**** More for a score - The old years ****

[is that my watch]

[is that my watch]

And here's another example of why I love this competition.

About ten minutes after I started searching, I bumped into an alarm clock. Now by some odd coincidence, last week I spent a few happy hours tracking down, and I'm not proud of this, the precise alarm clocks provided to the 1953 Everest expedition. As it turns out, they are a bit crap, but that's not really the point. However, in the back of my head, I had the notion that it might be worth having a dig to find out if anyone had made a really high quality Alarm clock. So when ISMY defined an acceptable purchase as:



My response that:



Wasn't actually a joke.

In fact, half an hour later, it really stopped being a joke when, after a bit of searching, I found the Jaeger LeCoultre alarm clock for the princely sum of £14.70. Now, the chances of it holding at that price were close to zero but even finding a JLC anything with 24 hours to go and under twenty quid got me thinking and, of course, researching. It turns out that JLC put the same effort into the inside of an alarm clock as anything else they make and so I decided that this was the proper response to my beloved's instruction (written clearly on my birthday card this morning) to 'go out and spend a couple of hundred quid on something daft'. After some thought, I decided that, actually, it was worth about fifty quid to me.
which, as this is ebay, translated to £56.87. The fact that I won by precisely 87p demonstrates, if demonstration was necessary, the wisdom of bid sniping in the last five seconds and avoiding psychologically obvious bids.

It's a bit above the price limit, but I'd never had found it if it wasn't for the competition. I love this competition.

Then for an encore, I suspect I might just have bought a vintage Rolex for fifteen quid. More on that later...

yes I was hoping members might run with it and go a bit wild and their might be a few out there wall clocks ,alarms ,and even a grandfather clocks (almost bought one till I saw it was collection only Liverpool ) did not fancy the train trip

[FuzzyB]

And here's another example of why I love this competition.

About ten minutes after I started searching, I bumped into an alarm clock. Now by some odd coincidence, last week I spent a few happy hours tracking down, and I'm not proud of this, the precise alarm clocks provided to the 1953 Everest expedition. As it turns out, they are a bit crap, but that's not really the point. However, in the back of my head, I had the notion that it might be worth having a dig to find out if anyone had made a really high quality Alarm clock. So when ISMY defined an acceptable purchase as:



My response that:



Wasn't actually a joke.

In fact, half an hour later, it really stopped being a joke when, after a bit of searching, I found the Jaeger LeCoultre alarm clock for the princely sum of £14.70. Now, the chances of it holding at that price were close to zero but even finding a JLC anything with 24 hours to go and under twenty quid got me thinking and, of course, researching. It turns out that JLC put the same effort into the inside of an alarm clock as anything else they make and so I decided that this was the proper response to my beloved's instruction (written clearly on my birthday card this morning) to 'go out and spend a couple of hundred quid on something daft'. After some thought, I decided that, actually, it was worth about fifty quid to me.
which, as this is ebay, translated to £56.87. The fact that I won by precisely 87p demonstrates, if demonstration was necessary, the wisdom of bid sniping in the last five seconds and avoiding psychologically obvious bids.

It's a bit above the price limit, but I'd never had found it if it wasn't for the competition. I love this competition.

Then for an encore, I suspect I might just have bought a vintage Rolex for fifteen quid. More on that later...

Happy Birthday, Matt! I’m looking forward to seeing both of those purchases. I love those old alarm clocks! And the Rolex is icing on the cake!

[crownpuller]

I might just have bought a vintage Rolex for fifteen quid.

[is that my watch]

guessing unbranded dial trench watch but movement marked ?

[Matt]

Thanks, You know you are getting older when your kids start to have their mid life crisis. Early.

As for the latest purchase, it's a fairly optimistic suspicion and and an equally hopeful might. It would be more accurate to say that it's in with a chance of being a Rolex. Even if it is from that stable it's far more likely to be a Rolco, Marconi, Wilsdorf and Davies and so on. But it's a solid silver wire lugged case that looks very Dennison to me, combined with a sterile porcelain dial which is identical to some early Rolex, and a few others, It's also got decently blued Breguet hands of a sort that W&D certainly used on several of their early brands. In addition, the relation between subdial and the rest of the dial looks consistent with an Aegler movement and that's enough to kindle my pathetic fantasy. Oh and it's got a red 12 which proves absolutely nothing, but looks cool.

So it's a beauty whoever made it and I think, with some serious TLC and if I can coax it into life, that it's probably my entry. The Winegartens is a lovely example, but this might well be something very special, even if it isn't a W&D product (and I'd actually like a W&D more than I'd like a Rolex of that age.

What I'd really like is a very specific Borgel, but that's yet another story.

[Matt]

guessing unbranded dial trench watch but movement marked ?

Ha, you underestimate my ability to make 2+2 = any damn number I please. When I see the movement I'll tell you. The fact is that Rolex was, until well after WWII, merely a franchise brand with no manufacturing capability. Wilsdorf might have thought big and insisted on brand standards, but he started off on the bottom rung, casing other people's movements into other people's cases before having other people case other people's movements into other people's cases for him but to his standards. He didn't stop having Aegler make his movements for him until, whisper it quietly, the late nineteen nineties. I wrote this all up somewhere on WUS once, Jeannie will know.

[tribe125]

Wilsdorf might have thought big and insisted on brand standards, but he started off on the bottom rung, casing other people's movements into other people's cases

Like Mr Patek.

[tribe125]

I've got a snipe on a clock. Not terribly old but I like the look of it.

The seller says it's genuine and I haven't been able to prove that it's not. Or that it is.

19 hours to go.

[is that my watch]

well was bidding on this always wanted one and it being a quartz no good for the comp but missed out on it by not a lot but I make a price and I stick too it