The short answer
Sometimes we can see clear evidence that a vintage watch case has been heavily refinished.
What we generally cannot do with a watch that is forty, fifty or sixty years old is categorically guarantee that its case has never been touched at any point in its life.
But there is another important part to this question: what do we actually mean by “polished”?
In the vintage-watch world, the word is often used to describe almost any cosmetic treatment to a case. What most collectors are really asking is whether metal has been removed and the original shape and definition of the case altered.
Those are not quite the same thing.
From the bench
A vintage case may have passed through the hands of several owners and watchmakers before it ever reaches us. Unless its entire history is documented, making an absolute claim that nobody has ever touched its surface is difficult.
What we can do is examine the case in front of us.
We look at the definition of the lugs, the edges and bevels, the transitions between surfaces and the overall proportions of the case. These can tell us considerably more than simply deciding whether a surface looks shiny.
The method used to treat a case matters.
A very light buff can clean and brighten an existing surface without attempting to reshape the case. Burnishing is different again. Rather than cutting the surface away with an abrasive, burnishing uses pressure to smooth and move the existing metal at the surface.
That is very different from sanding, lapping or grinding, which are abrasive processes and remove material.
Those techniques have legitimate uses when a case genuinely requires restoration, but removing material also creates the possibility of changing it. Repeated or aggressive refinishing can soften edges, round lugs, diminish bevels and gradually alter the proportions intended by the original case designer.
This is usually the concern hiding behind the question:
“Has the watch ever been polished?”
The customer isn't really asking whether a soft mop may have touched the case sometime during the last fifty years. They want to know whether its original shape has been cut away in pursuit of a cosmetically perfect finish.
At Past2Present, where appropriate, we may give a case a very light buff and burnish as part of its preparation. We aren't sanding away every scratch or grinding a case back in an attempt to make an old watch look new.
The objective is to present the watch sympathetically while preserving its original lines, proportions and character.
And sometimes the correct treatment is to leave the case alone.
What we recommend
Be cautious of absolute descriptions such as “never polished” unless there is sufficient history to support the claim.
Instead, look at the case itself.
Are the lugs still well defined? Are the original edges and transitions present? Do the proportions look right? Has significant material apparently been removed? Does the case still represent the design it started life with?
A watch showing scratches and wear isn't automatically unpolished, just as a clean watch isn't automatically heavily refinished.
If you're considering one of our watches and want to know about its case, ask us. We would rather explain what we can physically see and how we have treated it than make an unsupportable claim about decades of history we couldn't possibly have witnessed.
When someone asks whether a vintage watch has been polished, the important question isn't whether its surface has ever been touched. It's whether its original case has been taken away.