I have just been offered, somewhat inexpensively, a beautiful Universal single button chrono. It is late 20s / early 30s, with the tiny subs on the porcelain dial, and a crack (that I cant see on the photos) which might indicate that it has been played around with. I also cant see any signature on the movement, which might just mean that the photos are too fuzzy. Beautiful and large at 39mm but relatively standard. It looks a lot like one of those 20s/early 30s hinged back cases which on inspection prove to be paper thin 18ct. Not sure if anyone here would have sufficient expertise to know what is going on but this watch has the oval lugs and a push button in the lower oval! I have never seen any chrono with the pusher at 6 before. Either this IS rare or does anyone have any reason to think this fishy? I am NOT a timex wearer who likes to obsess about other people's supposed frankenwatches but was there a time when chronos just came into fashion when case makers were converting lapel/pocket watches like this to wrist and turning the dial? Has anyone here ever seen a 1920s s/b chrono with the pusher at 6?
No, I haven't. Still after your post i haven't . Without pictures it might be difficult to give you any informed answer.
Not sure sarcasm is in order. He probably only wanted to see one and wasn't just responding to my question about whether anyone has ever come across a s/b chrono with the pusher at 6. Or if not, whether there is anything inherently fishy about such a thing. BTW I had obviously done a search and also couldn't find any so his request was legitimate. there does seem to be something inherently suspicious about an s/b pusher at 6 so this request does need to be put on a forum where such expertise resides [though I had been hopeful about this one until I saw your message!] Watcuseek?
Man, you sure don't know this place! That one lonely (poor) picture isn't helping much. However, it looks like an old pocket watch conversion that some Ukrainian frankenmaster cobbled together.
That was what I thought. From past posts, those Ukrainian conversions always look like conversions when inspected closely. With those oval lugs, I am wondering if this could be a bit more difficult to identify if it is a 1930s/40s conversion
Have you had the watch in hand or just seen photos ( Do you know if the whole thing works. Sometimes the pusher and sub-dials are show but no go )
Just photos, though the watch is supposedly fully functional and has a few grand's worth of servicing. The real question is whether the wrist part was done by the factory when wrist chronos first became popular, or by some converter soon thereafter or by some Ukrainian more recently. All the original wrist watches were bangles, or pocket/lapel watch designs adapted for wrist use. You can only really tell whether they were originally made for the wrist by the position of the 12. I would imagine making that oval lug around that pusher would take a gigantic amount of not particularly profitable work.
It's not fishy, just impossible to tell if it's "authentic" or not. this sort of mash-up was quite popular in the late teens early 20's with any number of case companies and jewellers offering to modify ladies/boys size pocket watches to make them wrist-watches. any perusal of the literature from the period (newspapers/magazines) will show how popular they were. as an example of something "modded" in period it might be historically interesting.
