Toelke-King list of movement numbers

There is a mistake in Toelke-King in the list of movement numbers.
I recently saw a cal. 52, No. 124969 case No. 142083. This movement is indicated in the list Lepine cal. 57 - 19lig. H 7 Mod 1894.
Therefore it is confirmed that the list is is not fully reliable for the years 1894-1897.

That is not the only error...

There is also an error with cal 98s in the range 1811201 / 1816600 which in the Toelke-King list appear as cal 89. This was probably a number transposition.

Do you expect ....

columns of numbers comprising nearly 2.3 Mio. movement Nos. to be free of any misprint/typo? My experience is, that not only computer programs unevitably comprise some bugs, but bigger databases as well.

Probably already the serial books (the Toelke/King movement Nos. register is based on) were not free of typos and in 1986 there was no chance to crosscheck the serial books against the movement control books as the latter came to surface nearly two decades later.

Mr. King has a list with all mistakes discovered by now and I assume sooner or later there will be a revised movement Nos. register be published. But up the then the Toelke/King is the best and by far most precise tool for collectors to check movement Nos.

Regards

Th. Koenig

Unreliability of records from 1894 to 1897

Certainly the list of movements in the Toelke-King's book is extremely useful and the best published. But I am not referring to a printing error. I refer to the unreliability of records in short period ranging from 1894 to 1897, unreliability already reported by Reinhard Meis.
Unfortunately, the attempt of reconstruction is not fully satisfying as shows the watch reported.

Meis only says .....

that the Serial Books give NO DATES in the period from 1894 to 1897. He does NOT say, the books are faulty in that period. And he couldn't say that, simply because of the fact that there was nothing to crosscheck against.

In fact Meis as well as Toelke/King are based on the Serial Books ONLY and so both books inevitably convey the mistakes of the Serial Books to nowadays collectors.

By now the Movement Control Books have been found and allow to check these against the Serial Books. And from time to time a series says it is a series of calibre x, while a closer look in the Movement Control Books reveals, out of three hundred there were 288 calibre x, but as well 12 calibre y. But this is not the rule, but an exemption. The bigger problem are typos.

Toelke/King is a very careful written book, but it couldn't provide more data than known in 1986 and it doesn't claim for impeccability.

And what you pointed out is not a specific problem of the period from 1894 to 1897. When checking movement Nos. regularly against the Toelke/King you will find that there are mistakes over the whole period covered by the book. Most are typos as I know from Mr. King, some are caused by mistakes in the Serial Books. A rough estimate is, that in about 5 of 1,000 checks you will find Toelke/King to be faulty.

Regards

Th. Koenig

Toelke-King list of movement numbers

I do not mean that the book of Toelke/King is not a good book. On the other hand I do not particularly interested in printing errors, what is interesting is that the reconstruction of the movement numbers can contain and contains errors. This makes the list provided in the book not fully reliable. The fact that in a group of three hundred, twelve movements can be of different types can not afford to say that all are equal. The exception, even if only one, makes the list incorrect. For the list No. 124969 is a cal. 57 and in reality is a cal. 52. It is not a minor mistake!
P.S. When Meis said “nicht eindeutig zugewiesen” only for years 1894-1897 is reasonable to think that the Serial Books are incomplete for those years.

Regards

Mistakes in documents

To me it is not a surprise that there are mistakes in documents, if only very few, where most of the content is correct. How often you verify, by different people even, when the amount becomes reasonably huge these mistakes are almost part of life. To strive for zero faults is commendable, but most of the time not achievable.

What are you going to do in this case?

Kind regards,
Paul, wearing yellow gold Portuguese Perpetual Calendar: a few very minor issues here make it my watch