Bad Purchase – MB&F Split Escapement

1 of a series

This is a series about my bad purchases. Not bad watches, but the purchases that I shouldn’t have done for any other reason. Most of the pieces I’ll share here are great watches and made someone else very excited about adding to their collection, but it just wasn’t right for me.

 

It was October. I was in London and had just the day before received a call that my father had passed away.

Feeling the new loss but with a day before the flight home I made my way to the offices of Phillips Auction and Phillips Perpetual. “This will make me feel a bit better” I assured myself.

Greeted with the appropriate mix of excitement and sympathy, I settled in and enjoyed tea and a chat with the kind folks there.

They offered for review – among the usual collection of rare and special, bright and shiny objects – a MB&F Legacy Machine Split Escapement. This domed watch contains just one of the magic aspects of the MB&F Legacy Machine Perpetual designed by Stephen McDonnell – an escapement that cuts through the entire height of the watch to bring the movement of the movement (did I really just type that?) to the surface.

I’d never seen one before and its presence was magical. With a textured grey dial, horseshoe escapement bridge, and checking the boxes for size, scarcity, and independence I was quickly drawn.

It wasn’t the version I really wanted – that was the full Perpetual. Those, back then, were very hard to find if they could be found at all, and very expensive. I had met Stephen once for a brief encounter via a mutual friend and set my heart on his amazing machine.

But the Split Escapement would do the trick right? It was close enough, magical enough, the price was right, it was right there in my hands, and I would have a great story to tell of getting a watch to mark dad’s passing.  And – the serial number happened to be the month of my dad’s birth.

That was the sign, the whisper from the universe, the “this must be” that I was looking for. My credit card was out of my pocket before I knew it.

And yet, the Daemons of Compromise slowly rose from the center of the earth sucking all the oxygen from a darkening fire-red sky declaring – in a booming voice and with finger pointed directly at me – “the greatest waste of money is that spent on something not 100% desired!”

It was purchased in October 2019 and by May 2020 was sold at a 40% loss.

I compromised. A trend you’ll see in many or all of the “worst purchases”. I compromised and convinced myself that it would be ok. It wasn’t.

This time, the universe added a way forward.

Upon registering the Split Escapement with MB&F I received a nice welcome to the Tribe and an offer to help in anyway needed. I wrote back asking if there was a “full” Legacy Perpetual to be had anywhere.

I was in luck, they replied, there was one of the original 25 rose gold Legacy Machine Perpetuals available in their pre-owned department. Did I want it?

With the sale of the Split Escapement, the Perpetual joined my collection where it remains today.