Tell me why I am wrong. Part One.

Hold my beer…

Pin-lever movements on the whole sacrificed quality over quantity to keep costs down. They were designed to be replaced not repaired, and represent everything wrong with consumerism. They are a trap for the unsuspecting vintage watch buyer, and should come with a health warning.

They should be viewed exactly like the quartz movements that replaced them: easy to swap out and bring the cost of watch production down so that every consumer can afford one. In a world of replaceable consumer goods they were as accurate and durable as they needed to be.

It is only because we fetishize old watches that we care that a movement designed for five years gets a little balky at 70.

Grabbing my popcorn for an epic battle between @Aurelian and @chronotriggered.

@Omeganut , you watching this?  

This is very much a niche problem, but it’s easy to fall into the trap. Other than my personal experiences, my main issue with them is the lack of longevity and what it does to a lot of good (or potentially good) watches. 
I (and this is very hyperbolic) feel there are a lot of watches out there that are just landfill: skin divers, chronos, timers, alarms, 70s fashion watches, obscure brands and designs, that are lost or will be lost once these pieces of s*** give up the ghost - it’s a loss of design, of craft, of heritage. A watch shouldn’t be lost or mourned, it should be cherished and celebrated.

Uh...  I have no eff'ing clue what a pin-lever movement even is.  Isn't that the thing Mary Lou Retton did at the '84 games in LA to win the individual all-around gold?

The only thing I am qualified to do here on this site is to make incredibly juvenile jokes and post random gifs.  

Otherwise, when it comes to serious discussion about serious things, I am totally out of my depth.

Would you say then that trainers are awful? After all, they're designed to be thrown away when it starts to go, with even massive brands like Adidas glueing the soles so reparation is nigh on impossible. Companies like Shoe Zone have almost killed the art of Shoemaking. Not a sneakerhead or anything I just dislike how accepted disposability has become

Any watch that has reached us after 50 or 70 years has survived due more to happenstance than quality.  The vast majority of Rolex and Omegas have passed from this mortal coil (well, not really, most likely tossed).  When we celebrate a vintage piece we must acknowledge that it is here due to luck more than build.

What if we lost a 60 year old LaSalle?  Why do you mourn that more than the inevitable failure of a Moonswatch or Christopher Ward Aquitaine?  We can't make them indestructible. We shouldn't even try.  We would never buy new if that were the case.  The makers of Crocs learned that lesson.

I love that Timex is reissuing their heritage.  They should try one of their original movements and sell the piece for $15.00.

I would. I think fast fashion is a problem. Sustainability is definitely something to consider going forward regardless. I’ve spent half the day talking about this (sustainability in design) amongst other people within my industry, so I’m kind of burnt out…

Yes - there is luck, but what I’m concerned about is the watches that are still currently alive, perfectly functional, but are on borrowed time. At least with pallet-levers they can be repaired to a certain extent... there does arise the cost vs practicality issue, but I have a 1936 Vertex in the shop and a 1911 Elgin that keeps time, so where should I draw the line?

I appreciate that my latest arguement is very much heart over head. We are unique on here, you would mourn the LaSalle as well. Things don’t last forever, but I do wish more watches could, but that is a romantic fool talking. I don’t connect to the CW as I do my 1970s Seamaster f300Hz, but I think it’s nostalgia and pure personal preference. Then again, we are both in it for the thrill of the hunt - so we are wired differently than other watch collectors. The MoonSwatch is future garbage (as in its cheap and disposable) and is a gimmick.

In terms of heritage pieces and homages, I am in favour, but would always want to see and hold an original if nothing else.

(The old standby: the car analogy.)

Objectively, old Volkswagens are terrible cars.  They break frequently, they leak, rust, are drafty and the heaters don't work.  The windshield wipers are from a child's toy. They are unsafe at any speed. The seats were uncomfortable. They had a weird Volkswagen plastic smell. They were starter cars, and disposable.

It is exactly this quality, their nearness to the crusher, that makes them so beloved. The cost of ownership was low, the barrier to ownership was low.  When you could buy a better car, you did.

50 years later they are collectible. Would you buy one for your sixteen year old? No. You have to love and embrace the imperfections to be able to own an old Bug.  Full disclosure, this was my car when I was 16:

My friends would not be seen in it. This car would soon be the Scirocco and Volkswagen would move upscale (a bit).

