It should be pretty easy to differentiate between a pre-1937 European market LeCoultre and a Jaeger LeCoultre sold in the USA with an abbreviated dial signature by looking as the specification of the watch and, in particular, the country in which its case was manufactured. This stems from a disagreement over the ownership of the registered Jaeger tradename in America. The exception to this will be those sold in the USA which will have a LeCoultre dial signature. Watches made by the company after 1937 will have “Jaeger LeCoultre” stated on their dials. In reality, most of the classic 1930s models, including the Uniplan, Duoplan and Reverso, had the LeCoultre signature, though curiously, the Jaeger word is often given greater prominence in period advertising of the era.
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Prior to this union, we will find either a Jaeger or a LeCoultre dial signature, but never the joint full Jaeger LeCoultre title. While they had worked closely together since 1918, the firms of Edmond Jaeger and LeCoultre & Cie were separate entities until 1937, when they formally amalgamated. The dial signatures on vintage Jaeger LeCoultre watches can be rather confusing to the novice collector and it’s worth taking a few minutes to understand how these inter-relate.
This integrity is something that many serious collectors find appealing and is one of the reasons, along with very high build quality and superb finishing, that vintage Jaeger LeCoultre watches have such credibility in the marketplace today. When you buy a vintage Jaeger LeCoultre watch, everything inside it is a pedigree Jaeger LeCoultre product that can be traced back to this single point of origin. Very unusually, even among the top echelon of Swiss watch houses, Jaeger LeCoultre created, and still creates today, its own movements under its own roof in its Le Sentier factory.
In Switzerland, the term manufacture is one used to denote a watch brand that is capable of producing its own movements entirely in-house, without the need to purchase parts from external suppliers. Part of Jaeger LeCoultre’s appeal is the company’s “pure” status as a true manufacture. We always have a selection of exceptional, entirely original, vintage Jaeger LeCoultre watches for sale, but visitors to this site will have little idea of just how much effort goes into tracking down others to replace them when they’ve sold without compromising our very exacting standards in terms of originality and condition. All the watches left in the back of drawers were discovered twenty five years ago when prices started to rocket and the vast majority of the collectors who own well preserved classic Jaeger LeCoultre models simply don’t want to part with them. As with Rolex, vintage Jaeger LeCoultre watches have been objects of desire for so long now that there is very little new stock coming onto the market of a premium grade. As a well known dealer in this field, we are offered several early Jaeger LeCoultre pieces each week, but in most instances, we reject these on the basis that they are too badly worn, contain non-original components or have restored dials.
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