classicwatch Vintage Watches

Hello folks,

This is my first post here, so please go easy on me...

I just bought this rare steel-cased Futurematic, branded "Automatic" which I understand was for the European market. I'm a trader, so the watch will be for sale once renovated. The movement is faulty so it will need a full service - but what about the dial? The auctioneer's description said "surface dirt on the dial", but it looks more like a stain to me. A trader who has one of these on sale told me that it would be more collectable with the dial left as-is, rather than getting it restored. I would welcome your opinions on that.

Via a Google search, I read that there may have been only 500 examples made of the European/steel watch - but I don't know where that opinion or fact came from. If anyone has firm data, that would be very helpful too.





Thanks,
BOB

The 500 figure is not accurate. It's much higher than that. Probably closer to 3-4000.

The watch would probably worth less with a restored dial.

Why would restoring the dial make the watch be worth less? What am I missing? It's a beautiful piece btw, Frontfloater.

Generally speaking a dial restoration, i.e. a repaint reduces the watch value by 30 to 50% and on some rarer models even more. It's only original once and repaints never really match the print of the original.

Eventually.... It turned out that I did not need to consider the dial restoration decision, because that "stain" was just not there - it was entirely a trick of the vendor's camera, which is weird. The dial certainly has patina, but not such that I (or probably anyone) would want to mess with it.