Illinois White gold Pocket Watch

[Dr. Jon]

HI and Welcome to the NAWCC board. As it says at the top, we don't do $ values.

Here is bit of information you may find of value however.

Our watch is an Illinois model 405 made in 1923.

Yours was made in a lot of 2000. I checked that year and stopped totalling at 40,000. They made a lot of them,probably becuase they looked good and worked well.

You can look it up in Shugart's
Complete Price Guide to Watches available at good libraries and many books stores near you.

It is a very good watch and in good shape should give many years of good service.

If you wear it put a thong or chain on the "bow". This will help prevent dropping it and doing expensive to repair damage.

[John Cote]

Just to add to what Doc John said above, the grade 405 is actually the most popular and the highest production grade that Illinois ever made. The total production in this configuration (17 jewel open face) was just under 400,000 between 1911 and 1929.

It is a medium quality watch, but a great runner. These are not very collectable but they are nice watches. I know we can not talk much about value here, but from what I have said, I think you can guess that it is not going to be worth a fortune. It is a great heirloom though and yours looks to be in nice condition. Keep it clean and dry and in the family.

[Dr. Jon]

We generally need pictures to provide information but Illinois watches are well documented by serial numbers. There is a book on them published by Heart of America Press which has all the models and runs identified by serrial number.

There is not so much documentation of case serial number runs but Wadsworth made good cases and 14K cases are fairly common although all are valued for having survived the great depression and various run up's on gold pricing.

Illinos did some fairly fancy dials in that time period and they usually don't change the value much over a basic watch.

The hand etched number is a key to repair log put on there by a watch repairer to access their records.

It is a bridge model which is desirable but as John and I have written it is one of the most common Illinos 12 size watches.

I did look it up in Shugart and found the Shugart also listed the movement cost in the 1923-1924 catalog. It had a wholesale cost of $13.50 then. You can get current values for it by looking it up in Shugart. It lists the movement and cases seperately.

The variability is condiiton and there you would need expert opinion but the lowest vlue coresponds to a still very good looking watch.

Another way you can get an idea is to chack Ebay. Now you know the model you can use a search term like "Illinois 405 14K" Be sure to check completed sales; those represent what someone actually paid. Bear in mind too that auctions sometimes go crazy.

As John and I wrote before it was very popular becuase it looks good and runs well. Gold cased watches survive becuase they were highly regarded by their owners and descendents.