I recently bought this Illinois 18 size pocket watch in a display case. I have never seen one of these 18 Size, fully marked "ILLINOIS WATCH Co. SPRINGFIELD" display cases before. It has the serial number of 7420 stamped into the case body. Both bezels have the Roman Numerals VII IV II X hand written (scratched) into the inner edge, so all of the numbers do match.

My question for the Illinois collectors: Is this a scarce or maybe even rare display case, or is it common and I just haven't seen one of these before?

Thanks in advance for any answers that you post here.

Phil,

I would not go as far as to call these rare, but the 18's Illinois cases are fairly scarce when compared to most of the other marked cases.

Nice find.

Agree completely with what Rhett said, and would add that the 12 size Illinois marked display case is also not an easy find. You will run across a good number of 16 size for each 18 or 12 size Illinois display case you see.

Fred

A-men...

I was fortunate to see the 12 size case Bernie Levine has at Ft. Mitchell... a first for me..

and concur with the consus thus far... you will see many many more 16s Illinois display cases than the 18s cases...

One thing to look out for on the 16s, is there were some made for the Getty models, and then some for the model 9 movements....

different lever locations, and believe some had a plain case ring, and others were reeded, and the signature varied also.