The Lost Brands Guide is out. · Watch Lover

The Lost Brands Guide is out.

I've been very busy during these days, and here it is. The conversion is complete, and finally my new book is out.

It is dedicated to the vintage lovers - and outlines the key data of 75 amongst the notable watch brands that no longer exist in that form — and the stories behind why they disappeared as significant watch manufacturers.

This is the second volume in the TWM Field Guides series, and it covers the brands that shaped the vintage market as we know it: American railroad watchmakers, Swiss military suppliers, forgotten French manufactures, German ateliers destroyed by war and politics. Some are well known to serious collectors. Most have been almost entirely forgotten.

Two pages per brand. History, key references, and current market values — everything you need to know before you bid, buy, or walk past something you should have picked up.

A few of the stories you'll find inside:

The Swiss brand that invented the automatic chronograph — and disappeared six years later, its movement living on inside Heuer Monaco and Breitling Chrono-Matic dials without its name.

The French factory whose workers occupied the building in 1973, seized 60,000 watches, hid them across the city, and sold them from bicycle panniers to pay their own wages.

The Cleveland jeweller who built a national precision standard after a train collision killed people because a conductor's watch had stopped — and never manufactured a single movement himself.

The brand whose watches were systematically converted into fake Cartiers by unscrupulous dealers — and still are.

The only British watchmaker among the Dirty Dozen, whose London showroom was bombed in 1940 while the Swiss factory kept shipping.

This is not a guide to authentication. It will not tell you whether the watch on the table is genuine or faked. It will tell you what the brand behind it was, why it mattered, and what it is worth today. That context is often the most valuable thing a collector can have.

What's inside:

— 75 brand profiles, two pages each

— Over 850 secondary and alternate brand names referenced to their parent company

— 226 pages

— Introductory chapters on Swiss Made, serial numbers, fakes and Frankens, movement makers, and the Chronographe Suisse phenomenon

Available now on Amazon in paperback at $18.95.

amazon.com/dp/B0HJQPFSWT

A Kindle edition is not currently available — unfortunately I have tried, but the Kindle format with reflowing text requires a dedicated layout process that is in progress. It will be announced here when ready.

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The Lost Brands Guide is out.