When doing a little study of the Fitch Patent dustproof case. I noticed that the nickel 1873 8 size ladies' watch was a vert early example.
Ladies watches in America started with the Waltham 1861 model that was available in Appleton Tracy and P. S. Bartlett grade. There is also one run listed in American Watch Co. grade (10 watches), but I have never seen one of those. In any case, they were all believe to be gilt finished.
The American Watch Co. grade 1868 model was the first Waltham nickel finished watch, but United States watch Co. Marion may have beaten them to market. Howard also produced some early nickel finish watches but those were nickel plated brass I believe.
The next ladies watch at Waltham was the 1865 model that was not brought to market until 1866.
The database tool at https://nawccinfo.nawcc.org allows one to specify attributes of the watches in the database to search for them. In the case of nickel watches, the early production where the model was primarily gilt, has the nickel plate included as a comment in the ledgers and in the database.
The questions you may ask of the database use the "'%" character as a wild card so you can find nickel in a comment that contains other words %nick% in the comment field will work. For numbers such as dates, sizes, or jewel counts you may put the = character in front of the number and also use the < or > character for larger or smaller.
Here is the form that will find all of the runs of smaller watches with nickel plates and more than 14 jewels.
There are actually quite a few runs that match that request. It returns 282 production runs with a total production of 153,197. If you also put lad% in the "plate" field to request those with Ladies for the plate value, the list is much smaller with only 50 runs totalling 7,797 watches. The use of ladies as a plate design name was dropped around 1874 and 3/4 was used to describe the ladies watches and other 3/4 plate styles.
One of the interesting results of this search is that the 1865 model 10 size ladies watch, which was almost all gilt finish had some nickel watches near the end of that model as the 1873 model 8 size watch was being introduced. The first nickel ladies watch was the 1865 model in a run of 500 ATCo grade. The next was the 1873 model 8 size which started 6 months later, but took 4 years to complete all 500 watches. Then the run of P.S. Bartlett was started in 12/1873 and completed in 7/1874. The next run after that was Am'n grade and included the watch I showed in an earlier thread on Fitch's patent dustproof cases.
On a whim, I bought an 1865 model from the run shown above several years ago, without thinking too much about the fact that it was nickel. I will post some pictures of it here to give a little color to this post.
Ladies watches in America started with the Waltham 1861 model that was available in Appleton Tracy and P. S. Bartlett grade. There is also one run listed in American Watch Co. grade (10 watches), but I have never seen one of those. In any case, they were all believe to be gilt finished.
The American Watch Co. grade 1868 model was the first Waltham nickel finished watch, but United States watch Co. Marion may have beaten them to market. Howard also produced some early nickel finish watches but those were nickel plated brass I believe.
The next ladies watch at Waltham was the 1865 model that was not brought to market until 1866.
The database tool at https://nawccinfo.nawcc.org allows one to specify attributes of the watches in the database to search for them. In the case of nickel watches, the early production where the model was primarily gilt, has the nickel plate included as a comment in the ledgers and in the database.
The questions you may ask of the database use the "'%" character as a wild card so you can find nickel in a comment that contains other words %nick% in the comment field will work. For numbers such as dates, sizes, or jewel counts you may put the = character in front of the number and also use the < or > character for larger or smaller.
Here is the form that will find all of the runs of smaller watches with nickel plates and more than 14 jewels.
There are actually quite a few runs that match that request. It returns 282 production runs with a total production of 153,197. If you also put lad% in the "plate" field to request those with Ladies for the plate value, the list is much smaller with only 50 runs totalling 7,797 watches. The use of ladies as a plate design name was dropped around 1874 and 3/4 was used to describe the ladies watches and other 3/4 plate styles.
One of the interesting results of this search is that the 1865 model 10 size ladies watch, which was almost all gilt finish had some nickel watches near the end of that model as the 1873 model 8 size watch was being introduced. The first nickel ladies watch was the 1865 model in a run of 500 ATCo grade. The next was the 1873 model 8 size which started 6 months later, but took 4 years to complete all 500 watches. Then the run of P.S. Bartlett was started in 12/1873 and completed in 7/1874. The next run after that was Am'n grade and included the watch I showed in an earlier thread on Fitch's patent dustproof cases.
| Earliest | Latest | First | Last | Count | Model | Grade | Size | Jewels | Type | Style | Prov. | Date | Cmt | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6/1873 | 5/1874 | 702501 | 703000 | 500 | 1865 | ATCo | 10 | 4 pr | 15 | ladies | KW | MH | 1/2003 | nickel |
| 12/1873 | 3/1877 | 721001 | 721500 | 500 | 1873 | Amn | 8 | 4 pr | 15 | ladies | HC | MH | 1/2003 | ea92 \ sw \ |
| 12/1873 | 7/1874 | 733001 | 733600 | 600 | 1865 | PSB | 10 | 4 pr | 15 | ladies | KW | MH | 1/2003 | nickel |
| 10/1874 | 8/1875 | 733601 | 733910 | 310 | 1865 | ATCo | 10 | 4 pr | 15 | ladies | KW | MH | 1/2003 | nickel |
On a whim, I bought an 1865 model from the run shown above several years ago, without thinking too much about the fact that it was nickel. I will post some pictures of it here to give a little color to this post.
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