I am happy with patina; I am happy with mint (or near mint); I am also happy with NOS, but not usually willing to pay the premium for NOS, as it will not be NOS for long, once it joins my collection. There really is something amazing about seeing an NOS piece, that remains in perfect (or near perfect condition) . . . can be very striking / dramatic.

I agree that originality is critical, regardless of condition, and I will pay some premium for that. "Service hands" are usually acceptable, if the original ones are not to be found, but service hands causes some discount, in my heirarchy of values.

Shown below is one that I have enjoyed, even though it shows its scars. This is a very early triple calendar chronograph.

Good topic for discussion.

Jeff

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

: Horses for courses.

: For me, originality is king and the benefit there of a watch with
: good patina is that you can see if all the parts have aged
: consistently. It's actually harder to get, say, lume on dial and
: hands to match on a watch with patina than to put together a
: mint one. There are of course genuinely mint watches out there,
: but probably not as many as are passed off as being mint.

: Personally, I'd rather have the aged watch that has never been
: messed with than the one that has been put back to mint. I'll
: take an original mint watch with provenance too of course!