1903 Waltham

[Nancy Mac]

I have a 1903 Waltham pocket watch - serial # 12142795.
Coin Silver case. Beautifully engraved with gold insets. Case # is 2375 and company is CWC&Co. with a hallmark of a quarter moon with a star above. I wear it on a silver chain as a pendent watch. More of a ladies watch because of floral engravings. Stem wind. Working order - keeps great time.

I'm just trying to find out whether the case is the one that came with the original watch and if it is of any great value. It is of sentimental value to me.

[Nancy Mac]

I have a 1903 Waltham pocket watch - serial # 12142795.
Coin Silver case. Beautifully engraved with gold insets. Case # is 2375 and company is CWC&Co. with a hallmark of a quarter moon with a star above. I wear it on a silver chain as a pendent watch. More of a ladies watch because of floral engravings. Stem wind. Working order - keeps great time.

I'm just trying to find out whether the case is the one that came with the original watch and if it is of any great value. It is of sentimental value to me.

[Kent]

Hi Nancy Mac:

Welcome to the NAWCC Pocket Watch Message Board!

According to "History of the American Watch Case," Warren H. Niebling, Whitmore Publishing, Philadelphia, PA, 1971 (available on loan by mail to members from the NAWCC Library & Research Center (http://www.nawcc.org/Library/library.htm)):

From page 48:
The Chicago Watch Case Co. started in Chicago in 1882, manufacturing gold cases, mostly 10K. Around 1885, the firm moved to Brooklyn, NY, where, after a reorganization, it was renamed as the Crescent Watch Case Co. All production was sold through the Waltham Co. agents, Robbins & Appleton. The distinctive Crescent Watch Case Co. trade mark can be seen in a old ref::1901 Crescent Ad.

In 1904 the Crescent Watch Case Co. was merged with the Philadelphia Watch Case Co., Bates and Bacon and the Keystone Watch Case Co.

From page 7:
"... After a series of mergers in 1904 the name became the Keystone Watch Case Co., Riverside, N.J."

Regardless of the company’s name, the cases continued to be stamped with the previous, well-known trade names.

Prior to the 1904 merger that resulted in the Crescent Watch Case Co. becoming part of the Keystone Watch Case Co., Crescent had bought up several other watch case companies that had made silver cases (among others), thus they old ref::Acquired A Silver Case Business and expanded their capacity.

To answer the question "... how can you tell if a case and or dial are the original ones that came with the movement?"

The answer is that, except in rare instances where the dial or case was marked with the movement serial number when made, or when there are very early sales or repair records that show the case and movement serial numbers, you can't really tell if a dial or case are original.

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 (the "works") 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.

In the instances where the movements were joined to the cases at the jewelry shop, all you can really do is study case ads and say is that the appearance of the case is contemporary to that of the movement (as determined by the movement serial number vs. date tables) and it is probably original, or not.

There are a number of case ads that can be viewed online at: www.elginwatches.org/scans/misc_ads/m_index.html
To view, go to the Elgin Watch Collectors Site Home Page at elginwatches.com, then copy and paste the address in your browser's address bar and click on 'Go'.

If there are other movement screw marks in the case rim, then you can know that it held another watch at one time. If not, the case may be original to the movement, or perhaps it held a watch of the same make and model as the one that's in it now.

As it says in the upper left-hand corner of this page, we don’t provide timepiece values. However, your watch is a 0-size (small), ladies watch and a silver case, even one inlaid with gold, especially in the small size, isn't particularly valuable.

[Nancy Mac]

Thanks for all that terrific information Kent. I appreciate it. And yes, looking at the sites you gave, the "hallmark" of the quarter moon and star are exact. There are no movement screw marks that I can see and so I expect that the case and watch are original.

Nancy
in British Columbia