Greetings all. I've been waiting for this auction to end before posting anything about it.
We have all noticed, and probably discussed, the damage that the pre-scrapper ham-fisters do to watches, especially dials. But occasionally you'll see a pretty fine high-grade movement that has "chop marks" on it from plier-happy scrappers who just need that movement out as quickly as possible so they can move on to the next victim.
Being that this movement, a balance over center-wheel Series III Howard, is not very common, and was probably in a very nice gold case before the scrapper brutes got to it, I feel it deserves a spot on the Scrapper Hall of Shame.
In this particular instance, it was the movement plates that suffered the most abuse, as the dial was just slightly chipped. And it didn't look like it was down to the copper. Still, the harsh treatment brought to what I saw as a quite desirable movement for the Howard collector, down a couple of notches, if you'll forgive the expression. How much more it would have brought the seller if the plier-wielding warrior wasn't so careless, who knows? One laughable aspect is that the actual case screw was not far from where the pre-scrapper went in for the kill. I guess he didn't know how to get to the slotted screwdriver in his Ham-fister edition Leatherman. Not a total loss but a real shame.
Plier, plier, cases afire.
We have all noticed, and probably discussed, the damage that the pre-scrapper ham-fisters do to watches, especially dials. But occasionally you'll see a pretty fine high-grade movement that has "chop marks" on it from plier-happy scrappers who just need that movement out as quickly as possible so they can move on to the next victim.
Being that this movement, a balance over center-wheel Series III Howard, is not very common, and was probably in a very nice gold case before the scrapper brutes got to it, I feel it deserves a spot on the Scrapper Hall of Shame.
In this particular instance, it was the movement plates that suffered the most abuse, as the dial was just slightly chipped. And it didn't look like it was down to the copper. Still, the harsh treatment brought to what I saw as a quite desirable movement for the Howard collector, down a couple of notches, if you'll forgive the expression. How much more it would have brought the seller if the plier-wielding warrior wasn't so careless, who knows? One laughable aspect is that the actual case screw was not far from where the pre-scrapper went in for the kill. I guess he didn't know how to get to the slotted screwdriver in his Ham-fister edition Leatherman. Not a total loss but a real shame.
Plier, plier, cases afire.