Watches from each decade - Share your watches Part 5: The 50s

dont have a vintage but i believe this junghans trilastic is from 1950-1960 era. been borrowing it for a few days just to feel what does feel like to wear a vintage😃

In the early days of this forum I lamented that I was having a hard time finding watches from the 1950's. I could find post-War 1940's watches and sleek 1960's watches. @WatchYourIntruder commented that I did not know what I was talking about (he was polite about it). He was right. I underestimated the power of algorithms to shape what I was being shown. I was limiting my choices. So, I corrected course.

Style does not fall neatly into decades. There is little distinction between the late 40's and early 50's and then again as we enter the 1960's. Sometimes you have to guess.  There are plenty of clues to be found.

I think that the case shape puts this in the early 50's. (Wittnauer)

I researched this once upon a time. I don't believe that "Shockmaster" appears on an Elgin dial until 1952. That sounds about right.

During the 1950's the rectangle/tank/tonneau watch cases gave way to round dials. By the late 1950's non-round dials seemed out of fashion.  Also, brands began to lose some numerals in favor of just indices. Some brands used even numerals. Croton seemed to prefer odd numerals.

Pressed dials came and went in the 1950's.

Guilloche dials had a resurgence in the decade and only recently have come back into style. Also, red second hands or red tipped second hands became popular.

Radium gave way to no lume and eventually tritium.

The Soviet watch industry gets large enough to be noticed. By the end of the 1960's almost half of their production will be for export.

When you make the same watch in the same style year after year with the same movement you just have to guess.

(Forgot one.)

anybody know which era does this came from? found it recently on my sister closet, she said our grandmother gave it to her. its a manual wind citizen, is it belong to 50 era?

Early 1950s Longines. The movement itself is a caliber 22LS. It was invoiced on 24 May 1951 to the company Longines-Wittnauer Watch Co.

One more decade and I will finally be able to join in! 🤣

I love 1950’s watch design. It speaks to me.

Here‘s my 1954 Smiths A404

Vintage Smiths should speak to all of us.

1959 Bulova SVP "V" - 34mm of pure class!

1957 Hamilton Sinclair. Was my Dad’s watch for winning the Pittsburgh Field Club golf club championship. 18k gold and engraved. His everyday wear, now my dress watch. It’s super small compared to my 40-41mm daily wearers, my Big Crown Pointer Date and Aqua Terra.

You will be more than welcome 👍

I like nice lugs and those are spectacular👌

Great looking Smiths👌

Great ensemble from a ”non existing decade”👌 I remember that dialogue. A lot of C24 stats back and forth.

The 50s and 60s are my favourite decades of,todays, vintage watches. Here is an older shot of 3 of mine from the 50s. All in capped gold.

Universal Genève Polerouter bumper -55.         
Omega  Constellation -59                                                                                       
Omega Seamaster -58                                   

Alpina bumper auto in a Taubert case:

1952 Eterna

Smiths:

Start

1950 Doxa

Great looking Explorer👌

Like that railroad track a lot.

Even if on the smaller side doesn’t the square shape make wear ”bigger”?

Impressive as always👏

In a way. The long lugs help. But at 25x25mm, make no mistake, this is a small watch. Looks dainty. But does it look elegant? My wrist is 6.75” BTW.

As elegant as an classic Cartier👍

Ok things have finally progressed to my just grandpas watch (no great or great, great prefix needed on this one!)

It was gifted to Grandpa by his company and dated ‘53 on the back

Not sure about the brand - ‘Vadis’ .  It’s 31mm by 12mm with very domed hesalite.  Automatic, and some ancient form of lume.  Nice pop of color with the second hand.

Bracelet is gold fixo-flex, that I can’t figure out how to get off

Dial and case Need some restoring but it keeps excellent time!

I'll be thoughtful here and try and contribute some interesting references rather than just do a dump of my photo archive - I have quite a few watches from the 1950s.

I'll start first with Hamilton Electrics. In the 1950s, Hamilton hired Richard Arbib from Chrysler and had him design a series of amazing cool asymmetric watch designs. These later inspired the designs of Gilbert Albert for Patek in the 1960s. I'll spread the designs out over the 1950s and 1960s. The first designs were released in 1957 and found favor with Elvis and the rockabilly crowd - all the hepcats wanted to have Hamiltons. They were also a hit with anyone who wanted to appear to be future-focused. The watches used space-age names to go with their futuristic designs. I'll leave the 1960s designs for the next thread that Per posts.

Here are some ads from 1957

Here are some of those references in my collection:

Ventura - 1957

Spectra - 1957

Vantage - 1958

Pacer - 1957

Converta - 1958

Titan - 1957

Van Horn - 1957

Van Horn - 1957 with diamonds

Next up... a selection of 1950s chronographs...you can see the transition from the designs of the late 1940s in the early 1950s and how they progressed to the future as the designs progressed toward the end of the 1950s...

Many of the Swiss chronographs from the 1950s were intended to be sold as businessmen tourist souvenirs - something to take home to remember their business trip to Switzerland. The watches are often in a thin 18k gold case or a 18k gold-plated case. These are fragile watches - many of which have the less expensive Landeron or Venus chronograph movements in them.

However, there are also some higher quality chronographs using better Valjoux movements.

Here are a selection of wrist shots (or file photos) from my collection...

Here is a small group of military watches from the 1950s - some of which would have been officer's watches...

And here is a small group of 1950s dress watches...

Very nice patina on your beautiful watch.

Stunning! Tell me, does your watch museum have public open hours? Or is it by appointment only? Of all your beautiful samples I find my favourites to be your Certina and the White Star.

Many thanks!

I have had most of the collection here a few times to share with close friends. It's beastly trying to get all the watches together in the same place, but pretty fun to see them all displayed.

I think the last time I did this it took about 4 hours to get through everything. My buddy was taking wrist shots of all the watches he liked.

I lucked out on the Certina - picked it up from my good friends Sigfrid and Silvia at Watches83 in Spain. It is a vintage 1950s Swiss military watch still on its issued military bund strap - so very cool. It runs the manual Certina KF310 movement. The case size is only 33mm but wears larger on the issued bund strap - you can see below that it also has fixed lugs - important for military watches to prevent loss of spring bars. 

Here are a couple of shots showing the full bund strap and the movement...

Was it the White Star chronograph or the White Star Revelation that caught your eye? 

I learned about the White Star brand from Tony's Rescapement blog (sadly he is no longer writing it). I was shocked at how much some White Star references had sold for at auction. So I did some crawling through the web to see if I could find some references from the brand that were hidden deals.

The White Star Revelation was an incredible deal at $70. It runs the manual A. Schild AS 1890 movement (see image below) and you can tell it's almost NOS from how clean and perfect the caseback is:

The White Star chronograph was a bit more pricey and runs the classic manual Venus 188 chronograph movement...

Sigfrid and Silvia are awesome. I see from the pictures that it was a while back. Not the new background. The White Star was actually the last slide, in the military section.