TISSOT PR100 FLYBACK MANUAL SERIAL NUMBER
While I’m on hands, some Type XX pieces have Dauphine hour and minute hands rather than the syringe hands on my piece – I’ll stick with mine.Įarly production: Perhaps this is a personal quirk, but my watch’s serial number places it at the early end of the production of Mathey-branded pieces, and I quite like that. Among the big eye watches, some have 30-index minute totalizers (often with the 3, 6, and 9 minutes elongated) with a thin chronograph minute hand rather than the 15-index subdial with propeller-shaped hand that I much prefer. But it seems entirely contemporary in size and heft when seen on the wrist, and the chunky profile view is really attractive to my eye.Ĭondition matters: lug and bezel details, Mathey-Tissot Type 20 chronographįifteen-index big eye, propeller hand: Not all Type XX style watches feature the “big eye” look in which the chronograph minute counter is significantly larger in diameter than the running seconds. Wrist presence: At 38.5 mm (my measurement seems more like 38, but I’ll defer to the literature) this isn’t a huge watch, and you might expect the black dial and pronounced bezel to make it wear small.
TISSOT PR100 FLYBACK MANUAL SERIES
Valjoux Caliber 225: The Type XX series watches were manufactured with a variety of flyback movements over time the Brabham watch that I fell in love with utilized the Valjoux 225, a modified Valjoux 22 with the addition of a flyback function and hour subregister, and my watch has the same caliber ticking away inside. Why I love itĪ lot of my rationale for loving this piece is woven through the narrative above, but there are a few key points to highlight behind my fondness for this particular watch.
Whether you call my watch a Type XX, a Type 20 (as some literature characterizes non-Breguet labeled pieces), or just a big eye flyback (the flyback chrono being a feature that is part of all Type XX watches), it’s a great watch. While I’m generally a fan of watch arcana and love to discuss it with my friends, I’ll leave it to the experts on this topic to hash it out. Some folks even suggested that to be a “Type XX” the watch had to be an actual military-issue watch and that civilian versions like mine weren’t worthy of consideration. Three-register Mathey-Tissot Type 20 big eye flyback chronograph Watch for a forthcoming piece by Quill & Pad’s resident flieger expert Bhanu Chopra, which should clear up some of this nomenclature. While the original military Type XX specification seems to be lost to history (as confirmed by a good friend with close links to Breguet), the Type XXI spec seems quite clear: to meet the specification the watch should have two registers for running seconds and minutes rather than the three registers (including an hour totalizer) such as the one on my watch. That said, once I began posting a few photos of my “Type XX” watch on Instagram I started receiving messages from vintage enthusiasts pointing out their objections to my characterization. I’m not going to take you through the historical origins of the Type XX as a French military specification taken up by several manufacturers, including Mathey-Tissot there are a number of excellent pieces of scholarship on the topic you can check out, including a thorough retrospective of the Breguet-branded pieces to the current day and a quite comprehensive explanation and inventory of the known three-register Type XX watches that I’ve pored over a number of times.
Foiled again!įoundational watch: delivery day wristshot of the Mathey-Tissot Type 20 Why it’s not a Type XX – but I don’t care
So in December of 2018 I found myself at Christie’s in New York bidding on a Mathey-Tissot Type 20 against noted vintage dealer Eric Wind, who pushed well past the high estimate with his bids until I finally yielded. The best news: these pieces labeled with the brand of their actual maker sold for half, or less, the prices at auction enjoyed by the Breguet-branded pieces. I was starting to think I’d have to give up on my quest when in 2018 I learned something that savvy vintage collectors had known all along: the vintage Breguet-labeled Type XX watches (and the Girard-Perregaux examples as well) were manufactured by Mathey-Tissot, who had also made a small number of the same references under their own name. But I had another swing at Phillips’ famed “Winning Icons” auction of October 2017 at a second excellent example – which sold for even more than the Brabham watch. Sadly for me, that watch sold far above my budget. It’s good to be champ: case back of Jack Brabham’s Breguet Type XX (photo courtesy Phillips)
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