3 AM Eterna Matic

I have become a little obsessed with this 1950s-era Eterna Matic Watch I got on the weekend. Eterna is one of those once respectable Swiss brands that didn’t quite make it through the Quartz Crisis. The brand was bought out by some conglomerate but no longer produces timepieces of the same quality.

The Eterna Matic was one of the company’s most important innovations. Basically, they introduced five tiny ball bearings to the automatic movement  to reduce friction, which in turn, improved precision, increased the power reserve and made the parts last longer. This invention was so huge that Eterna adopted the five ball bearings as its logo (pictured above on the crown).

As I mentioned, this watch dates from the 1950s and it is keeping time like a champ. It’s not my first Eterna (vintage models seem to be abundant in Canada—we must have been a big market). It isn’t even my first Eterna Matic. But the case size and the freckle-faced dial has me hooked. And for $10 how could I resist!