Movement Collectors?

I think Julie may collect movements.

Sometimes it seems that way.

The cases never seem to fit the movements at hand. Suspect I am more of a 'parts' collector.

The OP may be onto something. I have been decades ahead of the trend curve in the past before.

One movement I have is a grand complication with moon dials the works. I doubt it will ever have a case again, unless I cut some sort of display frame from acrylic with a laser. Meanwhile Omega automatic (55x 33x) parts are still fairly common in the estate sale aftermarket, and not that much more than generic A Schild or other classic watch movements of the post war 1950s and 1960s. Tens if not 100s of millions may have been made. It was not really the quartz crisis that devastated the Swiss economy. More of it was over production, where 100,000 units was a small order. (One of my mentors ran a Silicon Valley tool and die shop which made parts for the 30 or so watch companies what sprang up after calculators became commonplace.)

I went through a whole phase of collecting bits of repeaters. Partly under the influence of Addie Chapiero, who literally wrote the book on the subject. I though I could use the 1990s desktop manufacturing to replicate the missing parts. Taking photographs and such in factories of machines and training exhibits. Some which were cut and shaped from acrylic.

This could then be used to create CAD models, and somewhat virtual watches. That was 30 years ago.

I do think this will eventually happen.

Steampunk came about in the early 2000s when the old guard went to the great watch shop in the sky. So 100+ year old pocket watch stuff became art projects.

AI has the potential to enable some of this. Not the generic LLMs. More of a specialized model based on the data in the old bestfit catalogs, and manufacture data sheets. Not sure though that anyone wants to take the time to train something with limited profitability.

Ironically the very statistics what separate a railroad grade watch or chronometer are the same statistics what underlay AI. The secret was literally grading the watches, so the parts with the tightest tolerances went into the highest grade.

Over 100 years parts get swapped about, so it is probable that a movement may be an assemblage of high and low grade parts. All of which are within tolerance. Since the tolerance gauges no longer exist. No amount of visual inspection can indicate how the parts left the factory.

At best one can use timegraphers and such to see if a watch runs within the rated specifications.

Then there are the differences between a movement running in static display vs. one that was in daily use where lives depended on it working.

On the other hand movements which are 'visually or technically exciting.' could have some potential. Although the market for people interested in such things is limited.

Several decades ago, I was asked to remove the 24-jewel Illinois movement from a 14-karat gold case because the owner had a handshake deal with a scrapper. I weighed the case and made him a better offer on the watch than the scrapper offered. He declined my offer as he felt honour bound to the deal with the scrapper. A year or two later, he offered me the naked moment for $500. Buy a movement with no case? Not me, thanks!