Among Hamilton collectors there is a solid percentage who believe that the 23-jewel 950B was the single best railroad watch ever made. They were very similar to the 992B but with a bridge design and a jeweled barrel. Rou…

After the Panic of 1893, the Columbus Watch Co went into receivership and re-emerged a year later with new investors and new capital as the New Columbus Watch Co. After production began again, most of the 21-jewel-and-hi…

When the short-lived Fredonia Watch Co ceased operations, John C Adams – the same John Adams who helped to found both the Adams & Perry Co and the Elgin Watch Co – visited the town of Peoria, Illinois to attract investor…

For many years the Complete Guide to Watches printed the existence of 28-jewel Railway, made by Seth Thomas, which would have been the highest count of any American pocket watch produced during the railroad era in the la…

One of the many contract grades that Illinois produced in their fifty-plus-year run was the Washington Watch Co, made for Chicago mail-order giant Montgomery Ward, which was founded in the early 1870s by traveling salesm…

Many people appreciate the years of trial and error, the hard work by lantern light, the failures and triumphs, the mesmerizing patterns, the fantastic precision, and the incredible history found in these mechanical work…

Watch hands don’t simply fall off when installed properly, but they could get snagged and break if the crystal is missing. This is especially true of the minute hand, which is the longest and sits above the others. If yo…

Aurora was another factory that half-heartedly complied with Webster Ball’s new standards in the early 1890s. Fewer than a dozen 18-size variants are known to exist in both open-face and hunter and Aurora was apparently …

Here’s an exceptional 24-jewel Hamilton 920, sent in by an excellent customer in Connecticut.

The American Waltham Company’s first 16-size pendant-set watch was the Model ’88 (Waltham kept it simple, naming the models after the year in which they were launched). In several ways the model mimicked the earlier leve…