More antiques

Well, I bought some more orphans. I have a bunch of orphans actually. Due to the ‘gold for cash’ craze lately, people are selling off every heirloom they can find for scrap and that includes old mechanical watches. I really (honestly) don’t understand selling a 100 year old mechanical device simply for a few dollars of gold, but since people do, the people who buy the scrap strip the gold (usually the case) and throw away the insides (usually damaging them in the process). Every so often a group of movements (what the mechanical inside of the watch is called) comes up for sale and I just can let them go in the trash or be destroyed by some Steampunk fool who has only a passing visual appreciation for the engineering and skill that went into these marvels. My latest collections of orphans…

The majority of these movements were made before 1924, running a basic serial number shows that one of them was produced in 1887 according to factory records. That one watch is 128 years old and has been around long enough to pass through the turning of two century marks (1900 and 2000). That one watch was created in a world powered by steam power, 16 years before man’s flight at Kittyhawk in 1903, before Henry Ford invented the Model T, and only a handful of years after Edison patented the lightbulb. And someone sold it for scrap to be melted down.

That is a pic of the back plate of the movement, with the Elgin name and the serial number in case you wanted to look up the year for yourself. As far as decoration goes, this isn’t a very pretty or detailed backplate, not like the later Elgin watches, but it is beautiful in its simple way. All of the gears and engineering were made on a factory floor that looks primitive to today’s standards and each watch was fitted and assembled by hand. Here’s a pic of the Hampden watch factory floor from around 1867 or so.

Oh, and just in case anyone was wondering, I put a few winds on the mainspring and it runs very nicely for 128 years old. The later watches had more detail to the plates, with fancy engraved fonts for the lettering and engine turned embellishments. Some examples….

Elgin SN: 10398880 – Year 1903

Elgin SN:27650937 – Year 1924

Waltham SN:13844616 – Year 1890

     I don’t just save pocket watches either, I have several early women’s wrist watches, some of which I managed to save before the cases were scrapped. Overall, I have WAY more uncased movements than cased, but over time I plan on finding or making replacement cases. One of my favorite ‘saves’ from the women’s collection is this.

     It’s an early Benrus watch from the late 1920’s in the original case with the original crystal. I can’t tell if the crystal has aged to yellow over time, or if it came with a ‘fancy’ yellow crystal that has faded. I can’t see why anyone would put a yellow crystal over the face though, since the silver and enamel work is rich in color when seen without the yellow tint.

     All in all, this is probably enough for one post. In a follow up post I’ll go into more detail about preserving and fixing the watches and movements I have collected. Heck, if your lucky I might post a pic of my workbench and let you see whats in my drawers…..