Fred’s Watch

[Briar Lee]

About twenty years ago at a local estate sale, I paid about fifty dollars for a Waltham 1883 Model Crescent Street gold filled hunter cased pocket watch engraved

Fred Hert
1892

I think I spend a hundred dollars for expert watchmaker John S Martin to overhaul it and get it running again. It keeps time to within a few seconds a week. Martin said the watch was 15 jewels, and gave a lifetime of service until the 1950s, when the last service marks were scratched on it by the watchmaker he trained under when he was a young man. The watch had been lovingly maintained and used for sixty years, or more.

The Hert family was the owner of a local bank until modern times, and I called a retired banker and asked if he knew Fred Hert. It developed Fred Hert was a great uncle of his that was a successful farmer, and we figured out he’d been born in 1871 and lived to be almost 90. The watch had been a coming of age present in 1892.

I felt bad, owning Fred’s watch I’d paid $150 total for. I offered it to the banker for what I had in the watch , and he said he had too many old family heirlooms as it was, and didn’t need to pay $150 for another.

If you have some incredibly beautiful and rare object use the ^%#+=%

Your heirs might not care, you know?

 

[Pipeoff]

Your post made me dig out my Dad’s beautiful silver watch, it still keeps good time after all the years. I wondered why my modern jeans have a watch pocket that will now be put to good use.

 

[CoffeeAndBourbon]

That is gorgeous!
I have my grandfathers slide rule. He was an electrical engineer and I plan on giving it my son who is just graduating as and EE.

 

[Briar Lee]

I own four genuine railroad service watches, open face 16 size, and three 18 size railroad grade Hunter cased watches like Fred’s 1883 Crescent Street. Plus I own a few more old pocket watches of high quality but not railroad grade.

When Fred's parents went to a local jeweler in 1892 to buy him his 21st birthday present, the Kipton Ohio train disaster was only a year past and it would take a few more years for the open face, 16 size, 21 jewel, double roller, lever set, stem wind railroad service watch to become standardized. But Fred had a top grade watch, certainly railroad grade in 1892.

The Origin of the Railroad Watch

Sales of quality Watch Display Domes by Bowers Watch and Clock Repair

www.bowerswatchandclockrepair.com

The Crescent Street grade Waltham was like a Flame Grain Kaywoodie. By 1892 watch standards it was very high grade.

It came in a Jas Boss (Keystone) high quality gold filled case.



Fred’s watch movement was one of a batch of 500. 15 jewels in 1892 was a fully jeweled watch, and it was adjusted and highly decorated.

 

[Briar Lee]

A word for those who do not own a classic American pocket watch and would like to buy one.

Years ago, every little town had a watchmaker and now watchmakers are scarce in bricks and mortar shops. Like pipe repair, watch repair is now mostly an online affair unless you are incredibly lucky enough to know where a real watchmaker is located near you. I’ve outlived a half dozen watchmakers and the last (and best) one I knew retired.

I own both my grandfather’s pocket watches, and one is a 16 size 15 jewel Elgin and the other a 16 size 17 jewel Elgin. I had both serviced decades ago and don’t carry them. They aren’t worth but maybe a hundred dollars each, if I sold them. If any part on them failed a watchmaker would either have to make a part or rob one from a junk movement. While accurate enough, neither are railroad chronometer service watches.

Here’s an 1897 Hamilton 935 in a worn out base metal case I paid almost nothing for at an auction and John Martin passed on service because he said it had been serviced and didn’t need anything.


New video by Van Adams - https://photos.app.goo.gl/PnRLjoj6gV5qRp3o9

But while that’s a nice early Hamilton movement it was placed in a nearly worthless base metal case many years ago. To make that Hamilton a nice watch, you’d have to buy a case like Fred Hert’s parents bought him and pay someone with the skills of John Martin to create what still, would never be a genuine railroad watch. And you’d have the price of a good Hamilton 992B in your watch by the time you finished.

American railroad watches, the real ones, the ones you want and collectors want, started being standardized in 1891 after the Kipton Rail Disaster. Ten years after that a railroad inspector approved watch was a 16 size, plain open face with Arabic numbers, 21 or better jewel, adjusted to all positions, temperature and ischronoism, and stem wind and lever set. And four railroad watches won out over the others, The Hamilton 992, the B W Raymond Elgin, the Vanguard Waltham, and the Bunn Special Illinois.

I own all four.

There isn’t much to say about quality differences or accuracy between them.

