Recently I saw an auction on ebay and the seller said they could not get the back off and that the watch didn't run or set. I looked at the pictures and saw a Hampden double sunk dial and thought, hmm with the lettering style and the fact it is a double sunk I would think at the least it is a 17j watch. The case was a silveroid and wasn't beat into submission, the dial looked ok but did have some hairlines and the hands were all there and looked good.
So it arrived today, I then got some good packing tape to wrap around my hands, got the bezel to give a little (swing out case) and got the bezel off and pulled the pendant up so I could look at the movement. Well I was correct it did have 17 jewels, plus 6 more It was a nice, clean New Railway adj5p 23 jewel movement. The balance swings nicely but the mainspring is toast. Price of this bad boy, $51+shipping!!!!
Thank goodness for gummy bezels!!!!

Fantastic, you hit the jackpot on that one.

Hopefully I did not use up all of my 2011 Watch finding luck in one fell swoop.

Lets see it!

William

Don't you just love it. I was at a gun show and this guy had a key wind - key set waltham and said I want $300 for the watch but you can,t open it cause the last guy that did it cost me $75. to get it running. So I said I have a colt gun behind my back how much will you pay. He finally figured how stupid it was to try to sell something that you can really see. I Stuck out it was not a civil war era Waltham.

After some cleaning and replacing the bow.

Great looking:

Wow Claude, you may want to pick up a lottery ticket, that has to be the deal of the century! Congrats...Ted.

Thanks Ted, my first one cost me a lot more, but it is always nice to get lucky like I was with this one. Even if it was only a 17j movement it was still worth $57, but I was surprised that many collectors passed it by.

What do they say?.... the only substitute for knowledge is money. Your knowledge save you big money Claude

Mike it it had turned out to be a 7j or something I figured I could sell the hands for about $10, the dial $15-25, and the case for $20-30 and have a parts movement if needed. I got lucky, well very lucky, These full plate Hampden 23j movements are nice, the other one I have was made in 1907, this one 1908 and both are marked adjusted to 5 positions. If it had been a single sunk I doubt that I would have jumped on it.

I also lucked out on a recent gamble. I spotted a 10-size Lord Elgin in what looked like very good condition, including the original box and papers, advertised as gold-filled. The photos were terrible and there were no photos of the case markings, but I thought the style of case was one that was only made in solid gold. So I bought the "gold-filled" watch for $99. It is solid 14k gold.

Ethan I have purchase more than one watch with "fuzzy" pictures based on a hunch, and have done better more often than I have been bitten. It takes a little effort to scroll though all the listings and a bit of knowledge/research to see the pearls in with the swine. Normally I don't collect many 10/12s watches but I have a few, ands still have the one I got won from you, that one is a very elegant watch. And feel free to toss up some pics of the one you won.

Here is the dial side of my "find," showing its only apparent problem, a broken crystal.

And the back.