About Zenith movements

Zenith watch movements were, and still are, the product of a single factory. Zenith designed, built, finished and regulated its own movements completely in-house without using any component parts from external suppliers. Zenith sold its movements to other concerns; most significantly Rolex, but at no time did it ever source ebauches, this being the correct Swiss term for movements in their raw, unfinished state, from other makers. While we might imagine that this independent status was enjoyed by all the famous brands, in fact, most of them relied to some degree on third party component suppliers.

The in-house nature of Zenith gives its products enormous credibility and goes some way to explaining why these vintage Zenith watches are so highly prized by the cognoscenti. A classic Zenith movement is a pure, single origin product, just like a single malt whisky that comes from a specific Scottish distillery or a puro Havana cigar, the leaves of which are known to have been grown on an identifiable plantation. As the vintage wristwatch market evolves and becomes more sophisticated, it seems inevitable that greater emphasis will be placed on which makers were or were not true “manufactures” ( this is the Swiss noun for those concerns that were capable of in-house movement production). Period Zeniths are very much “watch makers’ watches” and as there is a greater move towards veneration of the manufacture, we strongly believe they will rise sharply in value.

The movement in this watch is Zenith calibre 2532. A hand wound unit that ran at an impressive 21600 half beats per hour, the 2532 was introduced in 1964 and only produced for three years before being discontinued in 1967, making it something of a rare beast for the serious collector. It is interesting to note that this movement was deemed to be so dependable and accurate that it was used as the basis for two automatic versions, the 2532 P and the 2532 PC, these having a self-winding rotor module screwed down in place on top of the standard manually wound movement. 

In common with all vintage Zenith movements, the quality here is superb throughout. Zenith has a reputation among enthusiasts as being the maker of some of the finest mechanical movements of all time and without doubt, the unit here lives up to this standard. The edges of the plates are angled, the jewels are set in screwed chatons and the regulator is extremely sophisticated, allowing for a finer adjustment of running speed than was possible with the Hunter, Rolex’s flagship hand wound movement of the same period.