How the ‘Neo-Vintage’ Era Became the Hottest Thing in Watches

Perhaps the best argument in favor of neo-vintage is its value, particularly for classic tool watches. With the vintage looks of their forebears, the reliability of modern movements, and prices well below those of their 21st-century descendants, these watches offer a best-of-both-worlds scenario. “A [1990s] Speedmaster still looks like a Speedmaster from the ’60s; a Submariner still looks like a Submariner from the ’60s. The sizes remain the same, the general layout and configuration remain the same, the only things that were really different from the earlier versions were some of the materials,” says James Lamdin, the founder of Analog:Shift and a longtime neo-vintage evangelist. These watches also use tritium lume on their dials instead of modern Super-LumiNova, which ages more like old-school radium, lending them the warm tones of a classic vintage watch. “For a lot of people, it’s that aging of the material, going from white to this warm yellow cream vibe, that gives each watch its unique character and an element of romance,” Lamdin says.

Call it what you will—romance, patina, vibes—neo-vintage watches, their proponents insist, were the last generation made with a similar level of care, craftsmanship, and attention to detail as those from the golden eras of the mid-20th century. “As much as I don’t want to sound like an old man complaining, modern watches are more devoid of soul,” says Erik Gustafson, the founder of Hairspring Watches. “The finishing standards, proportions, and case designs of neo-vintage often align closer with my personal tastes, and I suspect that’s true for many. Handcraft matters, and it’s become rarer and rarer.”

An ’80s-era Audemars Piguet Quantième Perpétuel.

Courtesy of Alfredo Paramico

This is particularly true the higher you climb up the neo-vintage hierarchy. When G-Shocks, Swatch Jellyfish, and Casio calculator watches were having their heyday in the 1980s, the best minds in Swiss watchmaking were getting ready to mount a comeback with a string of old-school horological bangers. Blancpain was among the first to come out swinging with its collection of classic complications, dubbed the Six Masterpieces, including a perpetual calendar and a minute repeater. IWC launched its historic Da Vinci Perpetual Calendar (the first that could be adjusted entirely via its crown), Ulysse Nardin released the Astrolabium Galileo Galilei (a miniaturized astrolabe that held the Guinness record for most complications), and Audemars Piguet released the world’s first self-winding tourbillon. These were followed by countless other modern-day grails ranging from the first-ever Patek Philippe ref. 5035, a.k.a. the world’s first annual calendar, to the reborn “pre-Vendôme” Panerai Luminor.

It’s this revival of traditional watchmaking against the tide of electronic quartz timekeeping that captivates collectors like Paramico. “By the late 1980s and early 1990s, a number of extraordinarily talented individuals, true visionaries and master watchmakers—driven by a deep desire to reconnect with the golden era of Swiss watchmaking from the 1950s—revived the tradition of mechanical horology,” he says. “That spirit of renaissance, of rebuilding an industry with passion, creativity, and technical mastery, is what makes 1990s watches so special to me.”