But overall the best one, the most accurate, and the easiest one to service is the Hamilton 992 B that came out in 1940 and was made until the moon landing in 1969. The reason is the 992B was the last railroad watch designed and there are still lots of NOS parts for them they seldom need.

Price varies by condition and case style, but about $250 will buy a nice, running Hamilton 992B. Double that for a perfect one recently serviced.



If you don’t own a pocket watch, buy the 992B.

Mine is as accurate as a quartz watch, and if I ever need to service it it’s worth servicing.

 

[sablebrush52]

About twenty years ago at a local estate sale, I paid about fifty dollars for a Waltham 1883 Model Crescent Street gold filled hunter cased pocket watch engraved

Fred Hert
1892

I think I spend a hundred dollars for expert watchmaker John S Martin to overhaul it and get it running again. It keeps time to within a few seconds a week. Martin said the watch was 15 jewels, and gave a lifetime of service until the 1950s, when the last service marks were scratched on it by the watchmaker he trained under when he was a young man. The watch had been lovingly maintained and used for sixty years, or more.

The Hert family was the owner of a local bank until modern times, and I called a retired banker and asked if he knew Fred Hert. It developed Fred Hert was a great uncle of his that was a successful farmer, and we figured out he’d been born in 1871 and lived to be almost 90. The watch had been a coming of age present in 1892.

I felt bad, owning Fred’s watch I’d paid $150 total for. I offered it to the banker for what I had in the watch , and he said he had too many old family heirlooms as it was, and didn’t need to pay $150 for another.

If you have some incredibly beautiful and rare object use the ^%#+=%

Your heirs might not care, you know?

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$150 all in is quite the bargain. 45 years ago we were getting better than $500 for a watch like this, fully restored.

 

[Briar Lee]

$150 all in is quite the bargain. 45 years ago we were getting better than $500 for a watch like this, fully restored.

Fred Hert’s parents grew up in a world where only the very wealthy had watches, all hand made one at a time by watchmakers.

Waltham started factory made high quality watches in 1857, for $100. By the time Fred turned 21 in 1892 Elgin and Waltham were both selling vast numbers of 7 jewel watches that if kept serviced could last many years. In a Siveroid case they cost $10.

But when they bought Fred his watch it was a top grade Crescent Street ($35) in a 25 year gold filled case ($15).

They spent $50 on Fred’s top of the line lifetime watch. To have upgraded to a solid gold case might have made it cost $75.

Today, if I had Fred’s watch serviced it might fetch $500 on eBay, as a high condition top grade pocket watch.

If the case had been 14K gold there would be about a thousand dollars scrap value of the gold, but as a solid gold watch it might be worth twice that.

Fred’s watch is high grade gold filled, or about 1/20 14 carat gold. It’s worth about $50 for scrap gold but over $100 as a nice gold filled watch case.

If serviced the movement might bring $100.


If Fred turned 21 today his parents might buy him a $1,500 iPhone.

Which will be worth what, in 130 years?.

 

[mso489]

Beautiful watches. Back in the previous centuries, clothing was designed to accommodate watches, especially with the three piece suit, vests, and watch pockets in trousers and such. Also, despite the urgency of tracking time on railroads and for navigation at sea, the pace of life accommodated fishing a watch out of your inner pocket on a protective chain.

Today, if you use a watch at all, it is usually preferable to have it on your wrist where it can be seen with a slight movement of your wrist, even if you are driving or otherwise preoccupied.

I have a family heirloom watch. My dad carried it in his business suit for years, although he finally retired it to a drawer. It is in a safe deposit box. I'd dread losing it or having it dashed onto the parking lot pavement. I'm having difficulty determining who the logical heir for such a fine piece would be. Several men would probably like having it for its value, but I don't know any who would carry such an instrument. It was my paternal grandfather's 21st birthday present from his mother, and is so engraved. He worked in the family real estate business, earned a law degree, and was a lifelong duck hunter.

The last time he went hunting, he stayed with the car while others went to the blind. They came back empty handed, and he met them at the car with a string of several ducks. A new broom sweeps cleanest, but an old broom knows where the dirt is, as an old retired colonel friend of mine once said.

 

[sablebrush52]

The jeweler that I worked for, while I was going to UCLA, employed a watchmaker, trained in Switzerland, who completely restored these old movements. If he couldn't find a suitable part he made it by hand, and everything he fixed stayed fixed, as long as the owner didn't abuse the watch. We had some beautiful old pieces and I always thought that they were the coolest and really wanted one. But at a princely salary of $2.10 an hour, such finery remained way out of reach.

