Seemed like a good idea at the time

I guess we all have our cross to bear. For some reason, some years ago I thought it would be a good idea to buy several thousand plexi crystals haha. Not sure if these were picked through but there seems to be a lot of square ones and ladies sizes. They are in two GS flexo cases that have foot operated crystal presses! Now what do I do with them?

😁😁😁😁

Vintage watch crystal museum? 😁

List each one on eBay , sell the few that people have been looking for and sit on the rest of the listings for years selling maybe one or two a year. Or maybe @sheepdoll will but them all and find the watches they belong to 😗

On a serious note, you could spend a couple of minutes to see if there are any "common" sizes still left, and then ditch everyting into plastic re-cycling and use the cabinets for storing watches and parts and tools.

I too have two of those cabinets. One came to me from my late father, and it is like yours, thousands of plexiglass crystals of odd shapes and sizes. Also, the more useful round styles for pocket and wrist. The other one came from a watchmaker’s estate. Half the drawers are empty, and the other half converted to numerous other types of round plexiglass crystals of varied sizes. But I also have 11 cabinets containing about 30,000 GLASS watch crystals. A variety of sizes of round glass crystals, but the majority of them are numerous types of fancy shapes. One cabinet contains about every style of crystal used in Hamilton Electrics. Future of all these? Probably a recycler, or the landfill.

Two cabinets of picked over GLASS pocket watch crystals, including Geneva types for hunter cased pocket watches. AND, yet another cabinet of plexiglass crystals for hunter cased pocket watches.

I think every watchmaker has at least one of these. When you buy them, usually most of the crystals you will ever need are gone, and only obscure crystals you will never use are still there. Welcome to the club!

Ha Ha.

I had a steel cabnet at one time full of misc watch parts. Kept tripping on it. Too big to be of use, too small to be practical. So it went when I closed out my storage. Now I wonder what was in it? I am pretty sure I pulled all the Omega parts. There were also Longines and Rollex parts. Probably AS and other parts.

As far as I know that was the only set of parts I dumped. Although I am wondering why I now have so many cases with no backs. I never put anything important in that cabinet. I only got it for the Omega parts. Which had their own separate box.

As for crystals, I bought assortment of PW glass. Found them the other day. Always in the way. Probably one of the reasons I went cold on PWs. I did get a S. La Rose assortment of round wristwatch crystals. Third party, but I have common sizes what I use recently.

Nowadays I limit my passion to Omega, Heuer, Tissot, Landeron, Lemania, Valjoux, Venus and AS. There are a few other brands I will impulse such as Croton, Delbana, Wakmann and occasionally Monarch. The later often overlap with the former.

I specifically dumped Bulova, since one has to draw a line somewhere. Hamilton remains on the fence. I have a huge assortment of Elgin staffs. Some of the watches are interesting as well. I think the Swiss copied the design and manufacturing process. Feel pretty meh about Waltham. Some of those have AS movements so there is overlap.

Never Rollex.

Ironically I have come to appropriate Seiko. And most of the ones I have need crystals. So what crystals I watch online are for Seiko. Namely Seiko 5s. Seems to be hard to actually pull the switch. Paying more for a crystal than the watch, is difficult to impulse.

Guilty. Though I bought my cabinet full of movements today and was able to bypass the crystals. Second guessing bypassing the individual parts but had to choose. The movements will be fun. Many even worked. So at least ill know after I work on it that I broke it.

Put them in the garage and let your kids figure out what to do with them.

Welcome to the club. I should have a bunch of mystery "Unknown caliber" Omega parts arriving tomorrow.

Best to start with complete working watches. Preferably ones in tip top shape.

These could be repurposed as lovely watch drawers- or for straps and accessories? Do the dividers come out?

Yes, I can re purpose the drawers for watch parts and such, nit the cabinets are too unsightly to go in the house or office. I’d want to store the good stuff in a humidity controlled environment.

PZ or PX?

There are some threads with the vintage crystal charts. A place where pdf storage would be nice to have.