Patek Philippe

Baron - Mr Red
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Patek Reference 3483 - completing a theme

Building a collection is hard. It takes thought and a great deal of patience. I have spent a lot of time thinking about my collection of vintage Rolex. More recently I have been spending time thinking about my Patek collection. I teased recently about which watches I needed to add in order to complement the 5070P, 5124G and Aquanaut that were already part. Of course, I also had a 5110G as part of that collection. This article takes a look at what I consider to be a final jigsaw in my collection, completing the group and adding something quite different - a vintage Calatrava. The existing four watches in my collection are all modern variants. It made total sense to me to look for something vintage as the concluding part. Further, i decided that i would look for something in steel. I have white gold in two of the existing watches and platinum in one. Adding a steel Calatrava seemed to make sense.

But which one? First of all, finding vintage steel Calatravas is not that simple. Credit here to Miranda who did a wonderful evaluation of various vintage steel pieces. All credit to him for these. The Reference 96 came with either subsidiary or centre seconds along with an array of differing dials. The 96, however, typically came on a 31mm case. The Reference 570 emerged with a 35-36mm case and was thus much more appropriate in my search given its size. Likewise the reference 2508 and 2509 also featured in the search. Finding gold versions of these watches was not especially hard, but finding steel was close to impossible. One watch that really caught my attention was the Reference 565 in steel. This was the model that provided the template for the 5565 commemoration model. I like the commemoration version, but would prefer to get the original. An original 565 is definitely one that can be found and was certainly on my list. Others that have featured high on my list were the 3417 Amagnetic. Please see the incredible review of the 3417 provided by mstanga on this forum. A steel Amagnetic would, of course, make a perfect addition. Yet, despite all these possible distractions, I decided on this - the 3483. This was not easy to find. In fact, I could find more 3417s than I could 3483s!