I can't find info on the Ball Illinois 16sz as to help date them.

Were they made just from 1929 to 1934 ?

Can we pin them down fairly accurately ?? I believe the ranges to be B800,001 to B803,700.

Any help will be much appreciated.

regards,
bb

The price guide shows 1929-1932, Townsend's RR watch book has no dates and the Blue book suggests 1929-1935 for both 23 Jewel 16s Illinois Ball Movements of s/n B800,001 - B803,500. The Blue Book also comments that many fewer were made than the serial numbers suggest and these could have been assigned a Grade 810 by Illinois W.Co.

Furthermore, the Blue book gives considerable discussion about the variations of the Grade 810.

Illinois_Ball.PDF (121 Kb, 230 downloads)

OK- Thanks David. I was hoping to really be able to narrow it down as to specific dates to specific serial numbers. I think that is going to be next to impossible and all we can do is to do the math and say a B801,750 [1/2 of total production]would be "about" 1932 or so !! I guess we will have to live with that........

Thank goodness they didn't have a 10 or 20 year run, then it would be even harder to narrow it down and be anywhere close to predicting the correct production date

regards,
bb

Buster, part of the problem could be the serious cramp in sales brought on by the depression plus the fact that Illinois watch production had been turned over to Hamilton Ownership and management in 1927 which is before this production started. So how many were actually delivered?