In Europe, Covid regulations changed and meeting people, travelling is again
more possible
So yesterday, we had a small collectors meeting. 3 collectors of pocketwatches
and more specific Jones pocketwatches came together for a long anticipated
meeting.
We knew that all 3 of us added some Jones pocketwatches to our collection the
last months, but we never had a meeting to compare notes so to speak.
So yesterday, the bank vaults were visited to get our watches out and
transferred to the living room of one of us.
We placed the two collections on the table and I was blown away what a number
of Jones watches were together in one place. Going from very early ones with
cal nr 6XX, a few under the 1000, to the very late one, sold during the
Seeland era, with number 76XXX. Some models/calibers are so rare that only one
or two are known to exist.
Greenleaf, Craig, Romney, Bradley, Burns were names that were on the table.
With the book about F.A. Jones by Seyffer, Konig and Myers at hand, we tried
to find out more about the history of our watches. Even with the texts at
hand, we had a lot of speculating to do. Since IWC didn't made cases at that
time, different case makers were used to have the watches cased and to know if
the case was original to the watch or not, isn't always that easy.
Luckily I was tutored and given some clues where to look at.
At a certain moment, looking at the collection, one friend asked us: " why are
we doing this , why are we that crazy , collecting that much Jones
pocketwatches and learning about all the history and small differences in
movements, dials, cases etc. ?"
The other collector answered : " I am going to try to explain this in one
sentence..." only to stop his expose 10 minutes later ;)
I thought about this and it is not possible to answer it with one sentence,
but maybe by only one word : passion.
My wristwatch yesterday, thought it was the one to wear.
For security and privacy reasons, I stay vague on who attended and where, but
I have to thank the two fellow collectors for sharing their knowledge about
Jones and the pocketwatches he made.
Here is what was on the table as a group shot. And some more of a few that
were on the table.
Any other Jones fans here ?
Yes, all Jones
calibers...
