American · Collector and researcher · Steamboat Springs, Colorado

I collect watches, and I'm trying to identify one that nobody has a record of.

My name is Roman Gebauer. I'm thirteen and I live in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. My family travels three to six months a year, so I've been able to look at watches in museums, workshops and market stalls in fifty-six countries.

Languages · English (native), French (B1), Arabic (A2)
Training · British Horological Institute, starting this year

FAR chronograph, full front view, cream dial with two subdials and a red date at six o'clock — **The FAR chronograph**The watch I've spent a year researching. Two of them are known to exist.

I'm thirteen, American, and I go to my local high school in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. There are six of us in my family and we're all into watches.

I'm not stuck on one brand or one decade. I like old mechanical watches that nobody bothered to write anything down about, and I like what modern brands are doing right now, especially Longines. Traveling as much as I do means I get to see both in person, usually in the places they were made.

8 and 9 September 2026

Internship at Longines, Saint-Imier

Two days inside the manufacture. Longines normally takes interns starting at sixteen. They made an exception for me at thirteen because of how interested I am in the brand and its history.

Starting this year

British Horological Institute

I'm starting the BHI's distance learning courses in clock and watch servicing. It's the standard route from enthusiast to qualified horologist, and I want to learn to work on movements properly instead of guessing at what's inside them.

About me

Where I'm from, where I've been, the languages I speak, and how I got into this in the first place.

My collection

Two watches. One is an unidentified Swiss chronograph. The other is a modern Longines that does something really hard.

See the watches

The FAR chronograph

My main research project. No catalog entry, no auction record, and one other example known anywhere in the world.

Read the research

About

Roman Gebauer

Thirteen years old, American, and living in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

I live in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and I go to my local high school. My family travels three to six months a year, and I've been to fifty-six countries.

That's the part of my background that actually matters here. Most of what I know about watches didn't come from books or forums. I got it standing in front of the watches, in museums and workshops and market stalls, usually talking to someone who wasn't expecting a thirteen-year-old to ask what caliber was inside. You learn a lot faster when you can hold the thing and ask someone who has taken one apart.

How I got into this

In August 2025 we were in Milan and my older brother decided he wanted a watch so he'd stop pulling out his phone every time he needed to know the time. I went along with it, the way a younger brother does. It didn't stay his thing for long. Within a few weeks I was all over them.

The moment I fell for one specific watch was on my birthday at the Longines museum in Saint-Imier, when they let me hold a Spirit Zulu Time. I knew in about three seconds that it was my favorite watch. It still is.

Roman Gebauer trying on a Longines Spirit Zulu Time at the Longines museum in Saint-Imier — **Saint-Imier, on my birthday**Trying on the Longines Spirit Zulu Time. Not my watch. The one I want.

What pulled me the rest of the way down the rabbit hole was the history. I'm a history nerd first, and watch history is a great story. The designs did the rest, especially Longines, who take a vintage shape and clean it up until it works as a modern watch instead of just copying itself.

The research part happened in two steps. Before our first trip to Switzerland I had to research a watch company, and I picked Longines. Then at the start of this year I started trying to identify my FAR chronograph, and I've gotten a lot more ambitious about it since.

What I'm interested in

Watches in general, not one narrow period. What I like most is old mechanical work from the years when movements were made in huge numbers under hundreds of different names, and nobody kept the records that would let you identify them now. That gap is the fun part. A watch with no paperwork isn't a dead end. It's a puzzle you solve from the watch itself.

I pay just as much attention to what modern brands are doing, especially Longines. Their very high precision quartz is serious engineering, and most enthusiasts skip right past it on their way back to mechanical watches.

Training

This year I'm starting the British Horological Institute's distance learning courses in clock and watch servicing. The BHI is the professional body for horology in Britain, and its course is the normal route from enthusiast to qualified horologist. I'd rather learn to take a movement apart properly than keep guessing at what's inside one.

On 8 and 9 September 2026 I'm doing a two-day internship at Longines in Saint-Imier. They normally take interns starting at sixteen. They made an exception for me at thirteen because of how interested I am in the brand and its history, and I don't take that lightly.

