Here is a ad from 1899 for Ball Watch Company in which they show the 0 size Ball Queen ..they show in the ad four Dainty little Queens B of L.E. etc. 4 different ones...has anyone ever saw one of these..i would think these are a rare item..
Ball Queens are very interesting, for some reason they made them in both 16 and 17-Jewel, in fact there were mixed runs with both configurations. Some of both jewel-counts are marked "Adjusted" and a few 17-Jewel versions display sun-ray damaskeening. Some had Brotherhood dials and there were a very few genuine Open-Faced Queens. My understanding is these were all produced by Waltham to Ball Watch Company specifications. I do not think the example on eBay had a multicolored signature on the dial. Ball Queens were produced as early as 1896 and apparently by 1904 production had ceased, but they were sold for many years later
Like everything that Webb C. Ball touched these little "Rail-Road Queens" are a fascinating part of the story. The hands shown on this and the next one are the more desirable style to most collectors.
16-Jewels Adjusted, B. of R. T. Queen 7777402 c. 1896...
Posts: 10553 | Location: Northeastern Ohio in the USA | Registered: November 19, 2002
Thanks Lindell for the info and for the pictures...I was looking through some old books for some information on a South-Bend watch and came across this add..,,I had never saw a Ball Queen and did not know they came with the brotherhood marked dials and movements..most of the time i dont look at the small pocket watches but i will from now on..
I bought one a little over a year ago. I have a weakness for gold-hunters of any kind and this one was in especially good shape. That and the fact that it was a Ball, that I'd never seen....
In my database, I have it as 19 Jewels but I am willing to stand corrected and correct the data.
My specimen has a very unfortunate repair to the dial, otherwise I might call it "mint" whatever that means!
Posts: 986 | Location: Flagstaff, Arizona USA | Registered: June 19, 2005
Peter's watch B056925 is from an Adjusted 17-Jewel mixed run of both RR Queens and Railroad Brotherhood Queen movements. Interestingly I have B056959 in my collection which is also a Solid-Gold Cased RR Queen from that very same 1901 run of 500 movements as Peter's watch.
There were also earlier 16 and 17-Jewel Unadjusted Open-Face and Hunter-Case movements. Those 0-size movements were based upon Waltham's "1891 Models" which were produced without exposed winding wheels unlike the later watches shown above in this topic.
Posts: 10553 | Location: Northeastern Ohio in the USA | Registered: November 19, 2002
I do not recall having come across or knowing of a marked as Brotherhood Queen movement, my understanding is the dial and hands are what would make a Queen qualify as a Brotherhood watch. I do not claim to be expert on this in fact I'm not sure anyone really is. The movement number information can be confusing since they were produced in "mixed runs" and for that reason with Ball Watches so-called "variants" are almost the norm and oddities are possible.
Perhaps the 19-Jewel listing we find in reference books is a fallacy. One could also question if there were "Ball-Model" cases for these. Actually the "Ball-Model" case marking became common after the Ball Queen production era. A few Queen movements ended up cased as wristwatches such as the one I shared earlier in this topic. That dial is marked as "Ball Watch Company, Cleveland" which is a dial we find on many hunter-cased Queens.
Like I said above, this is often confusing.
Lindell
Posts: 10553 | Location: Northeastern Ohio in the USA | Registered: November 19, 2002
Came across this EB item that is closed. Ball queen serial number B642437. Look up at Lin post from July 20th 2005 08:42. He has B642434. Wow three numbers different.
Keith
Posts: 856 | Location: North Ridgeville, Ohio USA | Registered: November 19, 2002
