What happened...?

If you often work on used watches, every now and then you get specimen in such a terrible condition, that you seriously wonder what extreme treatment the previous owner did to that watch.

In the following article, some of these “WTF?” watches will be shown:

Stowa Automatic (Osco 1065), late 1950ies

(yes, indeed “Osko” with “K”), missing hands and bent lugs of this really massive case.

Someone really treatened this rare watch pretty bad :(

Fortunately, such badly scraped dials are not yet common, because originally, it would have been a nice patinated dial.

Anker 21 Jewels (Intex 1057 CLD), about 1960

Who does such a harm to such a rare movement?

It looks, like someone tried to literally break out the movement of the case, probably a slaughter, who was only interested in the golden case.

As you can see, not only the base plate was bent with really big force, there were also the pivots of the escapement lever and of the third wheel broken, and on top, the balance ring(!) was severely bent, but the pivots survived the treatment thanks to the Farr shock protection bearings.

Timex Quartz Hybrid, 1979

From a distance, the watch doesn’t look that bad and even contains the original stainless steel band and the divers' bezel. Pretty unusual!

But then you will recognise some odd stuff at the edge of the crystal, looks like dirt, but …

.. you cannot identify that greenish crystalized oily gunk, which looks a bit like sugar or salt residues. Or maybe battery acid?

To ensure, that it does not originate from the luminous paint, a test with a radioactive Geiger counter was made, fortunately absolutely negative.

But inside the watch, you will see the whole mess. Someone (in teamwork with that oily gunk mass) has really done all the work: Everything is oily and dirty, the white date discs are green, the hairspring is completely oily and bent and there’s even the tiny variable capacitor missing. WTF??

As you can imagine, that movement is beyone repair, but still good for (some) parts.