Girard-Perregaux Gyromatic

Why We Love It It’s systematic, hydromatic, ultramatic—why it’s… Gyromatic! Greased lighting! Girard-Perregaux has a rich tradition of excellence in watchmaking that is unfortunately often over-looked by vintage collectors, in part due to their contemporary...errr... "bleh" factor. Fortunately, this watch is anything but “bleh”, and instead a classic and timeless option that will never go out of style. This particular piece is a handsome example of a solid 14K yellow gold dress watch from the 1960s era that strikes a balance between casual and dress functionality. It’s powered by the innovative Girard-Perregaux Gyromatic self-winding automatic movement. It also features a beautiful silver sunburst dial with applied gold-tone Arabic quadrant hour markers and matching luminous hands. We consider this a steal of a piece from a watchmaker with a rich history that can be had for less than $2K, The Story Girard-Perregaux first applied the name “Gyromatic” to self-winding movements in 1957. These movements beat at the standard 18,000 bph (beats per hour). But as with anything, there was room for improvement, so in launching the Gyromatic line, that’s exactly what Girard-Perregaux set out to do.  While Girard-Perregaux’s first automatic watches used base movements made by A. Schild (and, later, Peseux), Girard-Perregaux was dissatisfied with their performance. So they developed a winding module, called the Gyromatic, which was then added to a blank manually-wound movement. The Gyromatic employed two “Gyrotron” wheels, which made the watch wind smoothly; additionally, each wheel had seven rubies on it to protect the movement from unnecessary wear.  Although Girard-Perregaux would go on to develop a hi-beat version of the Gyromatic in the late 1960s, early Gyromatics like this one are still excellent examples of self-winding technology—which was still in its infancy at this point.  Indeed, horological historians view these early Gyromatic movements as some of the most important ever produced.