Zodiac watches from the 1950s

7 pieces by Zodiac from the 1950s — each one I owned and serviced before listing it, with its reference, calibre and condition stated in full.

This is the decade Zodiac was taken seriously, and it earned it on engineering rather than price. The Autographic came first, in 1949 — one of the earliest self-winding watches to put a power reserve on the dial, the pointer sitting at six and, from 1952, pivoting across the centre instead. The Glorious followed in 1954: hermetically sealed, its dial built in layers rather than printed, and thin in spite of carrying central hacking seconds and shock protection. An Autographic version of it arrived the next year, a date version the year after that.

A dial built in parts is a gift to anyone buying at this distance, because it cannot be refinished convincingly — it either survived or it plainly did not, and there is no middle state to argue about. The power reserve is the thing to test rather than admire: it is driven off the winding work through a ratchet, so a hand that does not move as the watch winds is telling you something no photograph will. Everything else here is a plain three-hander from a maker who was, briefly, out-engineering companies whose names now cost four times as much.

The calibres here are Zodiac 10-S, Zodiac 12, Zodiac 1361, Zodiac 53, Zodiac 721 and Zodiac 810, 7 references between them, in chrome-plated, gold-plated and stainless steel cases.

All 7 have sold. They stay listed because the collection is only legible whole — a sold page is the honest record of what Zodiac was making then, and what it went for.

Reference guide: Zodiac Sea Wolf — 15 generations and 74 references, with calibres, serial dating and buying checks.