First off, Happy New Year to all of my IHC185 friends!

My question... When did Elgin go from gilt movements to the damaskeened nickel movements? Does anyone know what year and approximately what serial number that would be?

Thanks for any help and or comments..

Bruce, I have always assumed that the transition from Gilt to Nickel Plates started out as a grade improvement and both were made simultaneously. Much later the Gilt plates stopped entirely.

For Elgin you would have to look at the mid-1890's with the introduction of the 20/21j grade 149/150 since these were Elgin's top grade and were not introduced with a gilt alternative. Some of the other grades like GMW in the 17 jewel would have a nickel or gilt version but I can't think of any other of Elgin's high end movements that were gilt or had a gilt version starting with grades 149/150 or later (for 16 or 18 sizes). It appears that with the advent of these top line movements that Elgin made the gilt movements that were produced after 1895 to lower end 7-17j versions. For the 18s gilt movements were made into the early 300 grades and for the 16s gilt movements were made into the mid 300 grades.

I forgot to mention that to try to set a definite date would be a bit hard. Clearly with the higher end movements Elgin saw no market for a gilt version by the mid 1890, maybe even a bit before the 149/150 grades were released. This is probably a result of Elgin's marketing analysis where they felt that their customers liked nickel with DMK design work over the typical gilt look with standard engraving.

With all the effects that could be created with nickel ended up making the gilt look more like a low cost option which is why gilt style movements ended up on lower cost movements.

Claude, thanks for the info.. The watch I'm enquiring about is a grade 87 that dates to about 1879. It's a kw/ks. The plates are plain nickel with a single circular damaskeen pattern. I know there were 5000 made. I'm just curious if this model was one of the first to use nickel plates..

Just curious

No, the Elgin guide book shows grades 4 and 5 as nickel, 4 was a 16 size and 5 was an 18 size. Then the next 18s is the grade 27,33, 43-44, so there were plenty 18s grades that used nickel plates prior to the grade 87.