Five Great Watch Books from 2024

Most scholarly timepiece books provide exhaustive explorations of specific brands and heritage, generally with photography that can’t be beaten. They also make for evocative tabletop leave-outs in your home and/or impressively bound additions to your library.

That is why, as we say goodbye to 2024, we present five terrific watch books released this past year, including some more out-of-the-box choices for your reading (and writing?) pleasure.

An anniversary retrospective of a watch brand is typically an informative, if a bit dusty, read. However, Breitling chose to tell its nearly century-and-a-half tale in 140 individual stories.

Published by art book house Rizzoli, Breitling: 140 Years in 140 Stories ($95) features contributions from scion Greg Breitling and noted experts and authors Fred Mandelbaum, Jeff Stein, and Chris Stoever that encompass the brand’s watchmaking heritage and lets the reader get up-close-and-personal with significant players in the Breitling legacy, brand ambassadors, and notable collectors, as well.
 

Full disclosure: This book’s author, Jack Forster, is a trusted friend and colleague of ours. Therefore, we have no trouble trusting Jack to tackle no less than a century of Citizen’s watchmaking heritage in an informative yet entertaining way.

Produced as a part of the watchmaker’s 100th Anniversary in 2024, Citizen: The Essence of Time goes back to 1924 when the very first Citizen pocket watch was created. Published in a quality befitting the house of Assouline, this 240-page, 250-illustration book is available from the publisher for $150.
 

“Certified Pre-Owned,” or CPO, is a term and acronym that becomes more and more of a watch industry buzzword year after year. While Bucherer may not have invented the concept, it has certainly been at the forefront of taming the “wild west” of the pre-owned marketplace and creating a coherent, authorized, and trusted buying option with in-store retail experiences on par with new watch shopping.

This Timeless Treasures: The Fascination of Certified Pre-Owned Watches ($43.56), published by teNeues, comprises contributions from six noted authors and was edited by watch expert and collector Ralph Jahns. If this beautifully illustrated book doesn’t turn you onto the possibilities of CPO watches, nothing will.
 

Single-brand and single-topic watch books are all well and good. However, sometimes, it’s a reaffirming exercise to pore over a publication that reminds us all that, at the end of the day, watch collecting is, in fact, a spectrum.

Penned by @Collection.Personelle’s Clément Mazarian, Exceptional Watches: From the Rolex Daytona to the Casio G-Shock ($46.95) is a 232-page tome published by Mitchell Beazley that not only provides a spot-on review of collectible watches at all levels, but also remind us of the excitement we all share in common.
 

Perhaps you will consider the notion that, for a collector, the very best watch-related book might be the one you write yourself. That is why the Watch Collector Log Book makes our list (plus, it only costs $5.75).

This log book will let you record all the vital information of your ever-growing watch collection (from brand name, model name, year, and serial number through to repair history and selling notes) on 120 easy-to-fill premium printed pages and a fill-in index.