We selected three interesting watches from recent Catawiki auctions: an IWC Mark XII, a Longines Legend Diver and a Rolex GMT-Master II.As always, let me start by saying that before you bid on a watch, you should have done your homework. Especially when it concerns vintage watches. Some brands can help you identifying them, but most of the time it might take some more effort. From this weeks brands for example, Longines is known to have a great museum and archive that can help you to authenticate a watch. IWC has a small museum in Schaffhausen and should be able to give you some help as well. With Rolex, it will be difficult to get some official help from their offices in Geneva, but there is so much out there on their watches (including the GMT-Master), it shouldnt be difficult to source a good GMT-Master II. With vintage Rolex, it is a different thing though, that will require much more effort to get things authenticated.The selection I will show you here, are recently sold items. Yes sold. The thing is, the turnover on Catawiki of auction items is so quick, it leaves us with little time to do a proper write-up. So I show you some watches that I liked of the previous auctions, which might inspire you to look for the same or similar watches. Each watch gets a bit of description, which I hope helps you in making the right decisions.Catawiki FavoritesOnly the IWC Mark XII is the oldest watch of this selection, the Rolex GMT-Master II dates from 2006 and the Longines Legend Diver was originally sold in 2012. The Mark XII was introduced in 1993, so officially we could call this vintage but purists might have different ideas about the age of vintage watches. In the last Catawiki Favorites we also featured a Longines watches, a vintage chronograph from 1972, but this time we have a modern watch, be it one with a very short production period though. Without further ado, lets have a look at the selection.IWC Mark XII
IWCs Mark XII was the long awaited successor for the Mark XI, a professional pilots watch that was used for decades. The Mark XII has a diameter of 36mm and was in production from 1993 till 1999, so only a relatively short period. IWCs Mark XII uses the Jaeger-LeCoultre caliber 889/2 movement, which was the first self-winding movement for the Mark-series (The Mark XI was equipped with a hand-wound movement, caliber 89). The Mark XII was succeed by the Mark XV in 1999, which was fitted with an ETA 2892-A2 based movement.The actual production year is not entirely clear from the Catawiki description, but we are sure that you can find out by contacting IWC in such cases. The Mark XI that we have here, sold for 2149 (excluding premium), which is actually a low price for one.However, the condition of this watch as you can see is not that great. Although the seller rated the watch an 8 out of 10, we find that there are no official papers with this watch, no original strap and buckle and we noticed quite some wear (scratches and even some dings) in the bezel and lugs. To get this watch back in good condition, it will probably need some TLC from IWC in Schaffhausen. This will definitely set you back a couple of hundred Euro, especially if you also want to have an original strap and buckle for this watch. Paperwork is missing and is something you cant replace. In cases like this, it might be more wise to spend a bit more and get a watch that is actually in good condition and complete with box and papers.