Pin-pallets occupy the same space in the watch world.  We are sentimental creatures, but the market is not.  The market improved Volkswagen and it improved watches.

Let's pour one out for the working man's movement and resolve never to buy one again.

I might have bought another one…

I got outbid… sound the all clear 😂

Can we change this to "what kind of car did we have when we were 16?"

78 Grand Prix, although mine wasn't this nice. (pic from the interwebz)

I had one of those in college, baby blue.

Very true words,

You're on beast mode @chronotriggered , you destroyed me👹⌚💪😂👌👍!

Why cannot the ephemerality be appreciated? Like an 8-track cassette where part of the allure is that every listen may well be the last before it self-destructs. That things won't last forever is all the more reason to savor them while they do.

I don't know enough to theorize about an alternate history where pin-levers never existed.  Would we all still be clinging to inherited pocket watches that were among the most valuable things in our possession? Would quartz or some other technology have come around quicker?

I'm one for quality and durability, but the the reality is that when innovation is expected, objects suffer planned obsolescence. Making things the to last tends to imply that nothing better is expected to come around. And that is the difference in the times. At the heydey of the pin-lever, there was optimism about advances in the future. What do we have since the quartz revolution? Yeah, yeah, the coaxial escapement and what else? Stagnant technology, might as well make it last.

For a better treatise on this...https://www.speedsportlife.com/2010/02/22/avoidable-contact-32-nobody-wants-a-car-to-last-forever/

That is also a romantic view - the fragility of the movement is tied to the beauty of the piece and therefore the precious time you can coax out of the watch makes it all the more special. I think I’m there anyway - but I can still take umbrage at the situation. Why should my ChronOris be landfill when it stops? This is not a simple argument either and I believe I might be flip-flopping between hate and admiration depending on the amount of coffee in my system and my current blood sugar levels, but bottom line the movements are s*** and you should never really purchase a watch with one unless you want to throw money away. But, if you want to purchase one and appreciate it for what it is, a moment in time, then do. I have a few, I‘m both a fool and a pragmatist, but I am fully prepared to lose what I put in.

Your point regarding the innovation minus pin-lever, I think quartz would have eventually happened because once electricity got involved they were already looking at battery power and tuning forks in the 20-30s. Pin-levers were almost a side show to this and were rendered obsolete very quickly by quartz; if you consider the quartz arms race, it was Seiko vs a Swiss consortium with PP/Omega etc… these are Swiss brands who formed a cabal to keep lots of brands away from the their precious little part of the industry.

You also need to consider why pocket watch innovation and transformation into the wristwatch occurred - air travel (Santos de Cartier), WWI trench watch, WWII, advances in travel, motorsports and other sport timings… the only real advances left once they got quartz accuracy is adaptation to information and connectivity - and then it becomes less of a watch and more a piece of wearable technology. There is a limit to what a “watch” is. They are still innovating - Bvlgari got the thinnest movement to 1.8mm this year - you need some mad levels of metallurgy to pull that off without the watch breaking. Omega‘s latest diver can withstand stupid pressures. The 4-faces JLC Reverso, and the VC with 27 complications - the boundaries are still being pushed, it just seems less exciting now because we have achieved so much.

Stole this gif from @foghorn not gonna lie

I'd go big block 427 FE so Mark II

@MrBloke 

Pin lever escapement - as a technical solution - is, well, usually rubbish. It was intended as a cheaper version of the Swiss lever escapement, which it was, but that in most cases meant that the movement equipped with it would be cheaply made. And if you look at any pin lever movement, on principle most of them are perfunctory junk with poor finishing. That doesn't spare balance components - just look at the balance wheel on most of them. That stuff just can't be very capable. It looks like garbage, and usually is. Oris, once the king of pin levers, apparently really got used to movements that look like trash, because they finish their Sellitas so that they look like trash, even though they're not. But it seems to me like the brand has retained its sentiment for having their movements look miserable. 

There were some decent pin lever movements - notably, Oris alright had one pass observatory chronometer trials. I wouldn't mind owning a nice Medana with a Meyer & Studeli (MST) cal.374 or 375, these really weren't bad for pin levers.

Timex pin levers weren't exactly bad in terms of durability. I don't know how they did it, but even though these movements were about as pretty or as well-finished as a truck of manure, they performed admirably, even if mistreated.

