Eterna Oversized Calatrava, 1930s

Dealer description — Analog/Shift

Why We Love It In a marketplace bursting at the seams with sporty tool watches, it is sometimes easy to forget that timepieces can also be elegant, artistic expressions of the wearer's style. This stunning Eterna dates to the 1930s and features a beautiful two tone silver dial with Art Deco indices with blued steel 'feuille' hands. Powered by the Eterna Calibre 852 manually wound mechanical movement, this snap-back case is oversized at 38.5mm, a behemoth for the time and absolutely perfect for today's modern style. It also features fixed bars, indicating it was designed for use in the field. This lovely piece harkens to a time when personal style wasn't dictated by social media influencers or celebrity endorsements, and legendary manufacturers like Eterna were designing watches to near-perfection. Absolutely lovely. The Story Eterna is known by collectors for two main reasons: Their contribution to the development of the automatic winding movement, and a man named Thor who wore one on his wrist while traversing the Pacific on a hand-made balsa wood raft! The latter is a story for another time, but their help in developing the modern automatic movement is nothing short of legendary. Their contribution to the technology was the implementation of five ball bearings used in attaching the rotor to the movement, helping reduce friction and maintain accuracy while being worn and used. The layout of these bearings, a pentagonal shape, was adopted by the brand as their logo in the 1950s, and remains to this day. But the history of the brand goes back nearly 100 years before the introduction of the automatic movement, and the range of vintage Eterna pocket watches and wristwatches from the 1850s to today is about as diverse as one can imagine, with petite, ultra-thin gold dress pieces on one end of the spectrum, and large steel divers on the other. Regardless of your taste, the history and design of Eterna watches is rich and there's almost certainly something for every collector to enjoy.