Endeavour

The Endeavour is the round dress watch that made H. Moser & Cie. a name serious collectors argue about. Launched in 2005 when the Meylan-era manufacture in Schaffhausen was still finding its feet, it became the canvas for the brand's signature move: a fumé dial, hand-polished leaf hands, and on the Concept versions, nothing else. No logo, no indices, no text. Just a graduated sunburst that runs from a bright center to a near-black rim. We buy and sell these every few weeks at our counter on 19 W 47th Street, and the honest read is that the Endeavour sits in a strange, valuable spot: it is a genuine in-house manufacture piece with proprietary escapements and hairsprings, priced well under a Lange or a Patek, from a house most of the public has never heard of. That gap between what is inside the watch and what the market pays for the name is exactly what makes it interesting on the buy side. The line spans a simple three-hander at roughly $30,000 to a flying tourbillon in the $70,000s and perpetual calendars and minute repeaters above that. If you want to understand modern independent watchmaking without spending Greubel money, the Endeavour is where the conversation starts.