Dear Forum….. I purchased this tiny cal 481 cocktail watch last year for my wife - she loves it. I think it's 1950's vintage in a platinum case which is encrusted with diamonds. Does anybody know anything about these? Thanks for looking.
Some of these are "one-of's" made for jewelers. The movement and dial were taken from a non-precious metal (usually gold-filled) case to match. Others are US-only models where the movements were imported from Switzerland and placed in US made cases. Relatively few of these cocktail watches were in Swiss made cases, as I think they were more of an American style in the 1950's and '60's. Only way to find out for sure is to have a watchmaker open it up and post pictures of what you find inside. gatorcpa
Dennis your right, you would go blind scraping that! Too nice to scrap if someone likes it though. Looks like something Tiffany & Co. would have done in the '50's.
Thanks. It does look like "high bling" in the photo but it's very small - only about 17mm diameter excluding crown - very delicate looking. It was serviced by a watchmaker and I have a photo of the movement but unfortunately not of the inside case back. The platinum case is of excellent workmanship and I suspect it may be a jewellers one-off but of vintage age. It's hard to tell from the photo but the movement serial number looks like15068809 which, I believe, dates it to 1956. Thanks for the insights so far.
Here is the photo of the movement that the watchmaker took but I don't have a picture of inside the platinum case back
