white labeled Oscar Baldi
Modernista Pocket Watch
A Modernista pocket watch, with jumping hour and retrograde minutes.
- Movement
- Mechanical, manual-wind
- Current Market Value
- $1800
- Year
- 1905-1912
- Case
- Gold-tone
- Condition
- Good
- Gender
- Men / Unisex
- Acquired
- 2025
Condition
Good vintage condition.
Why I bought it
Most of my jumping-hour watches are wristwatches, so a jumping-hour pocket watch was an interesting addition to the collection. The layout also appealed to me, particularly the combination of jumping hours, a retrograde minute hand and subsidiary seconds.
The Modernista approaches the jumping-hour display in a very different way from the 1970s digital wristwatches in my collection.
The hour appears through a window at 12, while a long central retrograde hand indicates the minutes on a 0 to 60 scale around the upper part of the dial.
At 60 minutes, the retrograde, or flyback, minute hand snaps back to zero at the same time as the hour disc jumps to the next hour. The two actions happening together create a beautiful and almost hypnotic mechanical scene, which you can see in the video here.