Essential tips for your vintage watch

Great! You bought your first vintage watch, congratulations! Now it’s time to enjoy, and take good care of her. To help you with this we give you a handful of essential tips to care for your vintage watch.

1. Don’t go swimming with it!
We start with the most important advice, avoid water as much as possible. In any case never go swimming with your vintage watch or wear it under the shower. Vintage watches were not produced with the water resistance of modern watches. Also over time the gaskets can be dried out. And that could cause some water to seep into the case and cause fog under the crystal. Eventually, that vapor should disappear, but the damage to the movement can be horrific.

2. Don’t overwind your watch
Over winding your watch can cause damage to the mainspring. When you have a handwound watch stop winding it as soon as you feel resistance in the crown. If you have an automatic watch, you should only need to wind it when the watch has completely stopped running, a few turns should be sufficient to get the watch started again.

3. It might be a sports watch but don’t sport with it
If you are planning to go the tennis court or golf course it’s best to leave your vintage watch at home. Vintage watches are more delicate than modern watches and can’t stand as much shocks. So don’t risk any unnecessary damage to the movement.

4. Service prevents damage
You should have your vintage watch serviced every three to five years (depening on the age and movement). Servicing a movements usually prevents bigger damage down the road. It’s important to select a good watchmaker or watch dealer that understands how to service a vintage watch. And someone that will honor your request. You don’t want to end up losing your nice tropical dial because some watchmaker thinks it’s damaged.

5. It’s not perfect
Vintage timepieces are less accurate than modern watches. You can expect your vintage watch to keep time within zero to three minutes per day, again depending on the age and movement of the watch. The more modern the better the accuracy in most cases.