Gruen Books

Click sample pages from all three decade books below

Announcing! A new series of Gruen Identification books. 
This series consists of THREE individual books.

Gruen The 1930s – A Decade of Watches from the Daily News 
Gruen The 1940s – A Decade of Watches from the Daily News
Gruen The 1950s – A Decade of Watches from the Daily News

These books are a second and different series of identification books than my “coffee table” style Model Identification Guides below. Each book series serves their own distinct purpose.

These Decade books are looser in format and content. They are about telling the story of Gruen watches over time.

Each of the three books are black and white and feature their watches in the exact chronological order they were found in this nation’s (and sometimes Canada’s) newspapers.

You get a sense of how Gruens evolved and morphed from one watch or watch family to the next. Sometimes model names are present with watch illustrations, sometimes not; it all depended upon the advertisement.

You’ll find these watches repeated a number of times, on purpose. Sometimes the angle was different, others the years differed, or even a price difference was enough to keep a repeated watch in the book.

They are an entertaining read as the language used to describe Gruens also changed over time. Words like “neat”, “smart”, and “sturdy”, were the popular adjectives of the day in the 1930’s for example.

The Decade books hold rather staggering numbers of watches, with The 1930’s containing 1270, The 1940s 1625, and The 1950’s has 1675.

All three books total to over 4,500 watch images!  Even better news, out of those over 1/2 of them, 2,500, have model names.

Each book contains 3 Indexes. One is by year and is a page by page guide to model names from start to end. In the second index, watches are sorted by model name. And, the third index is a table with all of the data contained in the ads sorted by family, and then by model name (e.g. all of the Curvexes are sorted together). In this third index you'll find information the number of jewels, case materials, type of movement, the price, and the number of diamonds.

I'm sure you'll find these to be one of the most interesting and entertaining watch identification guides available, regardless of brand.

* Note that the sample images shown are from all three guides, not just The 1930s.

Gruen The 1930s – A Decade of Watches from the Daily News 

To purchase use the Add to cart PayPal button below

Note -- From this GruenWristwwatches.com site, you can only purchase US Domestic orders.  For International orders, it will be cheaper to use the Lulu site because they will print the book closer to your address. 

Domestic Customers - $27 + $4 shipping =     $31  (includes shipping via Media Mail)

International Customers - you place your orders through Lulu.com.  

The price is still the low low $27, but instead of the high shipping costs from the USA, you pay low shipping by purchasing books printed in your area! 

Reports back from customers all over the world are that the shipping is quite reasonable and the time to get the books good.

Using the same format as "The 1930's" book above,"The 1940's - A Decade of Watches from the Daily News" continues the Decade Series with 1,625 watches from the 1940's shown and then Indexed THREE ways.  It's another large book, 340 pages.  

Gruen The 1940s – A Decade of Watches from the Daily News 

International Customers - you place your orders through Lulu.com.  

The price is the same as the US price of $27

Reports back from customers all over the world are that the shipping is quite reasonable and the time to get the books good.

And finally, also using the same format as "The 1930's" book above,"The 1945's - A Decade of Watches from the Daily News" continues the Decade Series with 1,675 watches from the 1950's shown and then Indexed THREE ways.  It's another large book, 347 pages

Gruen The 1950s – A Decade of Watches from the Daily News 

International Customers - you place your orders through Lulu.com.  

The price is the same as the US price of $27

In total you'll be receiving over 4,500 watch images spanning 954 pages, more than 4.5 X the number of pages of the largest Gruen book available.  And don't forget, you get priceless data including accurate model names, dates, original prices, and more. 

SPECIAL - ALL 3 books with 10% off

Buy all 3 books, The 1930's, The 1940's, The 1950's and receive a 10% discount worth $8.10 + additional shipping discount of 2.90

Domestic Customers - $72.90 + $9.10 =    $82.00  (includes shipping via Media Mail)

Click Sample Pages Below

The Gruen Watch Model Identification Guide, Volume 1

The first identification book of its kind. The Model Name Identification Guide will help you identify your Gruen Curvex, Veri-Thin, Quadron (12 of them), Cartouche, Autowind, and other watch model families.

