IWC Pilot Mark Series

M Mycroft

I would buy the original IWC Mark XI. It’s a sturdy watch which looks beautiful and it will cost you less.

Lotus_Eater8815

Interesting. The watch fell out of your rotation? 😀 Great looking watch on a drool worthy strap! I thought they only made those for the TZC/UTC 3251. Did they make those for the Mark XV/XII as well?

M Mycroft

I would buy the original IWC Mark XI. It’s a sturdy watch which looks beautiful and it will cost you less.

w154

It fell on the floor ! After that it was losing at least 1-2 minutes a day so was basically impractical (plus of course it was likely damaging itself further) so it went back in the box. Need to get it sorted really as it’d still be a great daily watch.

And the strap is just one for a UTC. I bought the XV pre-owned and hated the deployant it came on, so bought the UTC strap as I wanted to be a bit more casual than black leather. The lug width on the XV is 1mm less than the UTC but it fitted OK. Pretty expensive strap though. I was in Japan at that time and I remember it was around ¥45000, which would have been about £250.

Lotus_Eater8815

A little update: I’ve had the chance to try on a Pilot 36mm with slate gray dial at an AD. Was thinking of a more modern alternative to the Mark XII.

Upon closer inspection of the Pilot 36mm, however, I’ve noticed that the specimen on my wrist had “bubblier” arabic hour markers than the ones usually seen online. It looks cartoonish and downright awful.

Here it is compared to one i found on watchpatrol.

IWC’s quality control can’t be that bad, can it?

M Mycroft

IWC Mark XI are regularly coming at auction and authentic models (correct hands, Tritium dial and MoD engraving on the back of the case) sell for 3’000-5’000. The original dial with radium are more expensive and if the dial has the numeric 12 (extremely rare) the price would be north of 10’000.

w154

Doesn’t sound too far out but that’s more money than either the XII or the XV.