On account of its disposability, I called the Sistem51 aka Swissmatic the Ruhla of our time. That's because pin-lever UMF Ruhla, Thiel and Kienzle were just about the most horrid stuff out there, closely followed by Baumgartner, Mortima/Cattin, Ebauches Bettlach and other such landfill. They were meant not to last. And neither is the Sistem51. You can't service a Sistem51, it's sealed for good, and when it needs servicing, it's thrown into the dumpster and replaced with another one. 

So, well, I use the most common pin lever movements as the point of reference for trash. 

When I see a vintage Oris or Mortima priced big, because it's an Oris or because it's a lookalike of a coveted type - say, a skindiver - I'm not sure if to laugh or cry. Kill it with fire before it lays eggs...

Of course, that's not to say that a jewelled Swiss lever escapement makes a movement superior to any pin lever. If I had a choice between a Medana or a Soviet-made Luch, it'd definitely be the Medana for me. Mind you, I've seen a bit of them that were damn good-looking. Then again, it might be like with my ex-girlfriend - nice outside, but the heart and soul are a cesspool. I'm a bit wary of what looks good, but has some telltale signs of that it might be rubbish.

You're not wrong. I have my grandfather's pin pallet movement Oris from the 1950s. It had a nickel plated brass case that has evenly worn apart from the cashback which is heavily pitted. The original dial is in great condition. It stopped a couple of years ago and sent it to Andrew Charles watchmakers. They were the service centre in the UK for a while. I thought they would have replaced the whole movement but said they didn't,  just replaced the worn parts. Now it keeps very good time but I rarely wear it as it has not an ounce of water resistance and has huge sentimental value if no actual value.

Georges Roskopf wanted to make watches that working men could afford. His was a noble pursuit.

That it was indeed. The problem is that the result wasn't particularly reliable when miniaturized to wristwatch dimensions, and the manufacturers of wristwatch pin lever movements seemed to have taken it as an incentive to put even less effort into finishing other components properly. Probably because they knew that more fragile pin pallets won't last long enough. 

 Sure, Roskopf's design cut the number of jewels required. That it did much like the cylinder escapement, but I suppose it was easier to manufacture. The simplified wheeltrain of Roskopf's movements was also a step forward. The thing is, the cost of rubies dropped considerably in 1902 thanks to Auguste Verneuil having developed a process of manufacturing synthetic rubies and industrializing it. In effect, the very point of using the pin lever escapement has diminished. So, the way I see it, it made little sense after 1902.

The premise of this post was that it was for entertainment purposes.

Of course we are all in violent agreement. Pin pallet movements are an abomination. The real shame is that Ruhla, Mortima, and many others made very pretty dials and the unknowing buy them and learn the hard way that what they bought ceased being a time piece years earlier. I have made that mistake, @chronotriggered lives in a nightmare loop that he can not escape. I am sure that somewhere in your collection is/was the deep burning shame of buying a pretty little Medana or Vantage that looked pristine but quickly ceased to function.

Edit:  I would move your date to 1950.  War shortages caused disruptions that made pin pallets economically feasible. After the war economies ended they shouldn't have had a place and yet survived for another quarter century.

I haven't ever bought a watch only to find out that it's a pin lever wonder. I do have a pin lever, which I got in a giveaway - a Timex. As for Medana... Oh, they did make some beautiful watches...

https://www.fratellowatches.com/tbt-the-full-kit-medana-pontife-watch/

But TBH, I wouldn't really be willing to spend more than 60-70 euro even on a NOS one, and just "because it's NOS" wouldn't get me to pay more. Obviously, no one would be keen to sell a watch in that condition for what I'd be willing to spend on it.

Edit: I'd not even be willing to buy one because of, say, pontife hands, I do have an Alpina with pontife hands on its way to me😀

I feel vindicated, thanks @MrBloke 👍

As if to highlight the contradiction you link to a beautiful pin pallet watch that would have all, or nearly all, of us reaching for our wallet. Therein lies the problem.

But this is kind of my earlier point as well, doomed watches that don’t deserve the death sentence given to them by the choice to put such a garbage movement inside. That Medana ticks every box I have, except movement, but as you rightly point out I would be seriously considering a purchase regardless. I guess you can’t save them all, but you shouldn’t either.