Bruce, thanks for that. Your Centenary is in fantastic condition, it really is. Turns out that it is the very earliest one in the case sequence so far, so it goes in at the top of the table -



Thanks for your contribution!

 

The thanks goes to you. This is really special for you to do this research and for us to have it available!

 

I only get emails asking if I'm interested in Viagra or Flomax.

 

LOLROFL! Especially when considering your avatar and ID!

 

Beautiful watches Hope to find one some day.....

 

+1 on that!

 

We'll miss him, God Bless

 

Very sad news indeed about Mike Kelley.

 

A table update is due shortly. I now have 39 entries, I just need one more JUB to get a 1% sample! (of the original 4,000). It is getting increasingly difficult to fit it all on screen so I can get a screen dump to paste here as a .jpg (the original is in a MS Word table), but I have just found that I can copy and paste the table directly into Photoshop, which surprised me. So theoretically, we can now have as long a table as we like.

 

Hello again from Cornwall. Here is the latest 2500 table update, and we now have 39 entries which is a pretty decent sample for ten day’s work. Very many thanks to everyone who has contributed so far -



Some points for discussion -

* The first thing you may notice is that I have now divided the table into two approximately equal halves, at the change between case numbers in the 10,72x,xxx series and the 10,78x,xxx series. This is because I wanted to make the following suggestion to you all – it looks to me as if there may have been two quite separate batches of the 2500 JUB. So far there have been no examples with case numbers beginning 1073, 1074, 1075, 1076 or 1077 (numbers from within the gap), which suggests that this may be a genuine hinge point, perhaps of two batches of 2,000 watches each.

* Supporting this idea is the fact that so far all examples having the 2500 reference engraved inside the back, or with rose gold cases, and/or engraved “Centenary” on the back are below this dividing line, not above it.

* I can still make no sense of the Centenaries with engraved backs, like Doug Gravina’s -



I would have thought that once the change had been made to an engraved back, all subsequent examples would have carried the engraving. But they are scattered at random, and account for only 12% of the total, less than the RG watches. So perhaps the engraved back was a later custom option, and ordered at additional cost by the purchaser?

Let me know what you think . . .

 

Oh, right - that makes more sense than "there's an invisible 2500 included on the chart". Gotcha!

 

Hi John, great job and interesting finding you have there. So it is almost definitive (since your total sample n= 39, more than n=30 minimal for normal distribution, as well as sufficiently random sample) that there are two batches of 2000 centenaries which divided among 1072XXXX case number and 1078XXXX, 1080XXXX and 1082XXXXXX case number.

You need a little bit more sample ( 12 more for 1072XXXX and 8 more for 1078XXXXX+) to make it statistically sound for each batch, however several things emerges:
- All first batch 1072XXXX are Yellow gold, no 2500 and no engraving case back. Other than this pattern it could be franken or later engraving.
- Only ~ 8/22 or ~36% in second batch are Rose Gold and concentrated in case number 10785XXXX or later
- The rest of 2nd batch or ~64% are yellow gold.
- Engraved backs only occured ~5/22 or ~22% of 2nd batch centenaries. They were for US, Portugal and Brazil with no clear pattern. In fact only Brazil samples that has all EB.

Hopefully others may help finding pattern here that will enrich your reference.

Regards,
H

 

Brilliant job, H - that was just what we needed, a mathematician who knows about statistical analysis But it is starting to look like we can say a lot more about 2500 JUB Centenaries than we could a couple of weeks ago . . .

 

It is interesting to see that the relevant serial number is the case number. Except for the first case number which is strange (should be confirmed) all the other are sequential till the first half (10.724.xxx.). Probably the 1948 issue.
Then again the first example of the second half is strange as are the last two. The rest is sequential (10.784.xxx.). Probably the second issue due to the model success.
The mvt serial numbers also show a first batch of 10.680.xxx. and then a second batch of mvt with 10.759.xxx. all sequential.

 

I am far from mathematician.......just statistics 101

 

Getting harder to find these.
Here's one more.
Case: 10724737
Mvmnt: 10759057
Cycle through pics to see movement and caseback.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/hamaltaktak1/3381715356/in/photostream/

 

Yes, I will try to get the first case number confirmed by the owner. I could always have made a mistake trying to read numbers from a poor photo on eBay.

Thanks for that one, pitpro. We are now up to 40! And, as it should, it fits nicely into batch one (YG, no 2500 in case back, no engraving).

 

I just checked with the owner, and yes the first case number in the table should have been 10724875, as Omegastar correctly spotted This will be corrected in later versions.

 

Well, here is yet another table update. There is one new entry (from pitpro), and three corrections to misread numbers, which are much easier to spot now that we have a good sample (thank you, Omegastar). I think the double batch theory holds up better the more I look at it - remember that the first batch of 2499 (the 28.10 JUB) was only 2,000 pieces. It could well be that the 2500 JUB was also intended to be just 2,000 in total, but demand was so strong for the larger watch that they doubled the run.


I have also added the date of delivery for the King of Denmark's 2500 - 15th October, 1948. This is the only firm date we have so far for the sale, rather than manufacture, of a Centenary. What is also interesting is how the statistics support the back of the neck inclinations of collectors to place scarcity value on certain watches, solely on the basis of long-term observation of trends. The scarcest 2500 does indeed turn out to be a rose-gold version of the watch with the Centenary engraving on the back, complete with its rating certificate (and better still, the silver box). Expect to pay a considerable premium for one of those