Do as I say, not as I do

I was going to write a post about how my avarice made me buy my fourth Croton/Nivada Grenchen and how unnecessary it was. I never started out trying to collect this little niche of horological history. Sometimes it just happens. And then I looked closely at what I had and decided that this will be another type of post.

@Porthole and others have given very good advice about buying vintage watches. Ignore it at your peril. I will say that I ignore that advice sometimes. When I troll eBay for bargain vintage I will often linger on sellers with 100% ratings who sell a lot, just not many watches. Watch sellers know what they have. The garage/estate sale bargain hunter doesn't know a Pontiac or an Onsa. They only know Rolex and Omega. The other brands can be had under true value. Often pictures from these sellers are blurry. If you look through their other listings and the same lack of care is used you can guess that the picture is not deceptive.

This isn't a bad looking watch. It was not expensive. The dauphine handset and patterned dial place it firmly in the 1950's. The plating is mostly intact and the lugs are cool. It is very thin with more than half of its height being crystal. I wish that I could feel more joy about this purchase. It was losing more minutes per 24/hours than I am comfortable with so I "popped the back" as we always tell people to do BEFORE they buy a vintage watch. Good news is that it is running much better now. Bad news is this:

A clean running movement that should say Croton Nivada Grenchen says Effem Watch Meyer. It's not a bad movement. Nivada sourced movements from several companies. However, they were all labeled as Nivada. And, I can find no evidence that any movement ever came from Effem. Effem was a Fritz Meyer brand. It is not common. Meyer was the founder of Roamer, and vintage Roamer is a quality product (as long as it is not a sub-continent fantasy). The movement is fine. I think that it probably is an old repair/replacement. I could live with that maybe.

As I have aged I have lost some of my near vision. I wear readers. Often, I see that a watch of mine needs to be cleaned AFTER I post a picture on WRUW. The camera magnifies and sees what I can not. I wish that I had not seen this:

Those reflecting squares are not original. They have been roughly and inexpertly glued to the dial surface. It probably could be cleaned and lightly restored to the dial's original condition. But, is it worth it? I think not.

A non-watch person would think that this is a pretty vintage watch that keeps reasonable time. A watch person would be shaking their head and thinking how happy they were that they followed advice when it was offered. Sometimes knowledge doesn't increase happiness.