baufoam
717
What to Do…….
I purchased a decent example of a Patek Philippe 1526 from a well known dealer in Miami. I love the watch and wear it often. It has been wound every day and it keeps excellent time.I have enjoyed watching it change the days and dates and the phases of the moon. As we all know, yesterday was a BIG DAY for those of us who are into Perpetual Calendars. I woke up this morning to find that my 1526 is deeply confused and thinks that today is Wednesday, February 29th!
I was devastated! When I bought the watch last October, I specifically asked the Dealer to PLEASE confirm that the watch was aligned and calibrated correctly for a perpetual calendar here in the 21st Century. The 1526 has no leap-year or day-night indicator. To me thats always been part of the charm of the older Patek Philippe perpetual calendars. You just have to take it’s word that Leap Year is here!
So what should I do? I have never tried to set up a vintage perpetual calendar from scratch. I assume that it involves a whole lot of pressing the different push-pieces. Does anybody have any suggestions? Would I be better off taking the watch to Henri Stern in NYC and let them set it up? I assume that when these watches were built originally they were sent to the dealers who then set all the functions correctly .it’s probably not as big a thing as I think it is. I am however pretty angry at the guy who sold me the watch. How many hundreds of thousands of dollars does one have to spend with a vintage watch dealer to be taken seriously?
I think that people used to take their perpetual calendars to a watch maker -repair shop if the calendar got too far out of whack. Any help our community can give me would be appreciated.
Poor old confused 1526!
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What to Do…….
I purchased a decent example of a Patek Philippe 1526 from a well known dealer in Miami. I love the watch and wear it often. It has been wound every day and it keeps excellent time.I have enjoyed watching it change the days and dates and the phases of the...
I’d start by…
taking a few deep breaths. That is an amazing 1526 you own, well worth any extra effort it might take you (or PP NYC) to set it straight. In my opinion, the charm of mechanical watches is that they DON’T perform flawlessly and that they DO require thought...
Its a beautiful watch
And IMO, if the watch is OK, and all it takes is to set it up, take the time to learn the process and do it yourself. I don't see any reason to go to AD. On top of that, it's a vintage watch, and I'm not sure a modern HSNA employee / WM will know instinct...
Like others said, it’s not clear your watch is mis behaving;
It could be just set wrong. The good thing is that you now know it is set to 1 year early… or the month is needed to be set 12 months earlier; now you need to do is move the month indicator up -36X… But first wait to see if it flies to march 1st tomorrow;...
One more possibility...
Your watch is right, we are in a leap year and all of us are confused
Pope Gregory XIII knew this would happen.
Never told a soul. Never wore a perpetual either.
