My wife has this silver wrist watch and I’m trying to date it for her. It has two letters, which I assume is an import mark and a date letter, but I cant find the import code in my book. It can’t have two date letters can it?
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Thank you in advance to anyone who can help!
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The AGR mark is the sponsors mark for Arthur George Rendell (Clerkenwell Road, London - import of swiss watches, in use since 1907. AGR was employee of Robert Pringle & Sons) and the “x” mark is the import mark for Edinburgh. The “v” is the date mark, and in this case, represents 1924.
https://www.blackbough.co.uk/product/swiss-1924-silver-vintage-wristwatch-wzslh/
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Great information from you again, thank you very much!
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You have been provided with useful data on the Scottish importer of multiple Swiss watches including the Liemer watch company’s product of which you have an excellent sample.
The company is mostly known for providing the Japanese naval officers with pocket chronometers which, in the days before GPS, assisted their navigation in the open ocean and target among other places Pearl Harbor – a day which may live in infamy in the mind of the US president but for the Japanese and their reliance upon the Liemer Watch company–represented the peak of naval success.
Liemer watches in good repair are fairly rare. Here’s one being offered for parts on Ebay:
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/114662262919
Yours is indeed an art deco adaptation of a trench watch — basically a miniature pocket watch with lugs to which a strap is attachable. You post-war example for the ladies even has a noon number in differentiated colour to enable low light reading before luminous watches became the fashion. They went out of fashion fairly fast in the 1960’s when everyone hoisted in they were radioactive.
The minute hand on your watch is sporting luminous paint. It should be replaced. If it is original the glowing paint combines a radioactive isotope Radium-226, with zinc sulfide. Because radium breaks down the phosphor over time, these hands often cease glowing entirely after a few decades, though the radium remains radioactive. If it is post 1960 it is harmless but not original.
CRWW
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Wow, I would never have imagined such an interesting background to my wife’s watch!
Thank you very much for the fascinating insight. The folks on this forum have amazing knowledge!
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Generous of you to say so.
i think we are actually just getting competent at culling AI stuff the internet wholesales.
Of course every time we do it we improve the AI capability to do the work without us.
Which makes the Luddite approach to modernization not entirely unattractive. I see the Harvard Class of '26 is already there.
CRWW
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