Drop + Invicta 1960 Chronograph Watch

While Invicta offers just about every style of watch you could imagine today, its history is often forgotten. Our 1960 Chronograph Watch is a tribute to the brand’s heritage, and a trip back in time to the classic watch era. Based on an actual Invicta doctor’s chronograph developed around 1960, this mid-century timepiece features a bronze case that develops a natural patina over time. Just like the original, the dial has two subdials and a combination of red and blue accents that make up the telemeter and pulsometer scales. In tandem with the chronograph, the pulsometer can be used to track your pulse (where the moniker “Doctors” comes from), and the telemeter can be used for distance and other measurements. With an anti-reflective domed sapphire crystal, the watch is scratch-resistant and legible. It gets power from a unique Meca-Quartz movement—a best-of-both-worlds movement with a sweeping seconds hand.

If you didn’t know otherwise, operating a Meca-Quartz-powered watch feels just like operating a mechanical one. That’s because this unique movement combines the properties of a fully mechanical chronograph—the levers, wheels, heart pieces, and satisfying snicks—with the accuracy of a quartz movement. Employing a quartz-regulated electronic timekeeping engine and a mechanical chronograph module, Meca-Quartz movements offer the best of both worlds. The Seiko VK64 variety we’ve selected for our 1960 Chronograph has all the charm of a vintage mechanical movement, with the precision of a much more modern mechanism.

Invicta, latin for “invincible,” has been making watches for nearly two centuries. Founded in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland in 1837, the company prides itself on its commitment to producing quality timepieces at reasonable prices. Up until the quartz revolution of the 1970s, Invicta was well known for its reliable manual-wind watches. In fact, the outfit manufactured one such watch in 1959 that was commissioned exclusively for Russian naval officers. After the transition to quartz all but pushed Invicta out of the market, the brand had a major revival in the 1990s under new leadership. Now located in the US, it continues to produce affordable timepieces with top-notch materials—just as it did centuries ago.