Almost every watchmaker from Armitron to Seiko offered their own fluted bezel homage to the Rolex great. Today, you can find many such watches on secondary sites like Etsy and eBay. As I drilled down into them, I found yet another watch category that I'll call semi-vintage. These are watches that revived the venerable brand names of once popular American mechanical watch brands and used them to sell quartz watches.
Let's look at now vintage quartz datejust watches sold under the Elgin and Gruen brands. Let's start with Elgin.
Founded in 1864, Elgin was named after it's headquarters city: Elgin, Illinois.They pioneered the mass production of mechanical watches with interchangeable parts. By 1908, they were the largest watch producer in the United States. The company switched to war production for World War 2 and had trouble navigating the postwar watch market. They shut down production in 1964 and closed up entirely by 1968. They never made a quartz watch.
However, the companies that bought the rights to the brand name made some very nice quartz watches. Many of them are old enough to be considered vintage now. This one (above) on Etsy appears to be in great shape and certainly looks nice. You can find the Etsy listing here. The name Elgin is a bonus that carries a bit of residual cache.
Another great watch brand was Gruen. Founded in Cincinnati, Ohio, by German immigrants, the brand employed a hybrid model where movements they designed were manufactured in Switzerland and tested and cased in watches here in the US. Like Elgin, they floundered in the postwar economy and they were gone by 1958. Gruen also never made a quartz watch, but some nice looking quartz models bear their name. You can check out this Precision by Gruen Two-Tone President-Style watch here on Etsy.
These semi-vintage quartz watches on Etsy add more affordable alternatives to the Rolex President Datejust. But, for more options from Amazon, check out my post Five Alternatives to the Rolex Day-Date President.
