The Drawer Where My Grandfather’s Watch Waited
My inherited grandfather watch arrived without ceremony. No velvet box, no letter tucked inside. My aunt handed me a small zip-lock bag at a family gathering in 2014, and inside it was a slim, gold-toned dress watch from the early 1960s — a Swiss-made hand-wind piece with a signed dial I still can’t fully attribute, running on what appears to be an ETA base caliber from that era. It ran when I wound it. The crystal had a hairline scratch across the lower left quadrant. The bracelet was long gone, replaced at some point with a brown leather strap that had dried to something resembling cardboard. My grandfather had worn it to work for twenty years. That’s all I know.
It is not worth anything on the open market. Fifty dollars, maybe, if the movement is clean and someone finds the dial charming. I know this because I’ve been collecting watches for over a decade, and I know exactly what modest, unsigned Swiss dress watches from 1960 fetch at auction. That knowledge, as it turned out, was part of the problem.
Why I Left It in a Drawer for Eight Years
I didn’t wind it after that first day. I wrapped it in a soft cloth, placed it in a small wooden box on my dresser, and then — gradually, over the following weeks — moved it to the back of a drawer. My reasoning, if I can dignify it with that word, was protective. I was afraid of breaking something irreplaceable. I was afraid a watchmaker might damage the original dial trying to service it. Mostly, I think I was afraid of spending $200 on a watch worth $50 and having to explain that decision to my more rational self.
In my experience, this is what happens to sentimental objects. We protect them so carefully from damage that we forget to actually use them. Eight years passed. The watch sat in the dark, not running, slowly losing whatever remained of its lubricants to evaporation and congealing. I was preserving nothing. I was just postponing.
What Happens When a Watch Just Sits
Here’s what I should have known earlier, and what’s worth understanding if you have something similar in a drawer right now. A mechanical watch is not like a photograph — it doesn’t degrade from being looked at. However, it does degrade from sitting still for years. The oils inside a movement are formulated to stay viscous under normal operating temperatures and the gentle agitation of wear. Left static, they dry out. They migrate away from the surfaces they’re meant to protect. They can congeal into a paste that’s worse than no lubrication at all.
A watch wound and worn regularly doesn’t necessarily need service more often because of that use. In fact, the opposite is sometimes true. That said, a watch that hasn’t run in five or more years almost certainly needs attention before it should be worn daily, regardless of how gently it was stored.
The Decision to Finally Have It Serviced
In 2022, I handed the watch to a watchmaker I’ve used for years — a one-person shop, no website, found through a local collectors’ group. I’d trusted him with a 1968 Omega Seamaster before, so I felt comfortable. I told him two things before he opened the caseback: the watch has sentimental value, not monetary value, and I want the original dial preserved at almost any cost to functionality.
That second instruction matters more than most people realize. Tell your watchmaker specifically that the dial is original and you want it untouched. A watchmaker refinishing a scratched dial is acting in good faith — a refinished dial looks cleaner, and on a watch being sold, it might add value. On an heirloom, it erases history. Say it plainly: please do not refinish, reprint, or clean the dial aggressively. Most will respect that completely.
What I Found Out When He Opened the Case
The report came back ten days later, and it confirmed everything I’d suspected. The movement was running, but poorly — gaining about four minutes per day, which is significant for a dress watch that should ideally keep within a minute or two. The oils were dried and in some places absent entirely. The crown gasket, which seals the winding stem against moisture and dust, had hardened and cracked. It was providing essentially no protection.
Specifically, he found minor wear on the keyless works — the small mechanism that handles winding and hand-setting — which explained why setting the time felt slightly gritty. Nothing was broken. Nothing needed replacing beyond the gasket and consumables. As a result, the service was about as straightforward as a service gets for a watch this age.
Total cost: $175. The watch is worth, again, approximately $50.
Why the Math Completely Misses the Point
I’ve watched people do this calculation and walk away from servicing a sentimental piece. The logic sounds sensible: why spend $175 on a $50 watch? However, that framing treats the watch as an investment, which it has never been and will never be. The $50 is what it’s worth to a stranger. What it’s worth to me is not a number I can calculate — and more practically, it’s the only one that matters when I’m deciding whether to spend the money.
A service doesn’t add monetary value to a watch like this. It restores function. It means I can actually wear it, which is the only thing that gives a worn object meaning. A watch in a drawer is an artifact. A watch on a wrist is a watch.
How I Store It Now When I’m Not Wearing It
After the service, I made some changes to how I handle it between wears. For anyone with an heirloom watch they’re not wearing regularly, a few things are worth knowing.
- Keep it somewhere with stable temperature and low humidity. Attics and basements are the enemies of mechanical watches. A bedroom drawer is generally fine. A dedicated watch box with a silica gel packet is better.
- Don’t store it fully wound. If you wind a hand-wind watch before putting it away for a month, you’re holding the mainspring under tension with no benefit. Wind it when you’re about to wear it.
- Avoid magnetic fields. Speakers, phone chargers, and magnetic bag closures can magnetize a movement, causing it to run fast. Keep vintage watches at least six inches from anything magnetic.
- If it hasn’t run in more than five years, have it looked at before wearing it regularly. Running a movement with dry oils grinds components against each other without lubrication. A service is cheaper than a replacement part — or a replacement movement.
When a Service Is Urgent Versus Optional
Not every old watch needs immediate service. If a watch is running within about 30 seconds per day of accurate time, was serviced in the last seven to ten years, and you’re wearing it casually rather than relying on it for precision, you can often wait. However, certain signs make service more urgent: gaining or losing more than two minutes per day, stopping unexpectedly after being fully wound, a crown that feels rough or slips when setting the time, or any visible moisture under the crystal.
A cracked crystal doesn’t require immediate service on its own, but it does mean the watch has lost its dust and moisture protection. Replace the crystal promptly. A watchmaker can do it at the same time as any other work, or sometimes independently for $20 to $40 on a simple flat mineral crystal.
What My Inherited Grandfather Watch Means on My Wrist Now
I wear it on Sundays, mostly. It fits slim under a cuff and runs within about 45 seconds a day, which I find quietly satisfying given that it’s 60 years old and worth less than my lunch. The dial has a patina that no amount of relacquering could replicate — a warmth to the cream that only comes from decades of very slow, very minor oxidation. The handset scratches are still there. The replaced gasket is invisible. It looks exactly as it should.
My grandfather died before I was old enough to ask him about it. I don’t know what he paid for it, or whether he bought it or received it, or whether he thought about it much at all. That gap of knowledge used to feel like a loss. These days it feels more like an invitation — to wear it, to wind it on Sunday mornings, to let it accumulate a little more of its quiet history on my wrist instead of in the dark.
The inherited grandfather watch didn’t teach me anything I didn’t already know intellectually. What it did was make me feel the cost of waiting. Eight years in a drawer helped no one. One hundred and seventy-five dollars and ten days gave me something I wear every week. That math, I have no trouble with at all.
