“A little act of madness” or “love at first sight”, that’s the way I would describe the purchase of my little Marvin, one July morning in Belgrade. Between two fruit and vegetable stalls, a small-time watchseller was jealously showing off his collection of Russian and Swiss watches. The language barrier prevented me from exchanging a few words with him about our shared passion, but the way I handled his watches seemed to win him over.

To reward me for my interest, he took out of a case with three old prestige watches, magnificent column wheel chronographs, the type of beautiful watches produced in the 1950s. That was all I needed for this sudden crazy idea to form: sacrifice a portion of my travel budget to purchase a modest watch. As I struggled to express what I wanted to the watchseller, he opened another case and took out several Swiss watches, including a Marvin with a case and a face of rose gold, which had me transfixed from the very moment I first saw it. Without the watchseller even needing to promote his product, I took out a wad of cash and before I knew it, I was the proud owner of a classic Marvin from the early 1970s.

This Marvin is a fine, elegant watch measuring 33 mm in diameter and with a thickness of 7 mm, a far cry from today’s design conventions. Upon my return from Serbia, I decided to contact the Marvin team for more information.

The movement, undoubtedly an AS-calibre, was not listed in the Marvin archives, and neither was the engraving on the base of the case. If I had given up at this point, I would have been hugely disappointed. But this watch was in fact like a page in the history of the Balkans and former Yugoslavia. Let’s not forget that in the 1960s and 1970s, Yugoslavia was a communist country, led by Tito. It was a fairly closed market, so Swiss brands had to resort to some unusual distribution channels. To penetrate the Yugoslav market, Marvin called upon the services of Revue Thomen. They may not have been of quite the same quality as 100% Marvin watches but the Marvin/Revue Thomen watches had the advantage of being affordable for the ordinary Yugoslav workers.

This was a godsend because at the time there was a Serbian tradition that was very widespread within the industry – to reward the best workers and executives, companies had a practice of presenting them with watches. So, during a wander through a market in Belgrade, I was able to uncover a part of the industrial history of Yugoslavia…

Martin Peneau

www.leblogdesmontres.fr