So, my parents actually said something quite interesting!

[MarkO]

My parents are on their annual visit, they have been here 4 days so I have covered just about everything of interest , or so I thought.
Kids are in bed, Mrs O is out on the lash so I have to make conversation tonight, so partly out of nothing else to say and partly planting a seed for future gifts I mention my interest in watches.
Well I do a bit of show and tell and they make polite noises then my mother says to my dad, well you still have 4 watches.
He passes round the watch left to him by his old boss, nice dress Zenith, Quartz, probably 9kt case and plated bracelet. 3 hander with date and gold face, pretty decent and judging from when the old man died must be at least 35-40 yrs old.
Then my mum says, you still have that watch I bought you for your 21st (so 56yrs old hand wound and from Watches of Switzerland ) still working never serviced.
I am exercising my google skills but if any one has an idea what this may be...
The final killer was you still have that half-hunter from your grandad, now this I vaguely remember as it was given to my dad when his dad died 27 yrs ago and the only thing I can recall is the heavy pocket chain had a sovereign holding case on the non-watch end of the chain.
So for all these years my dad has had a neat little vintage collection I didn't really know about!

Anyone have any idea what Watches of Switzerland would be selling with their own name on in 1958?

[vinylgreek]

I don't have an answer to your query but your anecdote really highlights how important it is to solicit family histories while we are able. It's also fascinating when some of those stories emerge unexpectedly. Life is full of surprises.

[MarkO]

Apparently the Watches of Switzerland one is engraved on the back from my mum to my dad for his 21st birthday, I have no memory of seeing this watch being worn.

[GaryF]

There might be something if you open it up.

Apparently the Watches of Switzerland one is engraved on the back from my mum to my dad for his 21st birthday, I have no memory of seeing this watch being worn.

[Matt]

Something like this:

http://www.poshtime.co.uk/Watches-of...5_3024.057.php


However they also got their logo onto watches made by other makers from time to time. If you Google Mappin and Webb, you'll see the sort of stuff that WOS was selling (they did the same sort of thing, but were bigger at the time) I have a WOS handwind somewhere, but since moving it's probably still in the unfinished pile of boxes in the corner of the garage...

[drunken monkey]

Parents are always interesting; it's up to you find out how.

[Seriously]

I don't have an answer to your query but your anecdote really highlights how important it is to solicit family histories while we are able.

Or at least just talk to your parents !

[RayMac]

Standard vintage watch response here. Can't really give an educated ID without pics and especially of the movement. Probably worth restoration and at least servicing given that it is a family heirloom.
As Matt has already pointed out, WOS is a jewelry firm and so this would have been one of their own private label items. Judging on what they sell today I would infer a pretty nice piece though.

[shameless]

strangely parents can be quite interesting - after all they have normally lived twice as long and seen twice as much as a gt grandad just sayin !

[Jeannie]

Parents are always interesting; it's up to you find out how.

My mother grew up on a dairy farm in rural Arkansas while the country was still recovering from the Great Depression. She was one of six and as a small child did not have indoor plumbing. She tells a hilarious story about how the end of the porch rotted because all the kids were scared to cross the yard at night and so after dark would sneak to the end of the porch, drop their drawers, and extend the appropriate body part over the edge. Except they didn't always extend far enough.

She said her dad never could figure out why he kept having to replace the boards on one end only.

She married young and followed the drum to Ft Bragg, North Carolina, only to be left alone far too much by her army husband and his many deployments and TDYs. She was heavily pregnant with my oldest brother and couldn't drive. She grew up in a world where that wasn't encouraged for women. So she walked everywhere--this little farm girl alone in a "big" city for the first time in her life where she didn't know anyone. She was and is a tough cookie in her gentle and steel magnolia way.

A few years later her husband left for a little conflict called Vietnam. She had four children under five and in those days before Skype and email and satcom she would go for weeks not knowing if my dad was alive or dead. I remember waking in the night to hear her quiet sobs as she lay in bed alone. But she always had a bright smiling face in the daytime.

I am losing her now and she is facing her death with the same quiet courage she lived her life. I wish I could be a fraction of the woman my mom is.

Jeannie