This guide is unique among "price guides". A summary

• Dedicated to YOU, the Gruen collector. Finally a book of 100% Gruens

• The majority of the watches are shown in color
• It is the only identification guide that every watch's data has been verified to be 100% Gruen supplied data. Nothing more has been added nor fabricated

• Retail pricing information that includes the original retail price and the equivalent amount of money that represents in today's dollars (Gruens were expensive)
• Each watch is life size or larger

• Two indexes, one by name, the other by date

• Expanded information such as names for watches when a flex-band was included. 

• Case and movement details

• Illustrations of the original bands that sold with the watch

• Every watch is shown in a standardized format

Domestic Customers - $40 + $5 USPS Priority Mail

International Customers - $40 + $18 USPS Priority Mail (USPS International mail rates recently jumped in price)

International Customers may find lower shipping rates by ordering direct through Lulu

The Rare Gruen Guild Book and Supplement A.

The Gruen Guild Book from 1929 and the 1931 Supplement are now available in PDF format in the WatchmakingBooks.com bookstore.  A direct link to the book is here:  Gruen Guild Book eBook.  Note that you do not need to register with the site in order to make purchases.

This book is one of the few early Gruen published books that you are able to directly make model identification from.  Of course, it only gives you a snapshot of what was available in 1929 and 1931, but does not give the entire picture of when  each wathch was initially produced.

Regardless, this is hands-down the most GEORGOUS book  that Gruen has ever published.  Each book was numbered so that each jeweler was tracked as having a copy.  It is extremely rare that these books come up for sale and this copy is a particularlly good one.  Go check it out at the www.WatchmakingBooks.com to see the quality of this eBook available to you

Click Sample Pages

The Gruen Watch Repairer's Reference

The most recent of these Gruen publications is The Gruen Repairer's Reference, a compilation of all technical / repair related Gruen publications. If you repair Gruen watches, or want to know more about your Gruen's internal workings, or simply want to quickly fill your horological library, then this is the ideal book for you.

You receive a lot of information for your money in this phone-book sized book! There are 500 pages of Gruen-goodness inside. Even if you own some of the repair guides, it's unlikely you have them all.

The Gruen Repairer's Reference received high marks in its recent review in the NAWCC.

Domestic Customers - $24 + $5.00 USPS Media Mail shipping 

International shipping is not available for this book directly via this site. The size is just too big for it to be economically done. However, you can order direct through Lulu who will print the book for you and ship it internationally for a quite reasonable price.

The Gruen School of Watchmaking created the Gruen Horological Text in 1948 as a means of teaching students how to clean & repair wristwatches. 

It is not Gruen watch specific, and covers basic topics as well as more advanced ones such as balance poising and hairspring manipulation. Readers new to watch repair will enjoy the hands-on, step by step style of the textbook.

Also included are the difficult to find all 8 Technical Bulletins released by Gruen. There are even memos from Gruen announcing new technologies and changes in procedures for repairing watches.

Beginners and advanced repairers will both find this book an enjoyable read and nice addition to their horological library

Domestic Customers - $18 + $5.00 USPS Priority Mail shipping 

International Customers - $18 + $18 USPS Priority Mail (USPS International mail rates recently jumped in price) 

International Customers may find lower shipping rates by ordering direct through Lulu 

 Gruen 448 (1948) Material Catalog - Brand new printing

If you don't yet own this catalog made by Gruen, this is an opportunity to pick one up inexpensively. Additionally, your copy will be a new printing with the pages cleaned up and perfectly white. They look better than when Gruen published them.

To save on shipping costs, I do not ship these directly but rather make them available directly through Lulu. There is no need for an inexpensive book to be shipped twice. 

 Gruen 453 (453) Material Catalog - Brand new printing

If you don't yet own this catalog made by Gruen, this is an opportunity to pick one up inexpensively. Additionally, your copy will be a new printing with the pages cleaned up and perfectly white. They look better than when Gruen published them. 

To save on shipping costs, I do not ship these directly but rather make them available directly through Lulu. There is no need for an inexpensive book to be shipped twice.