Military issue Dirty Dozen watch collection comes to auction

Individually, watches which the War Office commissioned from 12 Swiss makers during the Second World War are not as highly rated as other military watches – but as a set they are regarded as a holy grail for British collectors.

All with black dials, luminous hands, shatterproof crystal and stainless-steel cases, they had 15-jewel movements and were stamped WWW for Watch, Wrist, Waterproof and the broad arrow used on government material.

The 12 watches, all designed by different watch manufacturers, were commissioned by the British Ministry of Supply for the armed forces. They needed watches suitable for the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy. These were designed and delivered in 1944 and 1945, respectively.

Collectors refer to them as ‘The Dirty Dozen’. Presumably that coinage came after the 1967 Hollywood movie of the same name for there is nothing low-grade about the makers: Buren, Cyma, Eterna, Grana, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Lemania, Longines, IWC, Omega, Record, Timor and Vertex.

Fellows’ Luxury Watch Sale on August 24 contains a full set of Second World War ‘Dirty Dozen’ watches.  The watches will be sold with a box perfectly fitting all 12 and are estimated at £25,000-35,000.

View and bid for this complete collection of military issue ‘Dirty Dozen' wrist watches via thesaleroom.com.

Some collectors rate the Longines watches as the finest, others swear by IWC, but all seem to agree that the rarest of the group is the Grana, of which probably as few as 1500 were made for the War Office.

The handful of Grana watches sold at auction in the past decade have typically sold at prices ranging from £3500-£5500. However, in May 2018 one of these Dirty Dozen members was sold by Shropshire firm Trevanion & Dean for what was deemed a record price of £9000. 

Read more about prices at auction for Grana watches here.

To learn more about collecting wrist watches view thesaleroom.com’s watch buying guide here.