“Hey,” my wife called as she came down the hall, her arms full of delivery boxes, “you’ve got something very heavy from Zach Braff.” It took me a second, but I realized that must be my copy of Vintage Military Wristwatches, A Guide for the Collector, by Zaf Basha.
I don’t buy reference books like I used to. It’s not that I have anything against them, mind you. I still prefer the printed page to the glowing e-book for fiction and nonfiction alike, but for pure reference works, I have embraced the easy access to facts and images that the internet affords. If I buy a reference volume, it had better be special, and by that, I mean a high-quality hardbound volume with information unavailable elsewhere — exactly what Vintage Military Wristwatches delivers.
Zaf published the book himself, and I know what you are thinking. Too often, “self-published” means a rambling and poorly edited vanity project printed on fish wrap. In this case, I assure you the opposite is true. As my wife discovered, this book is 624 9×12″ pages printed on glossy #80 paper, which adds up to a 7 lb tome. The images are clear and accurate, the text is sharp, and the content is simply astonishing.
Zaf Basha is the man behind ClassicWatch.com, and he already has the excellent guide to Jaeger-LeCoultre to his credit. While he deals in all kinds of vintage watches, he has particular expertise in military pieces. He turned me on to Vietnam-era field watches about ten years ago, and he always has some amazing survivors in his inventory, maybe a LeCoultre Weems or a fully documented Tudor Marine Nationale.
He started compiling data for this book about 15 years ago. When it comes to determining authenticity or claimed provenance, I know Zaf dives into the records with a scholar’s mind and a bulldog’s tenacity, so the book’s lengthy gestation came as no surprise.
The book focuses on watches issued by 14 nations from World War Two through the early 1990s. It is organized by country, with the watches broken out by military service as appropriate. Each section begins with a synopsis of that nation’s military watch history, followed by the watches themselves, alphabetically by brand. Each piece gets one page with four photos (front, back, inside caseback, and movement). Data includes service life, case material, diameter, case back markings, movement, dial particulars, handset, production figures, and relevant notes about particulars or discrepancies. It’s a wealth of data. For more familiar watches, it is nice to see all of these vital stats in one place; for more esoteric pieces, it’s a revelation.
Zaf thoroughly researched the nearly 300 watches covered in the book and personally inspected and photographed all save one, where the images came from Christie’s. That was the $100,000 Universal Geneve HA-1 produced for the Italian Air Force, so I think we can cut him some slack.
Impressive as it may be, the book does not capture every watch in its chosen range. For instance, Panerai is absent, and you’ll find French-issued Rolexes but not the British Mil-Sub. I know this will disappoint some, but those pieces have been well-covered in other texts. The real beauty of Vintage Military Watches is the wealth of material that cannot be found elsewhere: his coverage of French and German watches is remarkably comprehensive; the section on Japan includes a handy guide to the Kanji markings found on case backs; and I defy you to find better coverage of Czech military watches anywhere.
In addition to the catalog, Zaf has included over 270 pages of original watch requisitions from the French, British, and American governments. All the materials in the book were captured in high resolution and are perfectly clear, including some U.S. Department of Defense materials that had previously been available only as poor-quality prints.
