Vintage Watching - A Bumper Crop of New Old Watches
Published: March 20,
2008 | 15:31
Just compiled a collection of oddities and obscurities from the forties through the seventies! So fresh to the site that not all the descriptions have even been written!
Time To F#%K - Vintage 1970 Erotic Mystery Message Watches
Published: December 07,
2007 | 17:24
Two vintage mystery dial watches from the late sixties/early seventies with secret dials revealing a not-so-subtle message from a pair of scantily clad tarts. Each of these mechanical erotic novelty watches had a unique feature of discs that obscure the dial most of the time but slowly unveil the other dastardly dirty time of day.
One for those with highly overactive libidos (hourly display) and the other with a more respectable twelve hour time frame. Although anyone who actually wore these was likely not getting any anyway.
One with a transparent disc with floating seconds arrow.
Around the same time, a digital version existed with the same message electronically requested in LED display. If anyone has seen the movie Autofocus about Bob Crane, Willem Dafoe shows his off at a bar to an unsuspecting lady. The filmmakers of Autofocus actually contacted me at the time of production seeking this watch but I could only provide some traditional vintage LED from Hamilton and Compuchron. They did use it for the scene but had to edit the message in.
A reader of The Watchismo Times and mid-century collector named Kyle Supley has shared a few of his kitschy clocks with me. Featured here are two especially funny models.
First, the Numechron Tele-Visiondigital clock from 1966. Plastic burled wood case with gold trim. Meant for the top of a TV set with low wattage bulb to relieve eyestrain believed to be cause by television in the early days.
A vintage 60s digital clock by Westclox with an unusual display of hours as words. And this 1950s teal lamp which is also a clock (clock face instead of telephone dial), and a cigarette lighter, conveniently hidden in the phone handset. It does not function as a phone. This lamp also comes with a conical desk lamp top instead of the venetian blind metal shade.