Best Corum Watches: History, Top Models & Buying Guide

Most Swiss watch brands try to make a watch that looks like every other good watch, just a little nicer. Corum never did that. Since 1955, this small brand from La Chaux-de-Fonds has built watches shaped like coins, watches shaped like bridges, and watches with a bubble of glass so big it looks like a fishbowl on the wrist. Some of these ideas flopped. Some of them, like the Admiral and the Golden Bridge, became the reason serious collectors know the Corum name at all. Nearly seventy years later, the company is still run by watchmakers rather than a marketing department, and that shows in almost everything it makes.

Who Makes Corum Watches?

Corum is a small, independent Swiss watch brand based in La Chaux-de-Fonds, a watchmaking town in the Jura mountains near the French border. The company was founded in 1955 by René Bannwart, a watchmaker who had already worked at some of the biggest names in Swiss horology, and his uncle Gaston Ries, who had already run his own watchmaking workshop for about thirty years. Together they built a brand around one idea: watches did not need to look like everyone else’s watches.

That idea shaped everything Corum has done since. Instead of playing it safe with round cases and plain dials, Corum leaned into strange shapes, unusual materials, and watches that doubled as conversation pieces. It is a much smaller company than giants like Rolex or Omega, producing far fewer watches per year, and it does not try to compete with them on volume. It competes on originality instead, and it develops several of its own movements in-house rather than only buying them from outside suppliers, which is unusual for a brand of its size.

The Story Behind the Corum Name

Corum comes from the Latin word “quorum,” which means the minimum number of people who need to be present to make a decision official. René Bannwart liked the meaning behind the word, since the whole company started with just two people, him and his uncle, and simplified the spelling to make it easier to say and remember.

The brand’s logo, a key pointing up toward the sky, reflects that same spirit. Corum has always described it as a symbol of mystery and discovery, standing for the idea that the company is always searching for a new way to build a watch rather than repeating an old one.

The History of Corum Watches

Corum’s first watches reached stores in 1956, a year after the company was founded. Within a couple of years, Corum had already released the Chapeau Chinois, nicknamed the “Chinese Hat” for its cone-shaped bezel, which helped put the young brand on the map as something genuinely different. But the real breakthroughs came over the next three decades, through three watches that still define Corum today: the Admiral’s Cup, the Coin Watch, and the Golden Bridge.

That founding idea, that a watch did not need to look like anyone else’s, explains almost every strange, memorable design the brand has released since 1955.

The Admiral’s Cup: Corum’s Most Famous Watch

Corum launched the Admiral’s Cup in 1960, and it remains the brand’s signature model today. The watch takes its name from a real sailing competition, the Admiral’s Cup regatta, which had started just three years earlier in 1957 and quickly became one of the most prestigious events in offshore yacht racing. The most recognizable feature is the case itself: a twelve-sided, or dodecagonal, bezel decorated with small nautical signal flags at each hour marker, giving the dial a nautical, sporty look no other watch really copies.

The original 1960 Admiral’s Cup was also notable for being one of the first square-shaped watches that was actually water resistant, which was a real technical challenge at the time, since square cases are harder to seal than round ones. Over the decades the collection grew into full dive watches, chronographs, and even tourbillon models, all while keeping the twelve-sided bezel. Corum eventually dropped the word “Cup” from the name, and the collection sold today is simply called the Admiral.

The Golden Bridge and the Wider “Bridges” Family

In 1980, an independent watchmaker named Vincent Calabrese brought Corum an idea he had developed: a movement built in a straight line instead of the usual round shape. Corum’s watchmakers saw the potential immediately, acquired the concept, and built an entire watch around it, the Golden Bridge. The result looks unlike almost anything else in watchmaking. The movement sits fully exposed inside a clear, rectangular case, with the gear train arranged like the trusses of a bridge, which means every visible part has to be finished beautifully since there is nowhere to hide a rough edge.

