Watch collectors holding onto their treasured pieces may be securing their financial future. With the ever growing value of antique watches, they are considered a smart investment. If you have been considering whether a watch collection is really the right move for you here is some information on the recent market state:
It’s sometimes quite amazing how things have a way of finding their way home, completely unintentionally, take this antique pocket watch for example.
The story starts with a jeweller, at 90 Main Street, Batavia in 1834, where a jeweller named Jerome A. Clark owned a jewellery store. A man named George Austin started working for Clark after school, learning about the trade and developing an interest in the business.
Charles Prescott also comes to work at the store a few years later as a clerk. Prescott and Austin form a strong friendship whilst working together. Then in 1885 the men purchase the business from their boss Jerome A. Clark, renaming this jewellers ‘Austin and Prescott’ and putting their skills to the test.
When Austin passed away in 1914, the jewellery store was then passed onto William Hoop. Austin left $30,000 to the village, to be used towards a public park, which still today is called Austin Park in his memory.
In the next 55 years, as you might expect, several jewellers open, shut, and move from street to street. Some are forced out by new businesses offering a wider range of products, offering convinience and seemingly ‘exotic’ products from England. 90 Main Street however was still home to a jewellers, all the way up until the Urban Renewal around 1965, which was not only fatal to the jewellery businesses but to local residents that had their beloved homes torn down, destroying the vast majority of Batavia’s architectural heritage.
In 1969 an older man approaches an attendant at Moretto gas station, offering either his wristwatch or pocket watch in exchange for $10, a full day’s wages. The man, clearly desperate for money was devastated to give up the pocket watch. So, an agreement was made between the gentleman and the gas station attendant that he would keep the watch well looked after and wound, and if the gentleman came back, the pocket watch would be returned to its rightful owner.
The man never returned.
However, 46 years later, the gas station attendant was doing a little research into antique pocket watches and the pocket watch’s original owner, whose name was engraved onto the antique pocket watch alongside the name of the crafter; Paul Breton. He found the jeweller’s original jewellery store and eventually also found his home, which just so happens to be home to the gas station attendant who lives there today with his wife, where they still keep the pocket watch wound in a glass domed holder.
A vintage timepiece owned by a survivor of the Titanic was one of the main items to be brought along and discovered by the adorning crowds at Keyworthcharity valuation day.
Continue reading “Flog It’s Charles Hanson enjoys notable pieces at Keyworth charity valuation day”
At Pieces of Time we are looking to constantly add new and interesting pieces to our catalogue of vintage movements, and we can announce that we have some exciting new timepieces to tell you about!
Continue reading “Pieces of Time add rare movements to their catalogue of notable timepieces”
For those of you who love to visit the various antiques shows, you will be pleased to be informed that the Chester Antiques Show is set for a return this coming October, it has been announced.
Continue reading “The Chester Antiques Show makes its return this autumn”
As lovers of antique pocket watches and vintage timepieces in general we decided to take a look into the past to discover the etymology, otherwise known as the word history, of the word ‘antique’.
Continue reading “Have you ever wondered where the word ‘antique’ originates from?”
September 2014, and the Apple chief designer Jony Ivemade some clear and incisive remarks about his company’s debut wearable device (The Apple Watch) to declare that the Swiss watch industry was ‘in trouble’. He’s not the first to make these kinds of remarks, or statements of intent. Swiss horologists have remained defiant in previous situations of extinction, and it can be done again.
We can thank the surge in popularity of the mobile phone and the tablet for the fact that watches being worn by individuals has somewhat decreased for people under the age of 50. We can argue that the smartwatch is striving to counteract that notion though. You invariably see someone wearing an inexpensive digital watch, but for the most part, men’s wrists are naked today.
Antique pocket watches aren’t found to have been inscribed by Winston Churchill every day, but one such timepiece has recently just been sold for £12,000 at auction.
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An exclusive Patek Philippe pocket watch with Suzanne Rohr enamel which was based on Pierre-August Renoir’sTwo Sisters(1881) obliterated the forecasted sale price at Christie’s sale of Important Watches in New York last week (June 17).
