On pg. 63 in Roy Ehrhardt's Rockford book, ther is a 1915 ad for an 18s 21 jewel "commercial" grade 215. The markings on it look like those on a 905. There seems to be no info out there on these, they aren't listed in any price guides I have seen.Anyone have one, or know anything about them? If they ever were made, they must be pretty scarce.Thanks !

Interesting advert Ted, to my knowledge mate no such thing as Grade 215, but anything is possible with the Rockfords. Holsman & Company were are large Wholesale Jewelry firm, sold all sorts of watches including the Rockford's, Seth Thomas & they had their own line of Swiss Imported watches marked the "President".

Maybe the Grade 215 and the name "Commercial" was their own spin to move the Rockford Stock. That one mentioned in their spiel, says only adjusted to Temperature, so would not have been Railroad Grade as specified in their advert. There were plenty of 18 Size movements in the later Rockford Grades while the Company was still producing prior to the failure in 1914 that only had the Temp adjustment.

They also say that it is a Open Face movement but the Advert plate-cut shown is for a Hunter movement. Also have to remember that a lot of the plate-cuts in periodicals of the day were not exactly true, I have seen a plethora of them that are incorrect not only in the description, but also the serial numbers displayed on them and the actual movement design itself over the years of researching.

Just another little tidbit on H. Holsman of the Holsman & Company Wholesale Jewelry concern, he was also elected to the position of Vice President of the New "Broadway National Bank".

Thanks for that Bila! I also noticed it showed a hunter in the ad, the other odd thing about it is the grade number, their other 18 sizes were numbered in the 8 and 9 hundreds. Too bad nobody had the foresight back then to preserve the rest of the factory records .Thanks again, Ted

I agree Tom, Rockford was extremely poor in relation to record keeping. This applies to both iterations of the Enterprise.

Pretty much all the modern Research has used the 2nd iteration of the Company's Production & parts list catalogs. Nothing wrong with this to a degree, but these should only be used by modern day Researcher's as a base starting point, as both their serial & parts lists are highly flawed.

A large lot of info out in the collecting world regarding their production is filled with discrepancies.