Hello Forum Members,
Many thanks for accepting me into the forum. I am a vintage watch enthusiast with interest in many brands, but my interest was initially stimulated by my father's IWC. He fell in love with the brand when stationed in Europe as an American GI in the early 1950s, and finally was able to afford one in the early 1960s. He wore the watch day and night, and I inherited it upon his passing. He also passed along a few other watches, including two IWC PWs. Over the years I have added a few more vintage IWC examples from the 50s and 60s to my collection, but his watch is obviously very special to me. I have always called it his "poor-man's Ingenieur" because the case is basically identical to a 1960s ref 666, and it has many of the features of that reference, including a movement cap and adjusted cal 853. It's a very well worn but quality watch.
Unfortunately, the dial of his watch was poorly repainted at some point in the distant past. I don't even know if he was aware of it, he was certainly not an expert. I have been looking for a dial for many years, but so far I haven't found one that was appealing enough to tempt me. More recently, I began to think about a factory restoration, and showed the watch to people on another forum that I frequent. Immediately, one of my friends on that forum suggested that the watch is not a poor-man's Ingenieur, but actually an Ingenieur. TBH, I immediately felt silly. I'm quite familiar with the reference, and it should have dawned on me earlier, but I think I just had a blind spot about it because I couldn't imagine that my father had such a special watch, and also because of the poorly repainted dial.
Anyway, I would like to figure out how to track down historical information on the watch because that my influence how I proceed with restoration. I am going to try to attach some photos to this post. I sent an inquiry through the IWC website, but I wasn't able to find any way to obtain historical information from the IWC archive. If anyone knows who I might contact about that, it would be much appreciated.
Regards,
Dan
Edit: I see that only the final image was included, I tried to upload several photos. Perhaps I should add additional photos as responses?
