Hi all,
I'm looking for a case that would fit and be correct for an Elgin Gr. 149.
I have not received the watch yet, but it is not in a hunter case, and should be replaced. The watch was made in 1895. Does anyone know if this will be a hard one to find ?
Thanks for any info,
Bill

Bill the 149 does not take a special case and any longer stem hunter will work just fine. A good 18s hunter case tends to be a bit on the pricey side for one that is not brassed out, dented, or has bad hinges.

Claude,
Thanks for the quick response.
I was not sure if there was a special case, so I will keep my eyes open. Maybe I can find a clean silveroid/silverine case for a decent price.
Thanks,
Bill

Bill the 149 is the mate to the 150 so the style of case would be the same, no later short/no stem cases and certainly for the earlier runs a nice box hinge would certainly be appropiate. I have mine in a boxed hinge and I have my 348's in typical french bow long stem case. You have the same situation with the 149 as the 150 which means the first run was a mix of 20 jewel and the later part of the first run 21 jewels. Some of the later 149's were converted over to 348's which show up with the 12M serial number range, these have the DMK effect of the 149 but are marked as a 348. These are very nice high end movements.

Hi Claude,
this one has a serial number of 6361053 which seems to be the first run, so do not know yet whether 20 or 21j. I also do not know whether it is marked 149 or not, so wait with anxious breath for its arrival.
Thanks,
Bill

Bill the Elgin yellow book shows the 1st run from 6,348,xxx-6,349,xxx with the 1st run 150 from 6,349,001-6,350,000 so I am pretty sure you 149 is not a 20j version. The 149s are either not marked or marked "Father Time" and the switch over to FT markings were in the 7M range. So you appear to be after the 1st run and before the Father Time markings.

149 with no markings

Thanks Claude, I was obviously reading the Elgin info wrong. But none the less it looks like a great movement and will go well with my collection of 150's etc.
Bill

Bill I looked and the Elgin site if you enter g=149 v=49 shows the same first run serial numbers and then shows a second run of 2000 from 6,360,001-6,362,000 so yours appears to be just a bit past mid-way of the 2nd run so it would be 21 jewels and not marked Father Time, much like the one I posted which is from the 3rd run.

Hi all,
I just received the Gr. 149 I bought, and was wondering if all the Gr. 149's were lever set,as this one is,seeing as the Gr. 150's I have are both pendant set from the same era ?
Bill

No all 149s are lever sets and all 150's are pendant set. Some call the conversion full plate Elgins, 150s but there is more than enough evidence to show that not only did Elgin convert movements in the 150 serial number range to lever sets and later properly documented most of these as grade 277's but did this with other 17j pendant set grades. The pendant set 17j grade 184 was converted to the lever set 273 and the runs selected for conversion were not always sequential which is also true of the grade 277 where it almost looked like Elgin saw what was still left in inventory and grabbed what they needed to convert. The other converted pendant set 150s to grade 277 lever sets might have been documented at one time but some of those notes could have been lost. Another example of this is when Elgin up-jeweled the grade 166 which was its big dog 17j lever set but the up-jeweled versions were called grade 266's and the serial number range fell into the same range as the other 166's but were changed to 21j 266s. Another example is the Elgin grade 165 PS converted to the 265 LS, 283 LS converted from 148 PS.

Hi Claude,
It makes it about as clear as mud tho, one would have thought that to stay abreast of RR requirements that they would have made lever sets in the 150's as well as the 149's, same everything else.
Also were all the 149's actually hunters from the factory or were they case by the jeweler ?
Thanks,
Bill

As far as I know I have the only lever set that came from the grade 150 serial number range that shows no signs at of every being a pendant set all others are converted and show signs that they were orignally a pendant set and later converted to lever sets. At this time most movements were not cased at the factory but cased at the point of sale (jeweler). On the 150's did Elgin show a tendency to regrade movements if they were converted if so, easily seen from the examples I gave to say they are lever set 150 runs a bit counter to how Elgin historically operated. If someone says that all of the converted lever sets that came from the 150 serial number range should have been documented in the factory records (most are) is saying that Elgin's factory records are 100% complete and 100% accurate which I think is not the case in both cases.