A Complete Price Guide To Watches No. 24 is an excellent book for those interested in vintage watches. This book gives you the opportunity to "see" inside a watch. It also gives you a lesson in watch history and mechanisms. Included are 400+ year old to modern era battery operated watches.
If you are a watch dealer you already have this book. If you are an enthusiast you should have it. It's basic equiptment. It can help guide you as to what to pay for a watch of the manufacturer/type/year...etc of your liking. At over 1000 pages long it's a bit beefy for a paperback. - It has to be, it contains a lot of information! You are given a detailed lesson in mechanisms and individual parts, diagrams and even samples of vintage advertisements for watches. It has tons of pics of vintage watches grouped by manufacturer, along with manufacturer's histories and serial #'s to boot!
This book can also give you a new sense of appreciation for a dizzyingly complex mechanism so finely tuned; it can work accurately for hours on just the winding of an incredibly tiny spring. If you are in the watch hobby/business you'll find yourself referring this book time and time again.