The Pennsylvania Special was a private label found in several brands, most notably Illinois and Waltham, ordered by jeweler H M Jacobson & Son of Philadelphia. Illinois made several variants in jewel counts ranging from …

People like to use vintage pocket watches as wall clocks, displaying them vertically and winding them daily, but watches were designed to be carried. The accuracy of these antiques is an average of twelve hours in a pock…

In keeping with what appears to be a strategy of pairing fancy dials with lesser movements comes this all-original two-tone Seth Thomas Model 9 in the famous Fried Egg pattern. This common 7-jewel Grade 37 is from my col…

Rockford was one of only three American companies to produce wind-indicators in quantity, with the other two being Elgin and Waltham (Hamilton put that feature in their marine chronometers). Rockford made several variant…

Most of the smaller sizes that are sent here for restoration are family heirlooms, usually from someone’s great-grandmother, but any collector who concentrates on these smaller pieces can find some impressive examples. W…

Hats off to one of my Florida customers for outbidding the competition to bring home this stunning 21-jewel Elgin hunter in a solid gold case from a popular auction house that happily sells to scrappers despite knowing f…

Another fantastic family heirloom, and this time a 21-jewel 999 Ball, made by Hamilton and based largely on their popular 992. It was sent in by a new customer just down the road here in New York.

The San Jose Watch Co had one of the shortest runs in American horology. Using the equipment from the failed Otay Watch Co in late 1891, the new factory was in operation for less than a month before an investor brought l…

The rarest regular-production pattern made by Seth Thomas was this one, incorporating a square center (the rarest of all pattern elements) with a two-tone four-leaf clover and blocked in a single run of seventy. This pat…

A new contact once asked if replacing the mainspring was standard practice on every watch restored here, and when I replied that it was not he said he would go elsewhere, which is fine because replacing the mainspring wh…