Vacheron Constantin

The waiting begins...

This is an updated to a prior post.

As noted in a comment to that post, I brought my vintage 6115 into the Vacheron Constantin Boutique in NYC to have an estimate produced for restoration.

Well, I received the estimate back. TL;DR I decided to go ahead with restoration.

For those that a might be considering Vacheron restoration for a piece, or for those that are just curious, here are some details and my thought process at this point in time. I will provide additional updates in future posts as the process progresses.

As is the case with some other brands the estimate was broken out into "Necessary" and "Optional" services. After dropping my watch off, it took about 3 weeks to hear an updated regarding the watch.

My impression was that the watchmaker who diagnosed my watch was not insisting to do everything to turn it into a brand new watch or back to the condition it was in when it left the factory. The necessary services appeared to include only features that were necessary to put the watch back into working order: a good cleaning, a spring, a bridge, the crown and stem were bent and dented and needed to be replaced. The optional services offered were few. New band, and pin buckle... Check! I might as well replace them since the after-market band and buckle did not do the watch justice. The other two offered services were replacement crystal and dial restoration (I presume the dial was optional since it is original). The dial is in fair shape on this watch so I did not want to have the toning and patina changed. As to the crystal, this was a tough decision. I think the watch has an acrylic crystal now, however the watch maker recommended a mineral glass replacement. I decided to go ahead with this since I had tried to use Polywatch on the acrylic already and wasn't able to get the scratches out (I think it is a combination of perhaps a harder acrylic, and I didn't want to press down on the watch too hard). I figure, that the watches heritage and motif will be preserved with the use of a mineral glass crystal as opposed to acrylic and that it won't cloud the gorgeous dial the way the scratched acrylic did.