Not new watches — old ones, brought back. The Collectibles is Jaeger-LeCoultre’s own certified pre-owned programme, launched in 2023 for the manufacture’s 190th anniversary: it sources, authenticates and restores museum-grade vintage pieces in a dedicated atelier in the Vallée de Joux, where ten master watchmakers overhaul each watch and missing components are recreated by hand from historical references or pulled from the archives. The programme was built around seventeen emblematic models from the 1920s to the early 1970s — not just the Reverso, but the Duoplan, Memovox, Powermatic, Geomatic and others alongside it — though later capsules have also brought back Reversos from 1972 and from the early 2000s. Seven capsules have been presented so far, travelling from the Vallée de Joux to Los Angeles, Singapore, Paris, New York, London and Hong Kong. Only one — the fifth, in New York — was devoted entirely to the Reverso, with eight watches spanning 1931 to 1937. Every other capsule mixed Reversos in among the other model lines; this page collects all of them, grouped by capsule. Only the fourth capsule (Paris) had no Reverso in its offering, as it was dedicated to the Duoplan model. We will add other Reversos as they are offered in the upcoming capsules around the world.
Sources: Jaeger-LeCoultre — The Collectibles · JLC Press — Fifth Capsule (New York) · JLC Press — Sixth Capsule (London) · Jaeger-LeCoultre — Reverso Platinum Number One (Hong Kong) · Jaeger-LeCoultre — Reverso Platinum Number Two (Hong Kong) · Jaeger-LeCoultre — Reverso 1931 Cordonnet (Hong Kong) · JLC Press — Third Capsule (Singapore) · Fratello — Sixth Capsule · Fratello — eight curated Reversos (NY) · aBlogtoWatch — New York · Worn & Wound — inside the capsule · Watch Collecting Lifestyle — New York · Hodinkee — Second Capsule (LA) · Hodinkee — First Capsule (Vallée de Joux)
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A Staybrite steel example from 1933 — 90 years old at the time of sale — with a lacquered toffee-brown dial still perfectly intact. Colour on a Reverso dial was a deliberate provocation in its day: LeCoultre offered blue, red and brown dials on request even as the rest of the industry stayed with traditional silver, marketing black and colour alike as "the dial of the future." This particular dial is signed "Jaeger Fab Suisse." Powered by the rectangular manual-winding LeCoultre calibre 410, on a new dark brown calfskin strap.
An uncommon vintage Reverso with a black dial and central seconds — far less common than the two-hand or subsidiary-seconds versions from the same decade, and rarer still with a luminous black dial. Dates to the 1930s and runs the calibre 437. Matthieu Sauret, the programme’s curator, has described pieces like this as a "travelling museum watch."
A men’s Reverso with the subsidiary-seconds layout at six o’clock that defined the model through the 1930s, shown alongside the ladies’ 1934 piece below as the capsule’s two Reverso entries in a ten-watch set that otherwise spanned the Duoplan, Powermatic and Memovox lines.
A ladies’ Reverso from 1934 with a rare, eye-catching chocolate dial in a steel case — one of three women’s pieces in the Singapore capsule, alongside a Duoplan Coulissante and an avant-garde Calibre 101 bracelet watch.
Described at launch as “the dial of the future” — black was radical in 1931, when silver dominated. Railway minute track and trapezoidal indexes, both of which directly informed today’s Reverso Tribute aesthetic.
Runs the calibre 410, the first movement JLC developed specifically for the Reverso, with small seconds at six. The two-tone case was a practical idea as much as an aesthetic one: gold combined with harder metal made a watch more robust than solid gold while staying elegant.
The manufacture’s fourth in-house Reverso movement. Its black dial carries the name Jaeger-LeCoultre for the first time — marking the 1937 merger of the two houses, and dating the watch precisely to that year.
A white gold cradle with yellow gold lugs and case. Its dial replaces the minute track with corner brackets at each of the four corners — a detail carried straight into today’s Reverso One collection.
Heat-blued hands and a rare double signature on the dial — evidence of limited deliveries to selected retailers whose own names appeared alongside the manufacture’s. On a blue strap.
