Who knows about these Glashuttes?

[KB]

What I am after is why so cheap?

http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewIt...&category=22228

Ta

Ken

[thomasng]

Ken, the the city of Glashutte in Germany, there are tens, if not hundreds of different watchmakers in the city, and each and almost every brand calls themselves Glashutte something.

The high end brands that hail from this city are Glashutte Original and A. Lange and Sohne. There are also some mid range brands like Union Glashutte. Just because the watch says Glashutte, doesn't mean it has a connection to the luxury brand "Glashutte Original".

[4fun]

Ken, the the city of Glashutte in Germany, there are tens, if not hundreds of different watchmakers in the city, and each and almost every brand calls themselves Glashutte something.

The high end brands that hail from this city are Glashutte Original and A. Lange and Sohne. There are also some mid range brands like Union Glashutte. Just because the watch says Glashutte, doesn't mean it has a connection to the luxury brand "Glashutte Original".

Very good information, thanks !

[gran]

Hi Ken!

I like this vintage look

Go here: http://www.as-glashuette.de/

they are selling this "Kaliber 74" for 395,00 Euros

Regards

Gunnar

[KB]

Thanks Thomas an excellent answer.

Next question

This watch is labeled Original Glashutte and it states that they are worth 1450 Euro and yet they sell for very cheap (under 100 Euro) so I take it this one is not fair dinkum?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ORIGINAL-GLASHUTTE-HER...bayphotohosting

Ken

[thomasng]

Thanks admin an excellent answer.

Next question

This watch is labeled Original Glashutte and it states that they are worth 1450 Euro and yet they sell for very cheap (under 100 Euro) so I take it this one is not fair dinkum?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ORIGINAL-GLASHUTTE-HER...bayphotohosting

Ken

I think that these watches may be attempted knockoffs at Glashutte? Not replicas I mean, but trying to use a similar name to confuse people I assume. But for 100 euro, you will still get at least a half decent mechanical watch.

The whole Glashutte watchmaking was confusing to me at first, but to be basic, all the companies with different names are different enitities. They have no relation to each other, but there are special cases, where Union Glashutte uses a Glashutte Original movement in their perpetual calendars, but with noticeable quality differences, the Union is machine finished, while the Glashutte Original movements are hand finished and well detailed.

[KB]

Ok thanks again Thomas

Ken

[gran]

The V.E.B. ("Volkseigener Betrieb" = People's owned company) used to own the former East German Glashuetter Uhrenbetriebe (GUB). So the watch is made in East germany (1961).

The movement is the famous and very reilable Spezimatic movement

The Spezimatic was built in considerable numbers until 1980, in two versions, as GUB cal. 74 and 75. Here is a pic, copyright by Jean Neef, www.glashuette-archiv.de

The absolute authority on old Glashütte movements is Jean Neef: http://www.glashuette-archiv.de

The site is in German, but the technical data and the pictures are easy to understand

see also this page

http://www.glashuette-archiv.de/kal74/index.htm

[KB]

Ok Gunnar thanks for that, so basically is it worth around $200 AUD?

Or are these a cheap knock off?

Ken

[slay]

the city of glashütte is located in EASTERN Germany, yes, the part which was communist 16 years ago and still is the bad part of germany (you can call it the bronx of germany!)!

After WW2 Lange&Söhne and a bunch of others had to shut down, because of the socialists. they all reopened after germany was united. the watches from the time between 1946 and 1990 are most likely made by the socialists (maybe they even took glashütte original over back then).

because of that, i would considder calling that watch an "ossi-watch" (the ppl who come from eastern germany are called "ossies")

that is also a reason, why you dont see any vintage lange's from the time between WW2 and now. all vintage langes were made way before WW2 and are HIGHLY collectable!

Edited April 24, 2006 by slay

[gran]

Ok Gunnar thanks for that, so basically is it worth around $200 AUD?

Or are these a cheap knock off?

Ken

It certainly is cool to have an Spezimatic movement in ones collection and the GUB movements are known to be reliable. Despite communism they did make some pretty solid watches back in the old DDR. A large number of these watches were made back in the 1960-1980s. I would not call them cheap.

It is probably worth USD150 and maybe even more if the movement has been recently serviced (someone who reads German better than me should comment on the servicing part of the ebay offer)

Regards

Gran

[SWATCHman]

This is a Glashuette ORIGINAL all right. But at that time (1961) they were not

a luxury watchmaker any more / yet again.

They are situated in Glashuette Saxonia. Until the fall of the Berlin Wall that

was part of East Germany of the eastern block dominated by the Sovjet

Union. So the watches were essentially crap. Later on they were reduced to

producing watches parts for the state owned watch industry.

Only after 1989 they went back to producing watches of medium quality,

later they went back to luxury and high end. So you'll find a lot of reasonably

priced Glashuettes of dubious origin. If you find a reasonably priced Senator

or Sport Evolution though, let me know...

[gran]

This is a Glashuette ORIGINAL all right.

Certainly the Glashuette GUB watches made in the 1960s can not be considered luxury watches

Maybe I am splitting hairs here....but at least we are learning something about these brand(s)

In strict terms, Glashuette Original is not a company, but a brand. The company's name still is "Glashuetter Uhren-Betrieb" or GUB, and this company owns the brandname GO. Besides UNION Glashuette is not only a brandname, but also a company, which is a 100% subsidiary of the GUB. However, Union does not have a company-owned production facility. Its headquarter located in the GUB building at Glashuette, Union assigns the production of its movements to GUB (all this is from a strict organisatorial point of view). While Union has an own staff, this is not numerous. AFAIK the conceptionof marketing is done in the same office for both brands, GO and Union. However, since recently two different PR agencies have been assigned for the advertising campaigns, because the two brands had been portraied too similar.

