With some manufacturers, like Rolex, more or less insisting on a case polish during servicing and reserving the right to refuse service altogether if the polishing is declined, it can be very hard to find their watches that have genuinely not been polished. With steel, it's often not so evident but the softer metals (e.g. gold) can have large amounts of material missing around the lugs. The servicing regime at Heuer was not so strict but we have seen that TAG-Heuer recently are keen to replace parts.

At the manufacturers, there appears to be an assumption that people want their watches to look as new as possible. This may be true for newer watches but it's not always the case where vintage is concerned. An expectation for a vintage watch, even a genuine NOS one, to look like a brand new one is something of a self-delusion. Indeed, if you want that look of newness, is vintage really for you? The intervening 30, 40, 50 years will always leave a toll, even if the watch has lived in a safe.

Parts can be changed, of course, but polishing a case is quite a big decision. Material is removed, so the decision is also irrevocable. So that's a decision you make not only for yourself but also any future owners of the watch. And, for someone like myself for whom originality is more important than ultimate condition, that probably turns me off the watch.

We've seen some of our watchmakers who can attain pretty much a factory finish. Which I'm fine with as long as the watch comes with disclosure. I might not choose to buy the watch, but I can appreciate the workmanship involved. But I've also seen others where the brushed finish, to take an example, was deeper and more aggressive than ever came out of the Heuer factory. It's the same with the incredibly over-restored cars we see at concours events - I can appreciate the skill involved in the restoration, but they've moved away from the essence of the thing and produced something that would never have left the factory in that state.

This is all a personal thing, of course. We've seen watches where the restorer (arguably bugger-upper, but let's go with restorer :) ) has opted for the simplest method of refinishing a case and went for a mirror-polish. And some of us have liked that and made the watches into projects - well within their rights naturally and some of those have produced attractive watches at the end. I actually have personally thought some of the mirror watches actually looked quite nice, but I wouldn't take that final step of buying one because, for me, originality has suffered too much.