Values & guides
Authentication isn't a scan of a serial number; it's reading a watch against the era it claims to come from.
Every pre-owned watch that reaches our bench carries a story it tells about itself. Our job is to check whether that story holds up. We authenticate in-house, and the work is less like scanning a barcode and more like reading a document for anachronisms.
Start with the dial. Printing methods shifted across decades, and so did fonts, index shapes, and the depth of applied markers. A model line that moved from painted to applied indices in a particular era leaves a fingerprint. When a dial claims to be from before that shift but shows the later hallmark, we stop and ask why. Sometimes it's a service dial fitted years later, which is honest history. Sometimes it isn't.
Then the case. Lug profiles were reshaped as brands updated their tooling, and polishing over the years softens edges that once had a defined bevel. We measure, we weigh, we look at how the bracelet endlinks seat. Small things. A crown that turns wrong, a caseback engraving cut too shallow, a font that belongs to the following generation.
The movement is where guesswork ends. Finishing, bridge shapes, and the caliber's own reference tell us what should be inside a given production window. Our watchmakers open it, confirm it runs the way it should, and service it if it needs the attention.
We do this because we are not selling you the brand's paperwork; we are selling you our reading of the watch, backed by our own store warranty. That's the signature detail here. The verdict is ours, made by people who have handled enough of these to know when an era and an object agree with each other and when they quietly don't.
A watch that passes goes on sale described exactly as we found it: its condition, its service history where we know it, and nothing dressed up. A watch that doesn't pass never gets listed at all.
