John F
07-11-2004, 02:49 AM
Hi Jeanine, and welcome to the NAWCC website. It's nice to have an heirloom like yours that has stayed in the family. And yes, you should be prepared to be hooked - this is a highly addictive pursuit. My wife calls it a disease, but happily it's not fatal.
As ladies' watches go, your g-grandmother's was a reasonably good one for its era - as a rule of thumb, ladies' watches were generally of lower grades and not as highly jeweled as men's watches (something about women of that era not needing the same level of quality in a timekeeper as men were have thought to have needed).
As for the case, up until the 1920s or so, most watches and cases were made by different companies entirely and sold separately. A customer would select a case and watch to their liking and the jeweler would put the two together. I do not recognize the "head" marking in the auction that you linked to, but it looks similar to one that I have seen on gold filled cases (an inner core of base metal sandwiched between two outer layers of gold). There were many more case makers than watch manufacturers, and in many cases (sorry for the pun!) not a lot of information about them has survived, particularly the smaller companies. Perhaps someone else may recognize this trademark.
As for the numbers, the "112858" is the case's serial number - if you look closely at the other parts of the case such as on the cuvette, along the inside rim, you should see the same numbers, or at least a segment of them (e.g., "2858") there as well. The other numbers you see were likely scratched there by a watchmaker when it was serviced. Each watchmaker had their own coding system that they used to identify when they worked on a customer's watch, what work they did, etc.
Hope this helps!
John
As ladies' watches go, your g-grandmother's was a reasonably good one for its era - as a rule of thumb, ladies' watches were generally of lower grades and not as highly jeweled as men's watches (something about women of that era not needing the same level of quality in a timekeeper as men were have thought to have needed).
As for the case, up until the 1920s or so, most watches and cases were made by different companies entirely and sold separately. A customer would select a case and watch to their liking and the jeweler would put the two together. I do not recognize the "head" marking in the auction that you linked to, but it looks similar to one that I have seen on gold filled cases (an inner core of base metal sandwiched between two outer layers of gold). There were many more case makers than watch manufacturers, and in many cases (sorry for the pun!) not a lot of information about them has survived, particularly the smaller companies. Perhaps someone else may recognize this trademark.
As for the numbers, the "112858" is the case's serial number - if you look closely at the other parts of the case such as on the cuvette, along the inside rim, you should see the same numbers, or at least a segment of them (e.g., "2858") there as well. The other numbers you see were likely scratched there by a watchmaker when it was serviced. Each watchmaker had their own coding system that they used to identify when they worked on a customer's watch, what work they did, etc.
Hope this helps!
John