A Possible Answer

Robin,

A few years back when I was just getting into luxury timepieces I read an article (for the life of me I can't remember its author or name) that stated to differentiate swiss watches further...

1) a 'swiss made' watch can essentially mean that the watch was just assembled and inspected in Switzerland. Therefore, like you said, the lower end Montblanc (among other companies, IWC, etc. too) use an outsourced movement but the watch is assembled and inspected in a Swiss shop hence 'swiss made'.

2) whereas, a watch with a complete in-house movement will actually have the city of manufacture somewhere in or on the watch. And we see this with the LeLocle and Villeret timepieces.

It makes sense from my limited knowledge however I can't remember the article so I can't speak to its validity.

Todd

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In House Movement

By: KL670 : May 6th, 2015-10:20

Hi folks, As I'm starting to learn more about watches, I'm curious what it means to have a Montblanc in-house movement. How do the in-house movements differ from the other "generic" ones? Also, by looking at the movement caliber #, how does one tell if it...

A few category of movements from Montblanc

By: jrwong23 (aka watchthebin) : May 9th, 2015-17:16

Sorry for the late reply. I missed your post as I was traveling for work this week. To make it simple, Montblanc has a few types of movement categories: 1. Completely outsourced movements from Sellita or ETA or others. These are mainly found in the lower ...