The cord-strap Reverso — the ancestor of the modern Reverso One Cordonnet, worn on a slim silk cord in keeping with 1930s fashion.
The women’s counterpart to the black-dialled 1931 piece above — the same radical break from the era’s silver dials, scaled down to the smaller 1931 Dame case with plain baton markers and no minute track.
A variant of the black-dial 1931 Dame with Arabic numerals in place of plain batons — the eighth piece of the New York capsule, completing the set at five women’s watches to three men’s.
The bold black dial with railroad minute track and elongated trapezoidal indexes, fitted with the Tavannes calibre 063 — a pragmatic early solution before Jaeger-LeCoultre began developing its own shaped movements in 1933. On a hand-crafted black calfskin strap.
Cased in steel and powered by the Tavannes calibre 051, showing how quickly the model adapted for different wearers: the men’s minute track gives way to bracket-like corner markers and refined Art Deco corners with trapezoidal indexes — details echoed today in the Reverso One collection. Black calfskin strap.
Steel-cased and running the manufacture calibre 411, its central seconds display marks five-second intervals aligned with elongated hour markers — designed for taking a pulse at a glance. The practicality earned it a lasting nickname among the doctors who wore it: the "Doctor’s Reverso." Black calfskin strap.
Steel paired with 18K yellow gold, its case stamped with the eagle-head hallmark for French gold. Runs the manufacture calibre 438 with small seconds at six — a configuration introduced in 1933 that became one of the defining signatures of early Reverso design. Light-brown calfskin strap with cream stitching.
A pivotal chapter in the Reverso’s survival: when the post-war era and the quartz crisis turned taste toward purely functional watches, Giorgio Corvo bought the maison’s final 200 unused Reverso cases in 1972 and fitted them with the mechanical calibre 840. Said to have sold out within a month to Italian clients, the Corvo proved demand for the design had never really gone away — and helped pave the way for its 1990s revival. Silver dial, black calfskin strap.
A product of the 1990s complication revival, when Jaeger-LeCoultre began fitting the Reverso with sapphire display backs to show off its new generation of complication calibres. The manual-winding calibre 823 (first developed in 1999) drives a black dial tracking the sun through a rotating 24-hour disc, with a moon-phase at six and a power reserve at eleven, framed by a railway track and Arabic numerals. Paired with a black Cordovan strap by Casa Fagliano, the Argentinian polo bootmaker.
The sapphire caseback’s other consequence: skeletonisation, first introduced to the line in 1995. This 2003 example pairs a hand-decorated, skeletonised calibre 822 — blued screws, hand-engraved bridges in a barleycorn motif — with a salmon-toned solid silver dial combining hand-guilloché patterns with vertical brushing, dauphine hands and trapezoidal indexes. Archival records suggest no more than ten were made a month. Black Cordovan strap by Casa Fagliano.
A second 1931 Cordonnet, after the one in the New York capsule. Numerals in place of baton markers, and small corner brackets in place of the minute track, show how quickly the first Reverso was adapted for women. Steel case, with the Tavannes calibre T051 that powered the Reverso in its first year while LeCoultre & Cie developed shaped movements of its own.
One of two platinum Reversos introduced at the turn of the century, each limited to 500 pieces, after the 1990s had brought a new generation of complicated Reverso calibres behind sapphire case backs. Number One shows its movement: the calibre 849R-SQ, skeletonised and adapted for the 42.2 mm case, with hand-engraved bridges and both sides of the barrel engraved, so the mainspring itself can be seen. The blue sapphire in the crown is picked up by blued hands and a blue Cordovan strap by Casa Fagliano.
The second of the platinum pair, and the quieter one from the front: a tone-on-tone grey dial with hand-painted numerals, the power reserve shown by a hand on the same axis as the hours and minutes, and the tourbillon glimpsed only through the small seconds. The show is kept for the back, where a mirror-polished bridge holds the turning cage; the hand-bevelled tourbillon bridge is hollowed and black-polished, a nod to Jaeger-LeCoultre’s first tourbillon of 1946. Blued hands, a blue Cordovan strap by Casa Fagliano and a white gold folding buckle.