Borrowed time: the ‘courtesy’ watches that rarely get returned

Collectors see the appeal of timepieces originally lent as temporary replacements and not available for sale
Ten years ago this month, Hublot launched a watch that was exclusive to its boutiques. The Atelier was not available to buy, but loaned to customers who left their own timepiece in the store for service or repair.  A decade on, this black composite model with quartz movement attracts attention among collectors. “There is an interest in these Atelier watches, as they are not for sale,” says Ricardo Guadalupe, Hublot chief executive. Due to a lack of stock, the watch is now issued only “sporadically in some exceptional cases”.  Over the years, a number of brands have offered this aftersales service, which is comparable to the courtesy vehicle available to car drivers. In some cases, these service watches have inspired commercial designs. In others, their history is shrouded in mystery.  When launching the Atelier, Guadalupe said it would enable a customer to “remain both physically and emotionally connected to Hublot”. A similar sentiment inspired the British brand, Bamford Watch Department, to launch its own quartz service watch, in March 2017: “it kept our name on their wrist”, says founder George Bamford (pictured top).  Despite having “property of Bamford Watch Department” on the dial, none of the 97 service watches that left the company made their way back, bringing the loan scheme to an end. The piece is “in quite a few people’s collections”, says Bamford. “There’s one or two times where I’ve seen people with their briefcase full of different watches and I’ve gone, ‘What the hell is my service watch doing in there?’”  When a client telephoned Bamford asking to buy four, he launched his other business, Bamford London, with an upgraded version of the service watch — the Bamford Mayfair — in November 2017. Bamford recently started collecting service watches and bought a Hublot Atelier on eBay.  Guadalupe says some clients “were so fond of their Atelier watch that [the] decision was exceptionally made to offer it to them”. Hublot — which Guadalupe says first offered a courtesy watch under its founder Carlo Crocco, following the launch of the Swiss brand in 1980 — also reproduced the Atelier to give to guests who travelled to the Fifa World Cup in Brazil, in 2014.