The origins of the IWC Portugieser reference 325 have now been scholarly agreed upon, pinpointing it to the beginning of 1932, where two Portuguese watch importers by the name of Mr. Rodrigues and Mr. Teixeira commissioned IWC with a special request: an oversized wristwatch with a highly accurate movement. Luckily, IWC had already developed and implemented in their pocket watches their cal. 74, a manually wound savonette movement with subsidiary seconds and a 54-hour power reserve. Whilst it was pretty common back then to have a large diameter pocket watch, a 42mm wristwatch was definitely impressive.

However, the first Portugieser pieces were not delivered to Portugal until 1942, a delay most probably caused by times of War. Instead, these watches were first delivered to an Ukrainian retailer in 1939.

Originally the watch had no reference number, but some early examples bear the number 228 in the inside of the case back, and traces of a “Mod. 228” can be found in the IWC archives. However, soon the model was internally designated with the much better known reference 325, although this number never appeared on catalogues of the time.

According to IWC, only 304 examples reference 325 were produced with the caliber 74, with a total of 690 examples in total produced between 1939 and 1981. Over these 42 years, only 141 actual Portugieser watches were imported to Portugal. Though prized by collectors today because of their rarity, size, and history, IWC's reference 325 did not enjoy acclaim during its actual production.

The present early example features a very rare combination of black glossy dial, copper colored numerals and pink gold hands.