Longines Avigation BigEye L2.816.4.53.2

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The storyWhy this reference matters

The story starts with somebody knocking on the door of the Longines museum in Saint-Imier, a 1930s pilot's chronograph under his arm. The brand examined it and ran into an unusual problem: there was no trace of the watch in its archives. A prototype? A short run that was never registered? Nobody has settled the question yet. Longines decided it made no difference and in 2017 reissued the thing exactly as it was, oddities included.

The name comes from what hits you first: the thirty-minute counter at three is unashamedly bigger than its two neighbours. That is not a designer's flourish. For a pilot, what matters on a chronograph is almost never loose seconds but elapsed minutes from a reference point, and enlarging that register is the simplest and most effective way to read them at a glance, in gloves, with the aircraft moving.

The Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève jury gave it the "Revival" prize that same year, the one for the best reissue. There is a joke in there: they rewarded the resurrection of a watch the brand itself had no paperwork for. Inside sits the L688, the column-wheel chronograph ETA builds for Longines alone on the A08.L01 base, with twenty-seven jewels and 28,800 vibrations per hour.

SpecificationsThe numbers, in one table

IdentificationHow to tell it apart

Three registers in a cross: thirty minutes at three — the big one — twelve hours at six and small seconds at nine. No date window, which is also faithful to the original. The pushers are enormous, mushroom-shaped, made for gloved fingers, and the crown does not screw down.

Forty-one millimetres across and fourteen and a half tall, with a domed sapphire crystal that throws back the reflections of old Plexiglas. The back is solid and screwed down, with no window on the movement: Longines chose historical consistency over showing the calibre. Water resistance stops at 3 bar, a figure for the desk rather than the pool.

One for the pedants: in 2017 Longines quoted 54 hours of reserve for the L688 and today declares 66 on this same reference, because the calibre has been updated along the way. Do not be surprised to find both figures on spec sheets for the same watch. The L2.816.4.53.2 is the black dial on a brown leather strap; there is also a titanium sister with a blue dial.

CollectingWhat collectors check

With an automatic chronograph, the first thing to do is work it. The start pusher on a column wheel has a dry action and a short travel, with no sponginess. If the hand shudders when you stop it, or if it does not return exactly to zero on reset, there is work pending and it is not cheap.

The 3 bar and the crown that does not screw down say it all: this is not a watch for the water, and a chronograph with two pushers has several more ways in than a three-hander. Hold the domed crystal against the light looking for knocks at the rim, which is where it chips first, and check the dial printing for rust spots.

In its favour second-hand: it has been in the catalogue since 2017 with no design changes, which takes the pressure off a used buyer and makes examples easy to compare. The twenty-millimetre lugs open up an enormous range of straps, and half the fun of owning this watch is right there.

Common questionsWhat people ask us about this reference

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