 

[huntertrw]

Briar Lee:

Your Waltham is truly a beauty, and I was pleased to see that its chain is attached to the watch by a piece of leather. A kindly old jeweler who years ago restored my maternal grandfather's Elgin recommended the same thing, and I use that watch to this very day. It's a tangible link back to a man I never knew, but who, based upon his only child (my mother), I know I would have liked.

 

[Briar Lee]

My father died in the fall of 1971 of infection from swallowing a chicken bone he didn’t realize he’d swallowed. I had a decent watch and inherited his 1958 Hamilton Thin O Matic and his last Scotty dollar watch.

A man who owned a paid for dairy operation on 320 acres owned exactly one nice wristwatch.

The milk checks stopped when Mama sold the herd, and we braced ourselves for genteel poverty.

Instead Mama sold the 1971 alfalfa crop for more than she earned in a year as a school teacher. Plus she got all the 1971 field crops and a third of all the crops in 1972, and after she sold all the 1972 alfalfa crop by 1973 she was in need of tax deductions.

My father’s dairy cattle were tame as pet rabbits. We needed to replace at least a mile of fence. There was a giant of a man named Robert Bruce Mauzey people called Red Mauzey who lived in a field stone cabin in Spout Spring Hollow as a hired hand of the Widow Carlson, and Red built all the fences in our community.

Red’s father, I knew had been the last engineer on the train that serviced Humansville. And while Red had volunteered for service in Korea, two decades later he was a hopeless alcoholic who drove a twenty year old hundred dollar pickup. People said he’d been valedictorian of his high school class, he was so shell shocked after his service he lived on Social Security disability.

Mama made a bargain with Red she’d pay him two dollars an hour labor, and Red paid me a dollar an hour as his helper. She also stipulated if he ever even had liquor on his breath around me, he was fired.

Red’s parents had bought him a new gold filled Elgin B W Raymond Model 571 as a graduation present from Dunnegan High School in 1949. Building fence is severe work, too much even for a cheap dollar watch to last, so Red kept his 571 Elgin wrapped up in a handkerchief in the glove box of his old truck.

He had developed a marvelous sense of what time it was, and each weekday about noon he’d call off work and we’d head for his truck and I’d unwrap his watch, and wait until the sound of the Humansville noon whistle drifted four miles across the woods and prairies to us, exactly at twelve.

Then we’d drive to our home and wash up and eat Mama’s pies and fried chicken and other good eats, to the sound of country music from KWTO.

I grew five inches that summer I was fifteen and over twenty pounds of muscle.

The first day I was back at school some Baptist boy tormented me and shoved me and without thinking I clocked him as hard as I’d drive a fence post and sent him sprawling across the floor.

Mrs. Raines pretended not to see it, and I instantly felt sorry, but he after that left me alone, you know?

Red got in horrible shape from his boozing, wound up in a nursing home, and died in 1993 at the age of 62.

He’s buried in Plum Grove, and I never forget him, when I decorate all the Christians I’ve followed after.



Red’s graduation watch was by far, the most valuable thing he ever owned.

I suppose his sister got it, and her children have it now.

It was the very first really nice railroad watch I ever saw, and I have one now exactly like it.

I only wear mine when I have a Social Security Disability hearing.

Lest I forget, just how big those $60 a month survivor’s checks were in 1971 when I’d lost Daddy and $60 was more than a week’s labor in the summer sun swinging an 18 pound post maul.

I don’t win every Social Security case, but I’m invested down to the bottom of my soul in every one.

 

[Briar Lee]

I was wondering how many jeweled (not dollar watches) American made pocket watches were made, and there were over a hundred million.



It’s easy to say the modern wrist watch replaced the pocket watch, but the last high quality pocket watches sold in numbers were Swiss, that look like this:


That little parachute on the balance wheel is a shock absorbing system named Incabloc that no American maker ever adopted.

I could theoretically drop that Arnex three feet on a hardwood floor and it would bounce, and not break the balance staff.

That Swiss movement evolved into the 6497/8 pocket watch movement that’s been cloned in Asia and for $50 you can buy a decorated, highly accurate, modern watch that likely will last ten years in constant service and a lifetime of occasional use.



About $70 buys a 6498 clone with a GMT and day/night complication.



I own several Chinese watches with pocket watch movements and all are accurate to within a few seconds a day.

The design has been perfected for nearly a century. Every one of the parts is made on highly refined machines.

If I had to guess they’ll make those for yet another century, and then some.

 

[timelord]

I have a coupe of watches using Chinese pocket watch movements...

