Summer is here and with it the first white-veiled glimmerings of wedding season. However, while you might already have the perfect venue in mind (you’d better, they get booked up quickly) and you might even have your suit already tailored, there’s one particular part of your wedding day attire that you might be forgetting: the watch.
Any formal ensemble deserves a matching dress watch. But your wedding isn’t just any event, it’s one of the most important days of your life, the kind of celebration at which your usual go-to, time-only number simply won’t cut it. You want something fittingly unique, something that mirrors not just your outfit but the vibe of the day itself and will act as a lasting memento.
So, what kind of things should you look for? Well, if you’re after timeless charm, look no further than vintage. Not only can you find something unique on the pre-owned market, something with a little more flair to it, but it also comes with its own story and history. On a day that’s all about writing the next chapter in your own story, there’s a poetry in that.
Fortunately, you don’t need to look too hard to find an extraordinary selection of vintage dress watches right at your fingertips. Ever since their Authenticity Guarantee-backed focus on preowned timepieces, eBay have become one of the most important platforms on which to buy and sell vintage watches. That means a fittingly vast selection to choose from – and more chance that you’ll find your perfect wedding day partner. Other than your soon-to-be spouse that is.
With such incredible variety at your fingertips across eBay’s listed watches, there are ample exceptional timepieces to choose from. With that in mind, we’ve selected a quintet of timepieces to give you some ideas of what to look for, all available (at time of writing) on eBay, with authenticity and condition guaranteed.
Patek Philippe Golden Ellipse
Patek’s hugely underrated dress watch is once again in a bit of an ascendency with a new version released this year. So, aside from the Golden Ellipse being a beautiful, uniquely tactile timepiece, it might also be a good time to get one. The dark blue dial is a stunner and a forgiving colour that goes with 99% of wedding themes, while the full gold beads of rice bracelet is one of the most comfortable you’ll find on a pre-owned watch, perfect for a full day of wear and well into the reception. It also ticks off something old and something blue, if you’re particularly into that kind of thing.
Prices for the Golden Ellipse are on the rise, but you can currently find them for around £10,000, with an additional premium for the full gold bracelet.
Omega Constellation Pie-Pan
Back in the 1960s, highly curved, pie-pan dials were a mainstay on dress watches, so much so that there’s a bit of a revival in them these days. Omega’s approach to the style was slightly different though, using striking applied indexes to create a faceted edge to the dial, emphasised by the crosshair at the centre. The result was the Constellation, which made for one of the coolest (yet still wearable) dress watches of the mid-60s, a step away from the era’s more ‘standard’ Seamaster dress models towards something quirkier.
Omega pieces are remaining undervalued in the vintage space and even a superb example of the Constellation Pie-Pan will set you back less than £3,000. As a quick eBay search will show you, it’s also available in steel, so you can easily match the metal colour to your wedding ring even if you’re wearing white gold or platinum.
Jaeger-Lecoultre Reverso
The Reverso has remained pretty much unchanged since a few British cavalry officers needed a watch they could wear without risking an errant mallet on the polo pitch back in 1931, and you don’t need to look far back to find some cool, pre-owned pieces. The bi-colour version from the 2010s is particularly worth a look as it toes the line between the luxury and formality of gold and the practicality of steel. This makes it equal parts good looking in a charmingly retro way and accessible compared to other Reversos. Best of all, you can flip it over to engrave the back with a wedding appropriate message, a keepsake not just for the day but for life.
A bi-colour Reverso from the 2010s will cost around £4,000 and they do crop up fairly regularly on eBay. There are of course plenty of other Reversos, with the sheer number of Reversos JLC have produced over the years, meaning there’s one to suit every wrist.
Rolex Precision
Every man needs a Rolex in their collection at some point. Sure, their prices can creep pretty high, but even The Crown has a few pocket picks that are keeping a healthy distance from the Daytona hype. Nine karat gold case in point, the criminally overlooked Precision. A perfect little dress watch mixing Arabic numerals and baton indexes with a sleek silver dial, it’s a world away from the Rolexes of today and gets some serious collectors’ kudos for it. Like many ‘60s dress watches, its combination of curved, silver dial and gold hardware makes for a classic look that’ll work with any outfit.
There are a good number of Rolex Precision models available on eBay and are consistently priced between £3,000 and £3,500 for great examples. This is one of the only Rolex models you can say that about.
eBay’s Authenticity Guarantee
As you can see, there are an incredible array of vintage watches available on the pre-owned market and platforms like eBay help you access rare and exclusive timepieces easier than ever before – and at less than any bricks-and-mortar retailer. More than that however, you can shop with total confidence as every watch over £1,500 – which includes everything on this list – undergoes eBay’s Authenticity Guarantee.
It’s checked by experts who live and breathe watches for both authenticity and condition post-sale, so that you know you’re getting what you paid for. So you can rest assured that of the various problems likely to crop up on your wedding day, your watch won’t be one of them.
More details at eBay.
