majestic / Sim & Co

[Dave Stott]

Just recently, my dad passed along a gold pocket watch

it is an slim open face, 14Kt gold case pocket watch. my local watchmaker tells me the movement is swiss. Ballpark for manufacture is 1920's, based upon the dial face numbers and style of monogram.

information on the case side of the movement reads:
majesctic w. corp
Swiss
15 jewels
three adjustments
57439

The dial side of the movement reads:
Majestic
A. Wittnauer Co.
263

The face of the pocket watch reads:
Sim & Co.

is this an occurance of re-casing?

Or am I looking at a Swiss movement in a Majestic case, which was sold by either A. Wittnauer or Sim & co.??

anyone care to fathom a guess ?? possible value??

Thanks

Dave Stott

[Dave Stott]

Just recently, my dad passed along a gold pocket watch

it is an slim open face, 14Kt gold case pocket watch. my local watchmaker tells me the movement is swiss. Ballpark for manufacture is 1920's, based upon the dial face numbers and style of monogram.

information on the case side of the movement reads:
majesctic w. corp
Swiss
15 jewels
three adjustments
57439

The dial side of the movement reads:
Majestic
A. Wittnauer Co.
263

The face of the pocket watch reads:
Sim & Co.

is this an occurance of re-casing?

Or am I looking at a Swiss movement in a Majestic case, which was sold by either A. Wittnauer or Sim & co.??

anyone care to fathom a guess ?? possible value??

Thanks

Dave Stott

[Zack Bortolot]

Unfortunately I can't answer your question on value due to message board rules. Your best bet would probably be to look at completed auctions on an auction website.

The watch you have sounds really nice. Majestic watches were manufactures by a company called MST, which was a large manufacturer of movements in Switzerland. It appears that the Majestic line was their top model range, and seem to have been used by a lot of high end jewelers for their private label watches and by other high end watch companies. Notably, a lot of Rolex and Jules Jurgensen pocket watches from around the 1900s - 1930s use Majestic movements.

Many of the higher end models have snail-type regulators, a feature these watches share with movements from better known companies including Agassiz, Patek Philippe, D. Gruen, and Omega.

A. Wittnaur was an importer of high end watches for the North American market, most notably Agassiz watches. Having his name on the watch does not indicate a problem, but instead makes the watch more interesting from a collector's standpoint.

I hope this helps!

Zack

[Dave Stott]

thanks for the info on Majestic... I will try to do some digging on the history of Sim and Co.

My reasoning for asking about value was, I am trying to determine if I should be putting it on a rider on my home insurance policy or not.