As some of you know, I am collecting pocketwatches, IWC only.
Far from saying that my collection is a museum collection but I am proud to
have found some nice and rare pieces over time.
Some of the pocketwatches are common, easy to find on the market, sometimes in
better condition than mine, but some I have are gems.
So in these crazy times, as the museum in Schaffhausen is closed, why not open
one here on the forum.
As long as the museum is closed, I will post here daily a pocketwatch from my
collection.
I hope I don't run out of pieces before the virus is beaten. Fingers crossed
for all of us.
I will post them in a random order, with some comments, feel free to join.
Keep safe all.
DAY 26 : the super rare cal 47
Since this week, we are showing the cal 52, 53 and some of the forerunners
like cal 49, here is the cal 47.
In a gold case 14K with casenumber 1082.
In the old archives of the forum, I found a post by Adrian van der Meijden
about the cal 47. Not much was to be found about that caliber, also an
indication that it is a rare beast to find.
Adrian wrote : " The interesting point for IWC pocket watch collectors to note
is that the movement is almost identical to the cal. 52/53 movement with the
exception of one obvious visible detail : the crown wheel and the rachet
wheel, dominating the view of cal. 52/53, are not visible. They are covered by
a three quarter plate, as seen during the Tschopp period. And, yes this
forerunner was designed by Louis Tschopp, the technical director after Jones
and Seeland had left IWC. These watches are extremely rare and it is unknown
whether really 6.300 have been produced. Fritz, in his article, mentions a
total of actually 6 watches known. Rolf Birkenkamper described 2 of them in
"Watch 3/97", without calling them cal. 47....."
Interesting that the illustration in Watch International ( case number 880 )
shows a caseback that is in layout very close to mine.
Strange is the the numbering of these cal 47, difficult to understand , at a
certain point IWC added "20" in front of the serial numbers, so the watches
shown or talked about in the old posts are more in the region of 2011386 or
2011373.
Mine has caliber number 21267.
Another forum member wrote :"In fact this is from the new numbering system.
The number 11373 is part of a group that goes by the number 11201-11400
datable around the middle of 1885. I do not think there are cal. 47 that
belong to the old numbering."
Maybe mine is one belonging to the old numbering.
We found the watch in the books and we see it was sold to the dealer Elias in
Amsterdam in 1888.
Elias was an important IWC dealer at that time. If you find IWC watches from
that era in Holland, you have a big chance , these were sold by Elias.
I am not sure about the hands if they are original or not.
nothing too fancy on the movement, only this decoration.
