Donor calibres, reborn ✦ No two alike ✦ Priced like we mean it ✦ Serviced, not shrink-wrapped ✦ Provenance you can trace ✦ Wear it, do not flip it ✦Donor calibres, reborn ✦ No two alike ✦ Priced like we mean it ✦ Serviced, not shrink-wrapped ✦ Provenance you can trace ✦ Wear it, do not flip it ✦
The Parts Bin Collection
Four builds shown here. The numbers are placeholder and the provenance is whatever we could verify.
We buy dead and dying watches by the crate. The movements that still run get cleaned and regulated, then rehomed in fresh cases behind dials we draw ourselves.
Most brands sell a story about lineage that a marketing department wrote last spring. A salvaged calibre carries a real history instead, and most of it is gloriously unglamorous.
So every piece is a bit of a mongrel, and that is the entire point. You get an object that earns its keep on the wrist for the price of a decent dinner.
Eight builds, most of them one-offs or close to it. What sells out does not come back in the same form, because the next crate never holds the same parts.
// prices and specs are placeholder, swap when the real builds are shot
The Parts Bin
Where the watches begin.
A crate of dead watches is a strange kind of archive. We read it, sort it, and keep whatever still keeps time.
The honest bit
Every build starts as somebody else's discard. We buy job lots of broken and forgotten watches, then spend a week working out which movements have any life left in them.
The ones that run get serviced and set aside. The ones that do not become the parts that keep the others going, so nothing in the crate is truly wasted.
This shows roughly what sits in the bin right now, before any of it becomes something you would actually wear. It updates when we remember to update it.
Four steps, plainly. No secret sauce, because there is not one.
01 · Sort
Wind every movement and see what ticks. Most do not.
02 · Service
Strip, clean and oil the survivors, then regulate them.
03 · Dress
New case, sapphire and a dial we drew for the occasion.
04 · Send
Photographed, listed and posted with a real warranty.
Our thing
A serious watch does not need a straight face.
ECTIC exists because the gap between what a watch costs and what a watch is had grown absurd.
Somewhere along the way the watch stopped telling the time and started telling everyone your salary. A whole industry now sells lineage by the gram, most of it invented and all of it expensive.
A mechanical movement is a small, clever machine that does one honest job. Wrap it in enough marketing and the same machine becomes a status object, a hedge, an entry ticket. We find that funny, and a little sad.
We would rather sell you a good movement with an honest past than a story with a warranty card.
So we work the other way round. We start with a calibre that has already lived a life, put it right on the bench, then give it a case and a dial worth a second glance.
The result costs less than a night out and carries more character than watches ten times the price. It will not appreciate. It was never meant to. Wear it until it stops, then bring it back and we will start it again.
The short version, for people in a hurry
Salvaged movements, serviced properly. Fresh cases and dials we design. Prices that assume you have a mortgage.
No heritage, no waiting-list theatre, no lume you could read from orbit. Just watches with a past, sold by people who like them.
// house spec · typical build
MovementDonor, serviced
CaseNew, 37 to 39mm
CrystalSapphire, flat
DialIn-house design
Water resistSplash, be sensible
WarrantyTwelve months, real
ProvenanceWhatever survived
The Parts Bin list
One email when a crate lands.
No schedule and no filler. You hear from us when there is something real to buy.
// first look
First access to each batch before it goes public, which matters when a build is a one-off.
// the receipts
A plain note on what came in and exactly what we did to it on the bench.
Join the list.
We send maybe one message a month, sometimes less.