Languages

English is my native language. My French is at B1 and my Arabic is at A2. I spent a few months living in Briançon, in the French Alps, learning French. That's where the FAR found me, and it's why I could do the tour at the Longines museum in Saint-Imier in French instead of English.

Where I've been looking

The Longines museum in Saint-Imier, the Omega and Swatch museums in Bienne, and a long list of independent shops, repairers and market stalls in whatever country we happen to be in. Most of my best conversations about watches have started by walking into somewhere I had no particular reason to be.

Roman Gebauer working on a watch at home, wearing a magnifying headset — **At the bench**Working on a watch at home in Steamboat Springs.

Years old

Countries visited

3 to 6

Months a year traveling

Training

8 and 9 September 2026

Longines, Saint-Imier

Two-day internship, at thirteen, against a normal minimum age of sixteen

Starting this year

British Horological Institute

Distance learning courses in clock and watch servicing

Working on right now

Finding a third FAR chronograph, figuring out who made the case, and getting the watch serviced by someone who'll photograph the inside of the caseback before closing it up again.

Roman Gebauer outside the Longines building in Saint-Imier — **Longines, Saint-Imier**Outside the manufacture. I'll be inside it on 8 and 9 September.

Collection

My watches

Two of them. I buy for what a watch can teach me, not for what it's worth, which is why an unidentified chronograph sits next to a modern quartz.

The Valjoux 7734 movement inside the FAR

Swiss · vintage

FAR chronograph

Valjoux 7734, hand-wound, 17 jewels. Steel tonneau case, domed acrylic, roulette date at 6, French dial. One of two known examples. Unrestored, and it needs a service.

The full record

Longines Conquest V.H.P. with black dial on a steel bracelet

Swiss · modern

Longines Conquest V.H.P., 43 mm

Black dial, steel bracelet, date at 3, no GMT. Very High Precision quartz, accurate to a few seconds a year. If a magnet knocks the hands out of position, it drives them back to where they're supposed to be on its own.

Quartz gets treated like the boring half of the industry and this watch is the argument against that. It's also why Longines is the modern brand I pay the most attention to.

Research project

The FAR chronograph

A hand-wound Valjoux 7734 chronograph with a name on the dial that has no catalog, no auction record and no forum thread. Here's everything I've worked out, and everything I still can't prove.

Overview

Dial signature: FAR
Movement: Valjoux 7734, hand-wound cam-switching chronograph, 17 jewels, Incabloc shock protection, screwless balance
Case: Stainless steel tonneau, no bezel, domed acrylic crystal, snap caseback
Caseback: Stamped ANTIMAGNETIC — STEEL — DUSTPROOF on the outside. The inside has never been photographed
Dial: Cream, applied rectangular markers, blocky applied 12, red telemeter track, blue tachymeter track, fifth-of-a-second chapter ring
Date: Roulette date wheel at 6, black-outlined square window
Subdials: Running seconds at 9, thirty-minute counter at 3 with telephone markers at 3 and 6 minutes
Lume: Aged plots and hand inserts, faint glow left, deep cream-green patina
Lug width: 18 mm, very shallow curve
Condition: Original untouched dial. Running, but unserviced: dried oil, stiff pushers
Provenance: Given to me by an independent watchmaker in Briançon, France, in September 2025, out of his own collection

The dial

Almost all of the useful information on this watch is on the dial, and it's the reason I think the dial has never been redone.

The hour markers are applied rectangles with a blocky applied 12 at the top. There are no markers at 3, 6 and 9, because the subdials and the date window are there instead. There are lume plots at all twelve positions. Hold it at an angle and there's a faint sunburst finish that photos almost never pick up.

There are three separate ink passes: black for the hour track and the text, red for the telemeter scale, blue for the outer speed scale. The blue scale never actually says tachymètre. It just gives the speeds, which is right for the period, and it was one of the first things that made me think the dial wasn't a later reprint. The chapter ring is split into fifths of a second, which matches the 18,000 vibrations per hour of the Valjoux 7734.

Above the date window it says 17 RUBIS, and below it, INCABLOC. French, not English, so this was made for a French-speaking market. The date wheel is roulette style, red and black alternating.

My favorite detail is the logo. FAR is printed tilted slightly to the left and a little off center. Anyone redoing a dial would have straightened that out. Nobody did, and that's the best evidence I have that the printing is original.

