halgedahl
1333
So good of you to offer this assessment, Nicolas. I'll naturally wait for more opinions, but at this point my thoughts run along these lines.
Aug 04, 2019,07:26 AM
1) It's so unlikely that the watch is anything but an original Pythagore. For it seems to me this watch was never popular enough for anyone to profit from slavish copying. A watch-making sweatshop in Malaysia churning out copies of Minerva Grand Pilots? Unlikely! More likely it's an oddity—not perfect, perhaps a quality-control reject that someone took home with him/her after hours, and which subsequently, over the years, made its long and twisted way to, of all places… Iowa! (If only watches could talk, eh?)
2) The price I paid could probably easily be returned in a future sale. These watches will only become scarcer. And other than these two anomalies, the watch presents very well. And finally (and most importantly)…
3) Were I to return the watch I can just imagine, ten years down the road, seeing an auction report from Phillips featuring the elusive "broken arrow" Pythagore Grand Pilot, "which sold for an all-time record paid for Minerva
watches due to recently discovered documents found in an old file retrieved from a building being demolished in Villeret, CH. Said papers show incontrovertible proof that the watch was one of only three pieces produced using an original machine used in the late 40s during the design of the original Pythagore movement. Frey was said to have been "very proud" of this evidence of early trials of his iconic movement inspired by Pythagoras' discovery of the Gold Section." You know? We just never know….
So, good friend, I'll probably keep the watch, and enjoy it. If in future a "full kit" comes available, with interesting papers, and I've got the $ to afford it (having enjoyed this first one as a "trial"), then I might be tempted. To be sure, really fine examples are always preferable. Have a fine Sunday in slightly cooler weather (at least your humidity is low)! Fred