Vintage Patek Quartz Watches
Yellow gold Patek Philippe ref. 3587 featuring the Beta 21 / Credit: Sotheby’s
There are many different types of watch collectors: vintage, modern, Japanese, chronographs...Some watch collectors, however, are opposed to a very particular type of technology: quartz. And they may be surprised to know just how involved Patek Philippe was in the quartz debacle in the 1960s!
Patek Philippe opened its Electronic Division all the way back in 1948, around the same time the first Swiss quartz clock was developed! Oscilloquartz, the company behind the quartz clocks, still exists today, and was acquired by ADVA Optical Networking from the Swatch Group around 2014. Other companies that were early to the quartz game were Elgin and LIP, who both made early electric watches in the early 1950s.
Patek Philippe ref. 3597’s Beta 21 movement / Credit: Hodinkee
It took Patek Philippe a few years to catch up with their own all-electronic clock, but they did it and released it by 1956! A replica of Patek’s first electronic clock was gifted to President John F. Kennedy in 1963. It was also in the early 1960s that Patek Philippe joined the famous group of Swiss watchmakers, ‘Centre Electronique Horloger’ or ‘CEH’, to develop the famous Beta 21 quartz movement! This group is notable because it drew ‘national’ lines in the race to develop and commercialize quartz, with the Swiss and Japanese squaring off. The Beta 21 was released in 1970 and used by many a famous watch brand, Patek Philippe equipped this movement on its reference 3597 – a watch that was emblematic of the 1970s in its design. Only 6,000 Beta 21 movements were created in 1969, the consortium had previously developed other quartz movements (in very small batches), but the Beta 21 was their first with sweeping seconds!
Patek Philippe also had other quartz movements that it made itself, notably it made the Caliber E27. The Patek Philipp Caliber E27 appears in both the Patek Philippe Calatrava ref. 3744 and in the notoriously freaky Patek Philippe ‘Nautillipse’ a.k.a. Nautilus Ellipse ref. 3770 – a mix of Nautilus with an Ellipse case. Many Ellipse models used the E27 movement, along with general ladies’ models. And yes, Patek even made a digital watch! The ref. 3414 which is very rare.
By: Andres Ibarguen