The IWC Portugieser was born in 1939 from an unusual request: two Portuguese merchants, often recorded as Rodrigues and Teixeira, asked IWC Schaffhausen for a wristwatch with the precision of a marine chronometer. To meet that standard, IWC fitted a large, hand-wound pocket-watch movement (caliber 74, later 98) into a wristwatch case roughly 43mm across. At a time when most wristwatches were under 35mm, this was extraordinarily large, and the design that resulted, a clean dial with applied Arabic numerals, a railway-track minute ring, slender leaf hands and a small-seconds sub-dial, defined the Portugieser look that survives to this day.
The original carried the case designation Mod. 228, and was later given the now-famous reference 325, even though it never appeared in an IWC catalog. It remained a rarity for decades; IWC archives confirm only around 690 examples of the 325 were sold between 1939 and the early 1980s. The watch quietly waited for the world to catch up to its proportions.
The modern revival came in 1993, when IWC reissued a time-only Jubilee Portugieser (reference 5441) for the brand's 125th anniversary. Momentum built quickly: the 1995 Portugieser Rattrapante (3712), a split-seconds chronograph engineered by Richard Habring, and the 2003 Portugieser Perpetual Calendar (5021), built around Kurt Klaus's perpetual mechanism with a patented double-hemisphere moon-phase display. The Portugieser Automatic 7-Day (IW5001, 2004) showcased IWC's signature Pellaton automatic winding and a seven-day power reserve, later updated as the IW5007 with the caliber 52010 in 2015.
The collection's most popular chapter is the chronograph. The reference 3714, launched in 1998, distilled the Portugieser into a symmetrical bicompax dial with no date window, applied numerals and leaf hands; for over two decades it ran on a heavily modified Valjoux-based movement. In 2020 IWC introduced the reference 3716, preserving the iconic look while finally fitting the in-house column-wheel caliber 69355 and a display caseback. The sporty Portugieser Yacht Club Chronograph (IW390) arrived in 2010 with an in-house flyback movement. In 2015 IWC officially standardized the German name Portugieser across all markets. Collectors are drawn to the line for its clean, instantly recognizable dial, its rich history, and its blend of dress elegance with serious horology.
Bedesten Watches has sold authentic IWC Portugieser watches in Istanbul since 1999. From vintage references to modern Automatic 7-Day and Chronograph models, our family-run, pre-owned specialists in Suadiye can source, appraise and verify your Portugieser. Visit our Suadiye store in Kadikoy or message us on WhatsApp +90 532 327 88 26 for current stock and pricing in TRY, USD or EUR.