The signatureFAR at 12, tilted left and off center. Nobody straightened it, which is why I think the dial is original.

Macro of the dial text reading 17 RUBIS INCABLOC above a square date window showing a red 21 — **17 rubis · Incabloc**French dial text, and the roulette date wheel showing a red 21.

Macro of the running seconds subdial at nine o'clock — **Running seconds, 9 o'clock**Fine circular graining inside the recessed subdial, with the red telemeter scale running past it.

Macro of the thirty minute counter subdial at three o'clock — **Thirty-minute counter, 3 o'clock**Longer markers at three and six minutes, for timing phone calls back when you got charged extra past those points.

Angled macro of the seconds subdial with the tachymeter and telemeter tracks — **Three ink passes**Black hour track, red telemeter, blue speed scale. The blue one never says tachymètre.

Angled macro of the minute counter subdial and teardrop counterweight hand — **Teardrop counterweight**The minute counter hand has a teardrop counterweight, same as the only other example known.

Open question — the lume The lume has aged to a creamy yellow green and it still glows very faintly. There's no T anywhere on the dial, which rules out the tritium marking used on most Swiss dials from this period. My guess is promethium-147, based on the missing T, the ghost glow and the color of the patina. I haven't had it measured, and I'd like to.

The case

The case is a mass produced steel tonneau, curved along the sides, no bezel, with a domed acrylic crystal sitting straight on the case. The tonneau was everywhere in the years before the quartz crisis because it was cheap, so a huge number of brands used it. That helps and hurts at the same time. It tells me the case was bought in rather than made, so the case on its own can't tell me who put the watch together.

There's a fine brushed finish on the outside and a full sunburst brush on the back. The caseback says ANTIMAGNETIC, STEEL and DUSTPROOF, and that's it. No reference, no serial, no case maker's mark anywhere on the outside. Anything useful is stamped on the inside of the back.

I've had the back off once, early in 2026, and I photographed the movement instead of the inside of the caseback. At the time I didn't know that was the important part. It's the biggest gap in my documentation and it's the first thing I'm fixing when the watch goes in for a service.

The crown is plain and spiky with no logo. The pushers are unmarked cam pushers. The lugs barely curve instead of wrapping around the case the way most watches do, so most bracelets won't sit right even at the correct 18 mm.

Caseback of the FAR chronograph stamped ANTIMAGNETIC STEEL DUSTPROOF — **Caseback**ANTIMAGNETIC, STEEL, DUSTPROOF and nothing else. No reference and no serial on the outside.

ProfileDomed acrylic sitting right on the case, no bezel, and the shallow lug curve that rejects most bracelets.

The FAR chronograph worn on the wrist — **On the wrist**The tonneau wears smaller than it measures. The strap is the one it came to me on.

The movement

The Valjoux 7734 is a hand-wound cam-switching chronograph caliber and one of the most produced chronograph movements of its time. It was tough, easy to service and cheap next to column wheel movements, which is why it turned up under hundreds of different names on the dial. It came from Valjoux, who later made the 7750, the automatic that a big part of the industry still runs on today.

The movement in mine has no decoration at all. It's a plain production 7734, not a finished or specially prepared one. The balance has no screws, which puts it in the later run. There's dried oil all through it and the pushers are stiff, so it needs a service before I wear it regularly.

That matters for what comes next. Whoever built this watch wasn't making a luxury piece. They took a good standard chronograph and put a specific name on the dial.

The Valjoux 7734 movement inside the FAR chronograph, with the caseback removed — **The movement, early 2026**The Valjoux 7734 with the back off. Plain plates, no decoration, screwless balance. This is the only time the watch has been opened, and I photographed this instead of the inside of the caseback.

The FAR chronograph dial, straight on — **The whole watch**Everything above comes from this one object. There is no paperwork, no box, and no catalog to check it against.

The research: why I think FAR is Fabriques d'Assortiments Réunis

There's no record of a watch brand called FAR. There is a very well documented Swiss company that went by FAR: Fabriques d'Assortiments Réunis, started in Le Locle in 1932 as a holding company owned by ASUAG. It pulled together the Swiss makers of escapements, balances and assortments, and bought out fourteen companies in its first ten years. In 1984 it merged with Nivarox to become Nivarox-FAR, which is still the biggest maker of escapement and oscillating parts in the industry and is now part of the Swatch Group.