Chinese (Baltany) :



Russian (Buyalov Design 'Airship')




I'll also include this one here although it has a modern Russian Vostok movement. Why? It's re-issue of the first Russian wristwatch which was originally made with a (Soviet made) Hampden pocket watch movement. When the Hampden company went out of business - Great Depression - the Soviet Union bought the company's machinery and IP; a lot of Hampden employees also went to the USSR on one year contracts to help them get everything set up!



by the way, this thing is enormous: 50mm diameter!

More info about this interesting period in the Hampden history

About | Hampden Watches - https://www.hampdenwatches.com/about

 

[Briar Lee]

I used to know, but since there exactly 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, and 24 hours in one day every one of over one hundred million American pocket watches with an 18,000 beats per hour train had to have exactly the same tooth count on the second, minute, and hour wheels. They all required 7 jewels to really function well and no less an expert than Web Ball claimed every jewel after 17 was just trouble waiting to happen.

The center hour hand turns so slowly the extra two jewels required for it aren’t really necessary either.

Elgin, Waltham, Hampden, Illinois, Hamilton and South Bend made essentially the same product as a Howard, or a New Era by New York Watch Company.

Here’s an early Crescent Watch Case Company 7 jewel New Era by New York Watch Company. I bought it at an auction and believe it’s new old stock, from maybe 1910.

New video by Van Adams - https://photos.app.goo.gl/BKpjPFfb6jczeMeT8




By the time this was made Crescent Watch Case owned Howard.

That means they made everything from a fake 23 jewel Trainman’s Special to the top of the line Howard.

The pocket watch became sort of a commodity, and today the Chinese and Russian versions are even more so.New video by Van Adams - https://photos.app.goo.gl/BKpjPFfb6jczeMeT8

 

[didimauw]

Those are wonderful watches BriarLee. When I worked as a conductor for the railroad, they still required a watch. We didn't have to set them to any standards, and there were no serious requirements. Right before I quit they started adding computers to the engines, which had a clock, and automatic speed alarms.

They are trying to get rid of conductors all together. However, if they knew how many engineers fell asleep behind the controls, they'd change their mind. I once took a train from Fond DU Lac WI, down to Chicago. Typically a 12 hour ride, with other train traffic.

As soon as we got our train together and left the FDL yard, the engineer was out cold. Part of my job and training was to know every single crossing and speed limits. I luckily only had to wake him for 2 whistle crossings, but the rest of the 40 or so, he would wake up just in time. He kept the train at about 35 MPH for most of the way, to prevent any speeding in dangerous areas. He slept the entire way to Chicago. He was a damn amazing engineer, however an engineer is only as good as his conductor.

 

[Briar Lee]

I dug out my 1950 Elgin 571 and by far, it’s the highest condition of my four railroad service watches.

About twenty years ago I was in the little town of Clinton and went to a jewelry store to buy my son a watch he wanted, some gadgety Casio. I love to talk and the jeweler was a watchmaker, trained by the Army in WW2.

He referred me to Walmart for the latest in atomic powered solar watches, but asked if I liked old pocket watches and indeed I did.

He took out from a drawer a stone perfect Elgin 571 and showed me where it had one service mark, his, and otherwise was like new.

He said he was turning the shop over to his daughter and he would do watch work as long as he was able.

He looked in his records and said I allowed $300 for it on a trade, and for $300 it’s yours.

Before I left he checked the rate on his timer and declared it good.

If those watches could talk, I’d like to know why somebody bought a brand new $100 Elgin railroad watch in 1950, and left it sleep in a drawer.

 

[Briar Lee]

Another old jeweler I knew that was trained by the army in WW2 told me something I’ve never forgotten about old watches.

In the thirties a metal called Elvinar (or substitutes) began wide use for use in watches that didn’t expand or contract with temperature change, and the makers began using pressed jewels with absolute precision, and other improvements in manufacturing high grade watches took the remaining high grade railroad watches to accuracy levels of about a second per day.

They were already accurate to about two or three seconds a day.

What he said was, the average watch customer is more than happy with a watch that is precise to within two minutes a week. All the rest of that accuracy is kind of wasted.

Here’s a Chinese clone movement of a 6486/7, that costs $27. In my experience all these are accurate to less than thirty seconds a week, worn as a wrist watch.



The basic, bare minimum to clean, oil, and adjust a pocket watch movement has been over $27 all my adult life.

Replacing a modern 6486/7 movement is much cheaper than a cleaning, oiling and adjusting the one in your watch.