Totally agree. Back when I worked nights in a TV station, we were young, restless, and bored. It is possible to do the entire clock with nothing but a few LM324 quad opamps. Timebase oscillator, two 60-step integrators, one 12-step integrator, and three comparators. Large value polypropylene film capacitors were mil surplus.
A friend recently bought an old, large (maybe 6" wide) meter that happened to have scales with full scale ranges of 12 and 60! His intent is to do a clock that switches between minutes and hours on the single meter. It will be interesting to see how he indicates the hours versus minutes...