A parts supplier doesn't sell watches to the public. It does have anniversaries and staff, and the Swiss industry has always marked those with small runs of watches that never show up in a catalog because they were never for sale. That would explain every strange thing about this watch at once. A real Swiss chronograph, a standard bought-in case, a plain production movement, a carefully printed dial with a name on it, and no commercial trace anywhere.

Here's the part I keep coming back to. FAR started in 1932. Its fortieth year was 1972, which lands right inside the production window for the screwless balance Valjoux 7734. I can't prove a connection, and I want to be clear that this is a theory and not a finding. But it fits the evidence better than anything else I've come up with, and it's testable. A company archive, a staff photo, an internal order record or a third example would settle it.

Evidence: the only other one I've found

One other FAR chronograph has turned up, offered by a dealer in New York and shown in a video online. It isn't identical to mine, but there's far too much shared for coincidence. Two of them showing up separately on two different continents also makes the easy explanation, that some watchmaker built a one-off and printed a dial for it, very hard to believe. Doing that twice would cost more than the watches are worth.

Feature	My watch	New York example
Dial signature	FAR, identical letterforms and linkage	Same
Movement	Valjoux 7734	Same
Case shape	Tonneau, domed acrylic	Same
Date	Roulette wheel at 6	Same
Hands	Blocky rectangular, lumed	Same
Minute counter	3 and 6 minute markers, teardrop counterweight	Same
Jewel text	17 RUBIS	17 JEWELS, same thing in a different language
Shock protection	INCABLOC on the dial	Same
Subdial numerals	60 / 20 / 40 and 10 / 20 / 30	Same
Caseback text	ANTIMAGNETIC	Same
Outer scale	Blue tachymeter	Same

What I still don't know

Whether FAR on the dial really is Fabriques d'Assortiments Réunis. What's stamped inside the caseback. Who made the case. Who printed the dial. Whether the lume is promethium-147. How many were made, and who they were made for. Whether there's a third one out there.

How I got it

In September 2025 I walked into a one-man repair shop in Briançon, in the French Alps, for the third time in one day. There are six of us in my family and we're all watch people, so when we went to Switzerland together everyone except my mom came home with a watch. We were living in Briançon for a few months to learn French. It's a small town with only independent repairers, and only one of them had good reviews, so when the bracelet resizing kept going wrong I kept going back to the same shop.

On the third visit the watchmaker gave me the FAR. He didn't sell it to me. I found out later that it came out of his own personal collection.

I've spent the year since then trying to figure out what it is.

Roman Gebauer outside Suiss'OR, the watch shop in Briançon where he was given the FAR chronograph — **Suiss'OR, Briançon**The shop. Third visit in one day is when the watch changed hands.

Open call

I'm looking for a third FAR

If you've seen a chronograph signed FAR, or you can help with any of this, please get in touch. I'll credit anyone who helps, and I'll publish whatever I find instead of sitting on it.

A third example. Any condition, any version. I'm not asking anyone to sell. Photos of the dial and the inside of the caseback would be enough. The inside of the back is the part I most want to see, on any FAR, including mine.
Archive access. Anything from Fabriques d'Assortiments Réunis, ASUAG or Nivarox-FAR: anniversary records, staff gifts, internal orders, photos of employees wearing watches.
Case identification. A case maker's mark that matches this tonneau, or a reference number stamped inside a snap back with the same profile.
Dial printing. Anyone who can identify the printer or the typeface used for this FAR signature.
Lume analysis. Anyone who can test the luminous material without damaging the dial.

Get in touch

Contact

Get in touch

If you're a collector, dealer, watchmaker or archivist, I'd like to hear from you. Especially if you've ever seen the name FAR on a dial.

rjgsd2012@gmail.com

In person

I'm based in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, and my family travels three to six months a year. I'm in Switzerland this September, including two days at Longines in Saint-Imier on the 8th and 9th. Email is the fastest way to set something up.

What I'm asking for

Any sighting of a FAR dial, access to ASUAG or Nivarox-FAR archive material, or an ID on the case maker. The full list is here.