Jaeger-LeCoultre is delighted to announce the launch of The Collectibles, a new program for collectors and enthusiasts who wish to acquire a piece of history from La Grande Maison. The Collectibles offers a meticulously curated capsule collection of emblematic pieces complemented by a new Master Reference Book. A simply brilliant offering.

Over time, a continually evolving selection of timepieces will be available to purchase through The Collectibles on jaeger-lecoultre.com and in the form of capsule collections that will travel around the world. Among the first to be offered are fine examples of a Geophysic, a Memovox Parking, a Master Mariner Deep Sea, and a Shark Deep Sea. Every Collectibles timepiece is presented with an extract from the Jaeger-LeCoultre archives, a new watch strap, and a complimentary copy of The Collectibles coffee-table book.

Every piece offered through The Collectibles is thoroughly vetted by Jaeger-LeCoultre’s historical experts and fully serviced and restored by the specialized watchmakers of the Manufacture’s restoration workshop. Currently numbering 10 experts, the restoration team can go through the Manufacture’s archives and find the blueprint of every piece ever made, and in some cases also find a stock of original spare components. If there is no component to hand, there is a stock of some 6,000 swages or stamps that they can use to make an identical component from scratch. Because the Manufacture is fully integrated, the entire process can be carried out in-house.

"Being able to restore these remarkable timepieces and offer them once again is a nice tribute to our current environment, in which sustainability and second lives have come to the fore," says Catherine Rénier, President of Jaeger-LeCoultre. "It is fantastic to see 50 or 80-year-old pieces given a new life. For me, that symbolises the beauty of our world —of timeless and durable objects to be passed from one generation to the next."

The Collectibles coffee-table book covers the period from 1925 to 1974, surveying 17 of the most significant models produced by the Manufacture during this ‘golden age’ of 20th-century watchmaking. Shining the spotlight on the pioneering spirit that has always driven La Grande Maison, the roll-call of ground-breaking innovations includes timepieces such as the Reverso, Memovox, Futurematic, and Geophysic. A full chapter is devoted to each of the 17 models, providing an encyclopedic history and including essential data for collectors supplemented by detailed and informative photography, and copies of historic documents from the Manufacture’s archives.

Besides providing indispensable data for collectors, The Collectibles book offers history aficionados a broader understanding of the evolution of the modern mechanical watch over the course of half a century. With background stories that place the watches in the historical and cultural context in which they were born, the book brings a fresh perspective to the way that watchmaking responded to the momentous social changes that occurred during the 20th century and the role played in that evolution by the Manufacture Jaeger-LeCoultre.