When issued, they remained the property of the Crown, and were supposed to be handed back in.
Service personnel, certainly in earlier years, were only issued with a watch if their role required them to have one. And, you generally can’t just walk into a shop and buy one. Military watches are usually produced in much lower numbers than commercially available watches. Well there are quite a few reasons that can broadly be divided into economic ie “reality”, and “fantasy” domains.įrom an economic perspective part of the value of military issued watches lies their relative scarcity. So just what is it about military issued watches that consistently attracts collectors, leading them to sell for significantly higher prices compared to equivalent civilian watches? None the less, they do tell an interesting story on the evolution of watches in general, and military issued watches in particular. Sadly, I don’t own an SBS Rolex Submariner or a Royal Navy Omega Seamaster, and many of the watches in my collection are neither particularly rare or valuable. Upon realising that I had inadvertently collected British military watches covering the period 1914-2014, it seemed an opportune time to use my collection to tell the history of timepieces issued to HM Armed Forces over the past 100 years. When it comes to military issued watches, there is probably no other country in the world that can match the incredible number, variety and quality of watches issued to its armed forces than Great Britain. 100 Years of British Military Watches - Part 1