The Golden Bridge was successful enough that Corum built an entire family of watches around the same linear idea. In 2009, the brand introduced the Ti-Bridge, its second fully in-house movement after the original Golden Bridge caliber, using the CO 007 movement housed in a titanium tonneau case. Corum later pushed the concept even further with limited-edition “Lab” watches that placed a similar exposed, straight-line movement into bold, barrel-shaped titanium cases. More than four decades after the original, it remains one of the most recognizable skeleton watches in the industry.

The Coin Watch: A Real Gold Coin Worn as a Watch

In 1964, Corum tried something almost nobody else had: they took a genuine United States $20 gold coin, known as a Double Eagle, split it carefully along its edge, fit an ultra-thin Swiss movement inside, and sealed it back together so it still looked like an ordinary coin from the outside, using the coin’s head as the dial and its tail as the caseback. Modifying US currency domestically carries legal restrictions, so Corum reportedly carried out the entire conversion in Switzerland before exporting the finished watches, a detail that added to the model’s legend.

The Coin Watch went on to be worn by six consecutive sitting US presidents: Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, along with cultural figures like Andy Warhol. Corum still produces coin-based watches today under its Heritage Coin collection, sometimes using American Eagle coins or coins tied to other countries, continuing an idea that was unusual sixty years ago and remains just as unusual now.

Corum’s Ownership History

Corum has changed hands several times, and its ownership history says a lot about how the brand has evolved.

• 1955 to 2000: Founded and run by René Bannwart and the Bannwart family.
• 2000: American entrepreneur Severin Wunderman bought the company and became its new chairman. Under his ownership, Corum launched the Bubble watch in 2000, a model built around an oversized domed sapphire crystal that magnifies the dial underneath it. In 2005, Wunderman brought in Antonio Calce to help lead the brand, and the years that followed saw a strong period of growth for Corum.
• 2008: Severin Wunderman passed away, and his son Michael Wunderman took over leadership, with Wunderman’s friend Serge Weinberg joining as chairman of the board.
• 2010: Founder René Bannwart died at age 95, closing out the era of direct family involvement that had started the company fifty-five years earlier.
• 2013: The company was sold to the Hong Kong-based China Haidian Holdings Limited, later renamed Citychamp Watch & Jewellery Group, which also owns the Swiss brand Eterna. Antonio Calce left the company the following year.
• 2025: In a management buyout completed on May 5, 2025, Corum’s own leadership team, led by CEO Haso Mehmedovic, who had started at the company as a watchmaker back in 2011, purchased the company back. Corum is now once again fully under Swiss management, after twelve years of Chinese ownership.

Corum spent over a decade owned by a Hong Kong-listed holding company, and as of 2025 it is independently run by the same watchmakers who worked their way up inside the brand.

The Best Corum Watch Collections

Corum currently builds around four main families, and each one does something a little different.

Collection	What Makes It Different	Best For
Admiral	Twelve-sided bezel with nautical flags, sporty and modern	Everyday wear with a distinct look
Golden Bridge / Bridges	Exposed straight-line movement, either in a classic tonneau case or bold titanium cases	Collectors who want visible mechanics
Bubble	Oversized domed sapphire crystal	Fun, playful, statement pieces
Heritage Coin	Real gold or silver coin used as the watch case	Collectors interested in history

Admiral

The Admiral is Corum’s most wearable and most produced collection today. Modern versions come in a 42mm case, available in stainless steel, ceramic, or gold, and some recent models feature dials cut from real meteorite, a material Corum first used back in 1986. Steel is the entry point into the collection, while ceramic and gold bezel versions sit toward the top.

Golden Bridge and the Bridges Family

The Golden Bridge sits at the high end of Corum’s lineup, and it is the model most horology fans associate with the brand’s engineering side. Because the movement itself is the visible design, every version requires the kind of hand-finishing usually reserved for far more expensive haute horlogerie brands. Today it comes in yellow, white, and rose gold, in titanium, and even in fully transparent sapphire crystal cases, and its cousins in the wider Bridges family, like the titanium Ti-Bridge, apply the same exposed-movement idea to bolder, sportier cases.

