So it looks like if you want to get a "Watchco" watch these days you almost need to find one that is fully documented and verified to have been made in the past by Watchco!
Not necessarily. These parts were available for many years through parts houses like Otto Frei and Cousins in the UK. They were also available to any watchmaker with a Swatchgroup account, so anyone could have built one- even the at home hobbiest for a time. Watchco just happened to be the company that was doing it en mass and from what I gathered, and are the reason the party is over.
Watchco was supposedly offering NOS movements in the early runs of their creations (note supposedly) but later ones were just movements they sourced from other watches they were scrounging up and building them due to demand (questionable what level of service they performed on these builds if at all).
From what I have read, the party was over by 2017. I have one of these very late builds that I got from a member here. The only documentation he has was the email receipt from watchco, and thats it. No packaging or certificate or anything- they just made it, shoved it in a Jiffy-pack and sent it in the mail with an email receipt.
It’s also important to note that as Archer said, there was a change in the case details in later years which can throw off anyone looking for one of these and comparing against another (he posted a thread on it a few years ago).
As always, buy the seller, make sure you post a listing here for the collective eyes to provide feedback, and make sure the watch comes with an inspection period to verify once you have it in hand.
These are a minefield, but you aren’t walking through it blind, nor without support.
Godspeed.
