My Roamer Cal. Mst402 From The 1960S

[WillFly]

Roamer Swiss watches have been very underrated in the past. Their movements up to the late '60s were very nice, though I'm not particularly keen on the Searock from the '70s or their later quartz offerings. This is an MST402 calibre - bought at an auction, along with two other watches, for £30! People seem to have caught on to Roamer, and the eBay prices for ones in good condition are rising steadily.

 

 

[autowind]

That's a very nice watch in very good condition,  I'd like to find a few like that.

 

RogerC

[Mark]

Nice watch - clear, to the point but with some character in the batons and the lugs. Good find.

[Craig]

Lovely condition Will :thumbsu:

[Nigel]

What a lovely watch and in great condition, any idea of its age?

What is a baton?

Nigel

[WillFly]

When a watch has hour or minute or 5-minute markers which are not actual numerals but lines or arrows or some such, then they're commonly known as batons. In the Roamer above, the pointer shaped markers at 3, 5, 7, 9 and 11 are batons, and the little lines that mark the minutes are also batons. If you wanted to be pedantic, you could say that the minute batons were on the outer "chapter" ring, that the numerals were in an inner chapter on a base of decorative lines - or some such.

 

Just a convenient way of describing the watch dial features, in the way that the seconds dial would be described as a countersunk sub-seconds dial at 6 o'clock. Hands might be pointers - like the Roamer - or spade, where they look like the card spade suit at the ends - or moon, where there's a hollow circle at the ends. So, if I was going to describe this dial on eBay, for example, I might write something like this:

 

"Clean white dial with an outer chapter of thin batons marking the minutes. An inner grooved chapter with raised gilded Arabic numerals at 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 & 12 alternating with triangular raised batons at 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 & 11. Slim triangular, pointed hour and minute hands with a countersunk sub-seconds dial at 6 o'clock and a gilded slim seconds hand. The dial is signed 'Roamer, Antimagnetic, Swiss Made' and is free of any hairlines, chips, marks, chips or scuffs."

 

And then, of course, you'd be dying to make a bid! :bow:

[Nigel]

Hi

Thank you for taking the time to put together Such a comprehensive answer.

As I really had no idea, I much appreciate the effort.

Nigel