Dueber Special Elgin P.W.

[Steven Mercer]

Welcome to the world o pocket wathes.

One of our resident experts on Elgins has a great web site,
http://www.midwestcs.com/elgin/databases/index.html

Wayne Schlitt has put a lot of work and effort into his site. Not only can you look up your watches serial number, but there is a whole lot of information on Elgins.

Enjoy.

Steve

[Kent]

Jill:

You'll have to open the inner back to see the watch movement (the "works"). Its the serial number off of the movement that is important.

Only a small percentage of American watches (or Swiss watches for the North American market) were cased at the factories prior to the mid-1920's. Most watch companies just made movements in industry standard sizes. The case companies made cases in those same sizes. The practice at that time was to go to a jeweler, select the quality of the movement and then pick out the desired style and quality of case. The jeweler would then fit the movement to the case in a matter of moments.

Or, watches were sold by mail-order. Large outfits such as Sears, Roebuck & Co., Montgomery Ward, or T. Eaton (in Canada), would offer the movements in a variety of cases of different design and quality in their catalogs. Smaller mail-order retailers would case the watches, typically in a 20-year gold filled case and offer it only that way, with the buyer not having a choice of cases.

You can find a few examples of Dueber Case Ads (http://www.midwestcs.com/elgin/scans/misc_ads/1904/m_dueber_marks.html) on Wayne Schlitt's Elgin website. Use the search function to find the other Dueber ads.

Kent :smile: