Tiffany & Co., ca. 1916, IWC Cal 75 movement

Recently I won this watch in an auction. It was described as from about 1970, obviously the seller did not know a lot about watches.

The movement is an IWC cal. 75, 10´´, which was the first wrist watch movement produced by IWC. The cal. 75 was intended for women´s watches in round cases and for men in square cases. The case bears the Cresarrow trademark and was made by Henry Blank & Co., USA. In 1912 Henry Blank had journeyed to Europe to conduct dealings with IWC, among others. He returned to the USA on board of the Titanic and survived. His firm was a supplier to Tiffany, including watches. These historical details match the date of the movement.

The movement has the IWC trademarks and is of the highest grad. It has an overcoil hairspring, 19 jewels, and is regulated in 6 positions. The import of this movement into the USA must have been rather expensive.

The case is in 18K gold, really heavy and of exquisite quality.

This item seems to be really rare pioneer of early wrist watches

Here are few sellers photos, the movement photo really fuzzy. Would you have recognized? It was a positive surprise to see the movement being of highest finishing grade. Good movement photos of both movement sides are to follow.

Here are photos of the movement, which I made yesterday evening. The three large circular recesses in the dial side of the movement are subject matter of the Swiss patent CH 55231, which is noted on the movement. This patent relates to a special fastening feature for dials. In case of my watch the dial is however attached in a conventional way. The dial has a rim and is snapped onto the movement.

The movement runs well and the missing/broken off screw of the center chaton seems to be an optical flaw only. I do not intend to touch that.

The coolest watch I have seen this year, even with the slightly unlikely looking hands. Congrats, fabulous.

Congratulations, it's a lovely watch.

Also nicely aged radium for how old it is 😀

The movement was made 1916. the case presumably 1916 or 1917.

The cal. 75, as the first wristwatch movement of IWC, was intended for both, men and women. With round cases (and thus a bit smaller) for women and (somewhat larger) square for men.

With respect to the "6 Adjustments" one can only speculate. For example you can find American pocket watches marked "Adjusted to 6 positions'", which is rather uncommon to Europeans, which are more familiar with 5 positions (and additionally heat, cold, and isochronism, if any).

Yes this one indeed would have had the risk of being melted down, in particular in view of the really massiv case. I estimate it to have more than 25 g. Henry Blank & Co. were mainly active in the jewellery sector for companies like Tiffany & Co. In a time where the name Tiffany stood for really exclusive luxury.

I would love to find out how much this watch had cost new back then. I will have to research that, but perhaps someone her has such information at hand?

Cheers, Bernhard

congrats, what an amazing find. Beautiful watch - that case looks chonky!!

@HamDoctor
Great idea, email to them is out. After digging around a bit on their website I even found a specific archives contact email, unusual these days.

I will report whatever they answer 😀

Cheers, Bernhard

I have received an answer from the Tiffany Archives. Unfortunately the Tiffany Archives commissioned research program has been suspended and they are not able to provide any support or information. In detail: "The mission of the Tiffany Archives is to support the research needs of our own Company. The majority of our staff resources are dedicated to supporting the needs of departments such as Design, Product Development, Public Relations and Marketing. Consequently, we are unable to devote the staff time necessary to fully investigate each customer request." 🙁

Well, they make their money with selling new items. And presumably do not have any resources for servicing vintage watches in-house and charging for that. Insofar it is not surprising that no efforts are made for answering inquiries from (the few) persons, who have preferred buying a used (vintage) item from third parties instead of a new one from them. And will unlikely buy a new item in the near future. Nothing to really complain about, thats simply business. Perhaps 1 of 1000 Tiffany customers, or even less, have any interest in that ol´ vintage stuff.

It is therefore all the more commendable that Longines, for example, not only provides information from its archives, but also does so free of charge. This is anything but a matter of course, but should be highlighted as an extremely positive example.

Thanks once again to Longines for their valuable information provided about my two vintage pocket watches.