Also read this:

East German watchmakers revive luxury tradition

Staff and agencies

26 December, 2005

By James Mackenzie Mon Dec 26, 9:06 AM ET

GLASHUETTE, Germany - Like the intricate, fabulously complicated watches made by its skilled artisans, the former mining town of Glashuette in east Germany is a rarity.

In this picturesque setting, traditional watchmakers make timepieces so prized by connoisseurs that they can sell for nearly $500,000 -- making Glashuette a rare economic success story in a region with a jobless rate of about 17 percent.

Glashuette was at the heart of a watchmaking industry that rivaled Switzerland‘s until Russian bombers destroyed its main workshops on the day World War Two ended in Europe.

Forced nationalization of family-owned firms and 40 years of communism apparently buried what survived the Russians until the fall of the Berlin Wall sparked an unexpected revival fueled by a renaissance in demand for high-quality mechanical watches.

The gold and platinum watches now made by A. Lange & Soehne or Glashuette Original, the two top firms in the town near the Czech border, cost thousands of dollars and vie with Swiss masters such as Patek Philippe or Vacheron.

"They are really very beautiful watches," says Christian Pfeiffer-Belli, editor of specialist publication Klassik Uhren.

The two firms‘ success has encouraged others, such as Nomos, a new company making less-expensive watches with a distinctive look reminiscent of the 1920s Bauhaus school of design.

"(Glashuette) is a very, very German name," Pfeiffer-Belli says. "And it works very well in Germany because there are a lot of people who know Lange as a great brand from earlier times."

Around 800 people now work in the watchmaking trade in Glashuette in Saxony, a notable success in a region where large swathes of manufacturing industry have collapsed since German reunification in 1990.

And the outlook is healthy: a strengthening global economy, including an economic revival in brand-conscious Japan, has fueled demand for luxury goods since the start of this year.

Glashuette‘s‘s remote location, in a beautiful wooded valley in the Erzgebirge region outside Dresden, is perfect for nurturing the special skills of the traditional watchmaker.

"You need to be calm and you need to be able to deal with very tricky problems," said Kerstin Richter, as she delicately turned a minute screw in a half-finished Lange watch.

The fantastic complexity of the clockwork mechanism and the precision of each tiny component is what attracts enthusiasts willing to pay the price of a house for a wristwatch that tells the time no better than a $10 electronic throw-away.

Lange‘s most complicated watch, the new Tourbograph, has over 1,000 components with features like a hair-thin transmission chain -- made of 633 individual parts -- to keep the torque generated by the watch‘s mainspring constant as it unwinds.

That, and the "tourbillon" -- a complex rotating component designed to counter the disruptive effect of gravity on the clockwork mechanism -- are considered the acme of the watchmaker‘s art and go some of the way to explain the Tourbograph‘s $447,500 price tag.

Even cheaper models cost thousands of euros and take months to complete. Connoisseurs, some now linked through Internet chat rooms, obsessively ponder their watch‘s finish or features such as the "double rattrapante" or "whiplash index adjuster."

As well as fine mechanics, the mystique of firms that produce only a few thousand watches a year has been decisive -- and that has its roots in the town‘s special tradition.

When Ferdinand Adolph Lange, a deeply religious man, founded Glashuette‘s first watchmaking firm in 1845, he trained local workers including basket weavers and laborers and laid great stress on fostering development of the then-impoverished region.

Over the next century, during which time Lange was followed by several other watchmaking dynasties, the town attained world renown, typified in 1898 when Kaiser Wilhelm II presented the Sultan of Turkey with a magnificent jeweled Lange watch now in the Topkapi museum in Istanbul.

Lange‘s great-grandson, Walter Lange, who picked his way through the rubble of his family‘s factory in May, 1945, has consciously built on the tradition since his return in 1990 with partner Guenter Bluemlein to relaunch the Lange brand.

Much of the success has been down to foreign investors -- both Lange, owned by luxury goods group Richemont and Glashuette, part of Swatch, are in Swiss hands.

But the technical skill of local craftsmen, kept alive during the communist era by the nationalized VEB Glashuetter Uhrenbetriebe (GUB), has also been decisive. GUB, which included nationalized Lange, sold cheap mechanical watches to the west for hard currency.

"The key to the revival was the period 1951-90," says Frank Mueller, president of Glashuette Original, the company that emerged when GUB was privatized again in 1990.

While the watchmaking industry in the west (= West germany) was devastated by the invention of the quartz watch, which allowed more accurate timekeeping at a fraction of the cost of mechanical watches, the east German industry was kept alive by state support.

"It was absolutely decisive that the knowledge and experience of these watchmakers wasn‘t lost," says Mueller.

[slay]

This is a Glashuette ORIGINAL all right. But at that time (1961) they were not

a luxury watchmaker any more / yet again.

They are situated in Glashuette Saxonia. Until the fall of the Berlin Wall that

was part of East Germany of the eastern block dominated by the Sovjet

Union. So the watches were essentially crap. Later on they were reduced to

producing watches parts for the state owned watch industry.

Only after 1989 they went back to producing watches of medium quality,

later they went back to luxury and high end. So you'll find a lot of reasonably

priced Glashuettes of dubious origin. If you find a reasonably priced Senator

or Sport Evolution though, let me know...

thats exactly what i already said 2 posts above yours