What isn't widely known here is that there is a small community of really expert collectors in the Schaffhausen area. They generally don't post on watch forums, aren't IWC employees, but these guys have been collecting IWC watches for years, often decades, and often their families did before them.
But you first have to get there, and flying via SWISS is part of the experience:
and then landing in Zurich is also nice. This time, the trees still had color and for some reason the fields were green:
En route I also looked in at the new Zurich boutique:
It's not as large as the Flagship stores, but still represents IWC well. The new Boutique is company-owned, unlike the prior Zurich one which will be closing early next year. (By the way, the new one at the Zurich airport is actually Türler-owned).
It was a private gathering, so there are no people-pictures. But the watches, even if the image got rotated, speak for themselves:
There's all sorts of interesting watches lying around if you look closely. Plus a tin of snuff (go figure).
Now --what really struck me were three pocket watches, all from the late-1970s. Two I had never seen before in person:
The first, on the left, is a so-called Varion, which converts from a Lepine style to a Savonette. You may have read the story about how only two were made 100 years ago and sold in Sicily, and this is a recreation of that rare model.
The middle one, which especially struck me, is a Jacquemart. It is a quarter[hour repeater where the arms move to "strike" the bell on the dial. Wikipedia defines a Jacquemart as an "automaton, an animated, mechanised figure of a person, usually made from wood or metal, which strikes the hours on a bell with a hammer. Jacquemarts are usually part of clocks or clocktowers, and are often near or at the top of the construction. The figurine is also known as Jack of the Clock or Jack o'Clock."
Wow! I asked Kurt Klaus later about this one, and he told me that the base movement was an IWC calibre 95 but then the repeater-automaton was by Dubois-Depraz, a specialist watch movement producer, and they then were assembled by Kelek (another company since acquired by Breitling). But regardless --what a pocket watch.
The one on the right was no slouch either. It has a thermometer as a complication.
A great get-together! Thanks guys.
