An unexpected surprise!!!

Sorry this post is a bit long...

About a month ago I posted on here about some pocket watches that I'd picked up. They were in a varied lot that contained an Omega watch I was after. The pocket watches were just something that were there, didn't cost much and I was just going to put them on ebay. One of them was a Waltham Hunter that looked nice and I thought about keeping it but after I'd posted here I found a 7 Jewel watch wasn't worth servicing and the advice I was given was to look for some better models with more jewels and no issues.

After a lot of reading and having a slightly better idea about things, I decided to keep the old Waltham Hunter case, which was in beautiful condition and swap the 7 Jewel Traveler movement for a beautiful 17 Jewel Riverside movement. I know it might not be what purists like, but the watch is for me and the movements are within one year of each other so no big problem. The Riverside movement was only £55, the case was worthless because of the original movement so in the end I've a really nice watch for not much money!!! Here it is :

Fast forward to last week. I've got a Tudor Oyster Royal in for a service moment and thought a fun way of paying for it would be to pick and sell a few pocket watches... What could possibly go wrong!!!

I'd spotted a fairly decent lot that contained Waltham pocket watches that I'd been reading about and I decided to bid!!! All except one of them was running and they all looked to be in good condition and ready to be sold on individually. One of them had a pretty fancy case and was a 23 Jewel Vanguard model so I knew that would sell ok. The rest of them were pretty standard early 1900's Walthams which would all sell and hopefully give me a bit of profit to pay for the Tudor service. So I bid and won them for what I thought was a decent price.

Here is the Vanguard. it's a lever set model from 1937 that doesn't have any decoration like the early models, but is running very well and is really clean :

very nice!! lovely movement.

Now for the surprise!!!

One of the watches looked like a simple open faced model. Nothing fancy and not really interesting. It just has Waltham U.S.A on the dial and at first glance had a pretty normal movement. This is the front :



The auction did have a photo of the movement and when I looked I knew it was a bit different to what I'd expected to see but thought nothing more of it due to my lack of knowledge on these watches, plus I was more interested in the Vanguard!!!

Anyway, after winning the auction I decided to find out a bit more about the watch. The movement was marked Traveler so normally that would mean it was a 7 Jewel model. However this one had Screw-Set Jewels????? After a lot of searching I managed to find a few posts that mentioned they were pretty rare.

286,000 Travelers were produced in the first model type then a further 400,000 of the later model. Of these, a very small percentage contained 11 Jewels. I've read the figure is 4,500 in total were produced in the first batch, but I don't know how to find that information myself to see if it is correct or how many more runs, if any, came after that.

So although it's a pretty simple and plain movement, it sounds like it's not that common. This is what it looks like ticking away and keeping good time :



Here is the surprise!!!

The batch this one is from had the serial numbers running from 111,400,01 - 111,415,00
The picture from the auction was pretty poor so I could only make out 111xxxxxxxx After playing about with colours on my computer I could just make out the number was 111,xxx,00 So much to my surprise when I opened the back of the watch and checked the number it was 111,415,00 The last movement in the batch!!!!

I imagine this might make it quite collectable and possibly worth more than the Vanguard, so I'll be keeping this one and adding it to my slowly growing collection!!!

Thanks for reading and sorry for the long post!

Steve

Thanks! They should have used display backs on them!!!

Great story! Thanks for sharing. I’ve been interested in pocket watches but I don’t have a practical use for one. I’m in board shorts most of the time and wouldn’t have a spare pocket to keep it in.

Thanks for reading through it.. Sadly the weather in the UK is only really suitable for board shorts in the summer! The rest of the time I'm in jeans or work clothes for construction sites, so I've no use for one either. Maybe just have one and appreciate it for what it is. You'd be amazed how long you can sit there and enjoy looking and listening to it.

Thank you for sharing

No problem. Even though they're not as relevant today as they once were, I can now see why people enjoy collecting them. I only planned on having the one at the top of this post, but when I realised I'd picked one up with an interesting serial number, my collection doubled in size!!!

I've finally been able to find the production runs for the 11 Jewel Traveler movement above (Serial #11141500). I wasn't sure how many runs were produced and whether my movement was the last in one of the runs or the last ever produced. Eventually I stumbled across a page on http://nawccinfo.nawcc.org/ which had all the information I was looking for.

Data shows that four runs of 11 Jewel Traveler Grade movements were produced and the total number of them was 5,000. The final run was for 500 "Open Faced" movements, serial #11141001 - #11141500.

So I'm really happy to find out that the simple little movement I picked up last week turns out to be the last ever one of its type to be made!!!

Such a shame Omega doesn't have this type of information available...

Thanks, that's what I was thinking and hoping. Even though it it's just a plain movement, I was thinking about finding a salesmans sample case that has a display back to to show the movement and serial number. I'll never find anything else like it so I won't be letting it go!