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 71, ref 5250 , 11h edition
It is a Sunday and I always try to show an extra special one on Sunday, so for
today the wonderful ref 5250 pocketwatch with moonphase.
When I call it the 11h edition, I know that a few members on the forum will
say " AHA".
It is the famous double seven dial. Someone who designed the dial made an
error
and two times 7 o'clock is written in Roman numerals.
Can happen, humans make errors, but the funny thing is that nobody saw it for
quite some time, pictures with the double seven made it to the catalogues and
the dealer handbook. I don't know how many double sevens are around, I guess
not a lot since the 5250 was a slow seller and at a certain moment, the error
was noticed and new dials were made.
As the 5250 was a slow seller, but had a fantastic movement inside, a elegant,
thin cal 95 with moonphase and shock resistance, the cal 9521, a few people at
IWC were thinking what to do with that movement. And so Hanno Burtscher (
designer of the Da Vinci perpetual ) and Kurt Klaus were sitting together in a
club and on a napking, they came up with the idea for a wristwatch with the
same movement, turned a quarter, and so the ref 5252, the big Portofino with
moonphase ( Das Speigelei ) was born.
It is always interesting to look at the prices back then and to compare the
price of pocketwatches with wristwatches, it can give an idea why these were
slow sellers.
The ref 5250 came in gold and silvre cases. The price in 1980 was 6600 DM for
the gold 5250 and 4980 M for the silver case.
To compare, the ref 1832, the Jumbo Ingenieur had a list price of 2950 DM.
The moonphase is made with Adventurine, which gives a sparkling effect, very
difficult to capture on pcture, so I made a few pictures and a small movie.
The 5250 came with two kind of hands
Regards,
