IWC Portugieser Hand-Wound Eight Days 75th Anniversary

The Portugieser was so-called because two IWC clients from Portugal approached the manufacture with a somewhat daunting task: to produce a wristwatch that was just as accurate as a marine chronometer. In those days, the only way to ensure that degree of accuracy in a wristwatch would be to cannibalize a movement from a pocket watch and put it in a wristwatch case. The watches the resulted from such a union were large, a huge departure from the slim cases that typified wristwatches of the era.   

So that’s what IWC did, using a Hunter Calibre 74 pocket watch movement to create the first Portugieser. 

In 2015, IWC released the watch that we have here, the Reference 5102 Portuguieser made to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the original Portuguieser which debuted in 1939.

This watch comes in at the same size as the original too, at 43mm wide. At the time, the standard size of most men's watches was closer to 33mm or 34mm, so while this watch isn't exactly small now, it would have been absolutely massive 75 years ago!

This watch features a gorgeous matte black dial with printed 'Arabic' quadrant numerals, a subsidiary seconds counter at the 6:00 position, and an exhibition caseback, displaying the IWC Calibre 59215 hand-cranking movement with a massive 8-day power reserve. 

With only 750 examples made in steel, this is an excellent opportunity to pick up a contemporary classic with its full kit, and one of IWC's best releases in recent years!

When an American watchmaker named Florentine Ariosto Jones arrived in Schaffhausen, Switzerland in 1868, he found a city almost frozen in time. Though the Industrial Revolution had swept through America, in Switzerland the situation was very different. Watchmakers still plied their trades by their own firesides, as they had done for centuries. But Jones had in mind something different — an American-style factory where the watches would be designed and assembled in keeping with the old Swiss ways. His methods caught on, and soon there were 196 people employed at his factory.

Though the International Watch Company was founded 35 years before Wilbur and Orville Wright’s first flight, the association between IWC and aviation began just as the age of flight dawned: A pocket watch made by the company in the 1890s found its way into the pocket of one Robert Albert Lotter, a pilot in the German Luftwaffe who served with distinction during the First World War.

Two decades later, in 1936, IWC released a watch that set the standard for pilot’s watch design, the Spezialuhr für Flieger, or Special Pilot's Watch. Another would follow in 1940, the Beobachtungs-ühren (“observation watch”), which spawned an entire model line in IWC’s current collection called the Big Pilot. However, despite the Big Pilot’s current popularity, it was the Special Pilot’s Watch that would lay the cornerstone for IWC’s most iconic line: the Mark series of pilot’s watches.

IWC released the Mark XI in 1948 according to specifications set forth by the British Ministry of Defense. These watches had to be legible, compact, and able to withstand exposure to the magnetic fields emitted by instruments in an airplane’s cockpit. The Mark XI, therefore, had a black dial with large luminous Arabic numbers, while its incredibly robust Calibre 89 movement was encased in an iron cage. (Later, in the 1950s and 1960s, IWC would produce myriad dress watches in steel and gold based upon the Calibre 89 movement, which remain relatively plentiful on the vintage market.)

The Mark XI served as the basis for design

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Most of our products are on hand and will ship directly from our headquarters in New York City. In some cases, watches will be shipped directly from one of our authorized partners.

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We welcome international buyers, please contact us prior to purchase for additional details on shipping and payment options.