Bubble

The Bubble is Corum’s most playful watch, built around a dramatically curved sapphire crystal that distorts and magnifies the dial beneath it. It launched in 2000, was discontinued for a few years starting in 2010, and returned in 2015 with a larger 47mm case. Corum now uses it mainly for limited-edition designs, sometimes made with artists or tied to specific themes like the Chinese zodiac, with individual editions often capped at 88 pieces.

Heritage Coin

The Heritage Coin collection continues the idea from 1964: real gold or silver coins hollowed out and fitted with a working watch movement, with the coin’s original design preserved on both the dial and caseback. It is a niche collection compared to the Admiral, but it remains one of the most unusual products any watch brand still makes, and its presidential history gives it a story that few other watches can match.

Does Corum Make Its Own Movements?

Corum does, and that is unusual for a brand its size. A movement is the mechanical engine inside a watch, the collection of gears and springs that actually keeps time, and most small watch brands buy a ready-made movement from a specialist supplier and build their case and dial around it. Corum does that for some of its watches, but it also designs and builds several movements entirely in-house, meaning its own engineers created them from scratch rather than buying an off-the-shelf design.

The clearest examples are the calibers built for Corum’s own signature shapes. The original Golden Bridge caliber was designed specifically for its straight-line case back in 1980, and the CO 007 that powers the Ti-Bridge, introduced in 2009, was Corum’s second fully in-house movement, built to fit that watch’s titanium tonneau case exactly. The Admiral’s CO 395 and the Lab collection’s CO 410 are more recent in-house calibers as well. Building a movement from scratch takes far more time and money than buying one, so the fact that a brand this size does it repeatedly says something about how seriously Corum takes the mechanics behind its unusual designs.

How Much Do Corum Watches Cost?

Corum watches span a wide price range depending on the collection and materials used.

• Admiral (steel, 42mm automatic): Generally in the low thousands of dollars, with ceramic versions running higher and solid gold versions reaching into the five figures.
• Golden Bridge: New models generally start in the five figures and can climb well past $40,000 for gold, diamond-set, or limited editions; older, simpler vintage examples sometimes sell for less on the secondary market.
• Bubble: Limited editions have launched around CHF 6,900, while complicated versions with tourbillons have sold for well over $70,000.
• Heritage Coin: Prices vary depending on the coin used and whether it is gold or silver, with silver dollar versions typically costing less than gold Double Eagle models.

Because Corum makes so many limited editions and material variations, exact prices change often, and current pricing for a specific model is best confirmed with an authorized Corum retailer rather than older listings.

Is Corum a Good Investment?

Corum is not usually bought as an investment the way some Rolex or Patek Philippe models are. Corum makes far fewer watches than the biggest luxury brands, and its resale market is smaller and less predictable as a result.

That does not make Corum a poor choice. Vintage Golden Bridge and Coin Watch pieces from the 1970s and 1980s have developed a loyal collector following, partly because nothing else looks quite like them, and the Coin Watch’s presidential history gives certain examples real collector interest on its own. A Corum is better understood as a genuinely unusual piece of watchmaking history than as an asset expected to appreciate like a blue-chip brand.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Bottom Line

Corum has spent seventy years doing the opposite of what most Swiss watch brands do: instead of refining one safe formula, it kept building watches that looked like nothing else on the market. The Admiral gave it a sporty signature, the Golden Bridge and its Bridges family turned a visible movement into a design statement, and the Coin Watch turned real currency into a working timepiece worn by six US presidents. After more than a decade under Chinese ownership, Corum is once again run by its own people in Switzerland, which puts the brand’s future back in the hands of the watchmakers who understand why it got weird in the first place. That combination of odd design and serious mechanics is what has kept Corum’s name in circulation for seventy years, long after most similarly sized brands from 1955 have disappeared.