Welcome to the ultimate website for vintage Glycine watches

This website is a collector's self accomplishment and has developed an interest based relation with the company itself. The name of my website comes from Glycine + Centennial, celebrating the first 100 years of continuous watchmaking history of the brand. My interest in this brand started back in 2012 when I bought a '70s Glycine divers model and had difficulties in finding information about it. 

Emailing the company and receiving unsatisfying information, scanning online boards with zero returns turned my search for information to obsession. I realized that not all hundred year old companies have archives as I assumed. So at some point I became member of some watch forums with the hope of finding out more. Meeting hobby-mates and sharing similar concerns triggered my research. Long story short, after several years of deep search from Swiss libraries, family trees, patent institutes and printed documents, I finally built a solid archive to better understand the company timeline and their manufacture. By that time I already had several dozens of vintage Glycine watches and was finally able to identify them.

I realized that it's the journey rather than the destination I have enjoyed and decided to share my joy with all enthusiasts by building this website in 2013.

Obviously my research efforts and building this site have not gone unnoticed and I have been contacted by the Glycine CEO in 2014. After some further correspondence, the suggestion came up to create and take care of the Glycine Heritage department. Committing to this assignment since then has helped me to become more beneficial to the community I built from Brunei to Alaska with Glycine enthusiasts, who mainly were flying personnel and Airman collectors. That year Glycine asked for help by sharing with me two handwritten books with a note that they were not able to understand the format or numbering systems. Ownership changes through decades reflected also to the way of recording the manufacture and serial numbers from 1954 and onward. Spending serious amount of time and effort on the hand-written manufacture records while trying to read the different handwriting in French and German was a real joy. Cross referencing the registers with my serial numbers archives has solved the puzzle after many months. It was pleasant to see the whole iceberg finally, rather than just the tip. I can say now that we have covered each year of Glycine history and I am not shy to claim credit for it. 

During this journey I met so many authentic people that I concluded that this hobby brings genuinely curious people together. That is also what drives us to explore. The core of the hobby, independent from what you collect, it is the quest for answers - just like in life. I also had the chance to enlarge my network within other companies' heritage departments during this journey where archivists along with researchers help each other to dig in deeper with collective knowledge. Setting up a network beneficial to Glycine watch owners has been only completed once I have found skilled watchmakers around the globe for each continent with whom we were able to restore and service hundreds of vintage Glycine watches, in particular Airman models. I am forever  thankful to those craftsmen, especially Matt Henning from Massachusetts, James Sadilek from Nevada Watch Repair Center and Ronald Prins from Cohen, The Netherlands. Knowledge can not be obtained without efforts and network, I was lucky to connect with the right people, therefore I am thankful to Andre Stikkers who is the lead, especially in Glycine Airman. Also several hobby and forum mates I owe is Dennis Smith, Jerry 'Thudguy', along with the moderators of Watchuseek forum and many others whose names I didn't mention here.

Glycine Watches SA in Bienne and our Glycine Heritage department now has the handwritten manufacture records from 1954 and onward. The earlier records from 1914 to 1953 were damaged in a flood in 1941 with many ready to ship watches and a factory robbery in 1975. Some limited data is and was available from the company regarding their older timepieces. This website is aiming to shed light on the lost history of Glycine and also give credit for the numerous inventions it has contributed to horlogerie.

Glycintennial.com has the largest documented archives for Glycine and Eugene Meylan timepieces. Everything in this website is backed up with contemporary resources and documents.

If we define watch collecting in vertical depth so as thematic, brand-oriented or from a special aspect, I consider myself as a collector who has some dozens of vintage Glycine watches and some other dozens of weird and early automatics, chronographs and dead beat seconds watches...it's a rabbit hole. 

I am fascinated by engineered mechanisms which offered a solution to a problem, even if it was overdone sometimes or it wasn't always commercially successful. That's the reason I have spared a page for early automatic wristwatches, a soft spot for me. The history page covers pretty much all milestones of Glycine, not too detailed though not to bore you with Eugene Meylan's bike accident or how he was murdered...). Patents page shows its contribution to the world of horlogerie. Serial numbers and movements chart page is pretty detailed. Serial numbers are for Airman models, calibers are from in-house movements to later used movements which were sourced from other ebauche makers. The models page is limited to my collection but has most of the mainstream design and functions covered. I had a private page for my own use within the site but than thought why not let everyone benefit, so I opened the page to public, I called the page 'Horological Source ' which has no certain focus but many interesting facts and documents. And finally a sales page for reliable transactions within hobby-mates.

I hope you will enjoy browsing and reading through the pages of Glycintennial. 

English is my third language so pardon any imperfections. I value your feedback, please let me know your comments, ideas and suggestions via info@glycintennial.com or send me a pm through WUS,  username: Emre.

May time tick in your favor,best wishes,

Emre Kiris