http://www.chrono24.com/en/universalgenve/compur--id3825707.htm

To me it looks legit although the crown seems a tad odd. The seller wants a princely sum. Thoughts?

I've been buying too many watches of late but this one has my attention.

 

It's a very serious Italian dealer from Milan.
The watch, that I saw in person, it's in very good condition.
The dial is amazing.
Only there is a little piece of dial missing ( at the 180 of the tachy scale).
With the glass on you almost don't notice it, but it's still missing so, for almost 8k, you have to know it.

 

Thanks...I'm going to pass. 7500 Euro is just too much for a damaged dial.

 

I remember seeing this one and being fascinated by the inscription. Who were Eddie Graves, Randy, and Elim, and what were they doing in Rio in 1941? Google is no help with this one.

 

Perhaps this

"The American embassy is a former palace at 147 Avenida President Wil- son with wide windows overlooking 1 bay. There are now 16 secre- taries and assistants under the am- bassador. A 17th, William C. Burdett, -ned to Washington recently with bis family,

Embassy bachelor secretaries are ' Adams. Randolph Harrison Jr., Ellen. OShaughnessy, and Donald 3Boo:.. Col. Edwin Sibert Is attache, and naval Commander Edward Graves is being replaced by Rear Admiral Augustin T. Beauregard and two aids, while he heads for Washington with a lovely , niece of Admiral and Mrs. Dmwns at Great Lakes. There is an agricultural attache and Walter Don. nilly, the commercial attache, has a staff of 12 secretaries. There are nine...."

http://archives.chicagotribune.com/...states-building-new-embassy-in-rio-de-janeiro

 

That's why vintage is so much fun. The stories in a 70 year old watch.

 

Well yes, that's it! Only it isn't Ellen O'Shaughnessy, it's Elim (check the actual microfiche image, below). Randolph (Randy) Harrison Jr. and Elim O'Shaughnessy, bachelor secretaries at the U.S. embassy in Rio, pitched in to send off newly-married naval attaché Edward (Eddie) Graves with a very nice watch. Well done.

 

I hope all New medias taking over old medias around the world would keep digitizing historical contents so they never are lost.

 

I shall rock the boat and this one. I have doubts about that dial. I am not convinced it is original. I just cant consolidate it with the watch's chronology or period. The watch has a 633xxx serial that places it between 1936 and 1938. It could well have stood in a shop for a couple of years but I dont really buy that one ...



I could well be wrong but I kind of smell a rat!

 

Well we would derelict in our duties if we just let a black-dialed Compur pass without real scrutiny. Why don't you like the dial?



As far as the timeline goes, if the serial number dates the watch to 1936-38, it might have been sold in Brazil in 1941 after very little time in a shop. It's almost to be expected, in my opinion, that the movement production date would have been a few years before the sale date; that seems to be the way things used to unfold. If you asked me to guess the date of production of the movement of a UG sold in Brazil in 1941, I would probably guess 1937. And then again, we don't know the date of the initial sale. We just presume to know the presentation date. Maybe Randy and Elim picked it up in a pawn shop or a poker game.

 

This is great. Congrats on the fast provenance work! I thought my sister in law was fast, you folks are amazing. Big issue with the watch for me is the chip at 180 for the princely asking price.

 

Here is another from the era which is supposed to be pukka! So many differences, the one that worries me most of the size and font, I though that was pretty standard in those days as a new cliche was costly and difficult to produce ...

There again, there may not have been any standard and they just put togeher with what was available or as best they could ....



This one has much cleaner lines but some quite unacceptable mistakes in the way the various printed parts of dial overlap. It is as the outside scales have been printed a size too small for dial.