Where is a good place to buy pocket watches ?
Anyone here use pocket watches?
What kind of feedback have you gotten on pocket watches?
Anyone here use pocket watches?
What kind of feedback have you gotten on pocket watches?
Very cool.My great-grandfather was a conductor on the Santa Fe railway, and I have his Waltham pocket watch that is branded with "Santa Fe" on the dial. A watchmaker and I spent an hour trying to figure out who actually made it, and we finally identified it by its bridge. It was a pretty interesting hour.
I have not read all the posts so if this is repetitive forgive me. I to have recently gotten interest in serious pocket watches. I had a couple of battery ones in grade and I received a modern mechanical Chinese movement when I graduated high school a few years back. I have started to wear my mechanical pocket watch and I wanted upgrade the watch and get a hunter case. So what I did was talk to my step grandfather who collects clocks and is decently knowledgeable about watches. Over the course of a couple hours we talked about what to look for and what to buy.
A synopsis of that conversation would be;
1. Buy a size 16 watch, size 18's are just a little too big
2. Buy vintage, I mentioned looking at Tissots and he asked vintage or modern. The answer was modern his reply was no one has made a better movement then the U.S. railroad watches.
3. Make sure that the watch does not have any rust/water damage.
4. Buy a U.S. railroad watch such as Illinios, Waltham, Hamilton or Elgin.
5. Avoid really old pocket watches, usually the ones with the fancy cases, a partial back plate to the movement, and low jewel count. The reason they don't keep time well and are difficult if not impossible to service.
6. Avoid a watch that has been serviced a lot, most people only took their watch to be serviced when it needed it. So if it has been serviced a lot it means the watch has issues.
7. Buy a watch that has a movement that can still be serviced e.g. Hamilton 992B.
8. Generally you will want something in the 20+ jewel (J) range though 16+ J is acceptable.
9. Go with a gold filled over a gold plated case, gold filled is more durable.
10. Avoid any watch with a chipped/cracked dial face, even small cracks.
Outside of that case and dial style is personal preference. What I decided to do was wait until local clock collector meet, which also includes a good number of pocket watches to go and look at them in person.