Why Watch Collectors Pay for Patina

"If you buy a vintage watch with patination and you're not sure about it, I recommend that you live with it for a while. Because once [the watch is restored], the patination is likely gone and you can't get it back," said Aurel Bacs, co-founder of the watch auctioneering firm Bacs & Russo and a senior consultant to the auction house Phillips. "Why keep the patination? Patina gives uniqueness."

In watches, patina is a collective term for signs of aging, from spotting on or discoloration of the dial through to a faded bezel, typically the result of prolonged exposure to humidity and sunlight. Patina, he conceded, is not for everyone. It's not for most manufacturers: return a watch to most for servicing and the policy tends to be to make it look as new as possible again, polishing and replacing parts as necessary to bring back the piece's original functionality.

"I certainly hear tales of manufacturers that do too much to a watch while repairing it," said Bacs, who in 2017 sold Paul Newman's Rolex Daytona for $17.8 million, at the time a record for a wristwatch at auction. "But I think most manufacturers are learning, slowly."

What, exactly? That patina has become something many collectors cherish "not just because signs of aging are proof to some extent that the watch is vintage but because we now have a thirst for history in a society in which we're surrounded by ever more perfect, and so sterile products," Bacs said.

"Look, I like my new iPhone as much as the next person, but there's not much emotion in it," said the London watch collector Charles Heely-Smith, who favors 1960s dive watches for their "ghost" bezels. "I'm drawn to signs of aging in watches the same way that I prefer antique furniture over IKEA, not because it's inherently any better, but because it somehow feels more human."

Auction houses sell the effect by name. In December 2022, Bonhams in London sold an Omega Speedmaster from about 1960, consigned by the original owner's family and cataloged with a "tropicalized dial," for £19,125 with buyer's premium, about $23,700 at the time.

But Sarah Fergusson, a senior watch specialist at Bonhams in Edinburgh, argued there is some spin in play here. That spin means watches patinated beyond reasonable repair can, she suggested, be turned into a positive.

"Patination is something that can be marketed, with certain kinds of patination, a 'Patrizzi' dial, for example, becoming unofficially trademarked, which itself generates buzz and a premium," she said. "It's why we despair when an heirloom watch has been sent back to the manufacturer for polishing because the owner believed that would improve it. There's still this disconnect between what manufacturers want and what auction houses want in order to meet the demands of this particular subculture of the collectors' market."

The manufacturers' own service terms are less absolute than that. Rolex says it replaces components that no longer meet its functional and aesthetic specifications, but its U.S. servicing page says the case and bracelet are refinished "on request." Patek Philippe polishes "if requested by the customer" and routes watches more than about 45 years old to a restoration workshop in Geneva whose stated aim is to keep original components wherever it can. Omega is the exception: polishing comes bundled into its complete service as "a courtesy package," and its separate restoration service takes only watches made before 1940. None of the three addresses patinated dials in its published terms. Patek lists dial replacement as a paid extra.

Many watch fans are less concerned with the authenticity of the patination. For some brands the sense of an aged dial is artificially achieved, as at Longines, whose Heritage Military reissue of a 1940s RAF pilot's watch has a dial hand-sprayed with tiny black droplets to reproduce the original's patina, so that no two are alike. Others take a handmade route.

"You can call it a kind of fakery but really the aging process is much like traditional decorative techniques in watchmaking; it's nearly all about hand-work," said U-Boat Watches' founder Italo Fontana, discussing the brand's latest aged model, the Profondo 10001 Limited Edition, a 10,001-meter depth-rated, outsized dive watch that he said launches in November.

The dial spends a month in salt water, then is brushed and chemically fixed. Other components are hand-distressed.

As Fontana said: "Aging adds emotional value to some objects because it suggests history, but if it's an aesthetic you're after you don't always want to wait."