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Welcome Aboard IHC185™ Internet Horology Club 185 IHC185™ Discussion Site Main Page Horological Discussions, Questions and Answers Pocket Watch Discussions 18s Ball-Elgin hunter ~ ever seen one?
Internet Horology Club 185 IHC185™ Discussion Site Main Page Horological Discussions, Questions and Answers Pocket Watch Discussions 18s Ball-Elgin hunter ~ ever seen one?Go | New Topic | Find-Or-Search | Notify | Tools | Reply to Post | |
This has been one of my more exciting finds as of late. I thought I would share it with the group. It's a first for me. I have never seen one before. It's a 18s Ball-Elgin #333 in a hunter case.  | |||
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Beautiful hunter case with no monograms.  | ||||
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Both back & the front are the same. very little wear. Details are still sharp & crisp.  | ||||
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Handsome watch...  | ||||
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Inner dust cover is free from any presentation engraving.  | ||||
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Keystone J. Boss. 14k gold filled case  | ||||
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Everything is tight including bow, covers open 90 degrees.  | ||||
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18s Elgin #333 17 jewel movement. This watch will be part of my fall auctions. Anyone know anything about these scarce Ball Hunters? Thanks, Jim  | ||||
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Beautiful watch, Jim. I'll keep an eye open for it come auction time. Eric | ||||
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| IHC Member 1101 Site Moderator  |
Jim, Very unusual and attractive watch there. You are not boring me....I love seeing beautiful rare timepieces. Keep them coming as far as I'm concerned. Steve | |||
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| IHC President Life Member  |
This is a rare animal.  Thanks to Jim for sharing it.From what we can find, less than 200 of the 17-Jewel and likely less than a tenth that many of the 21-Jewel Ball-Elgin Hunters are thought to have been produced. Watches like this tend to define "rarity" in our hobby! Lindell  | |||
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Just a great hard to get watch, what a beauty !! Bill | ||||
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Hi All, Elgins being my "Pet" watch, I just had to look this one up for additional information, and I found some different information, so we may need to check this out a little further. The Name 333 is an unusual one, but the Elgin records show some things that make it complicated to figure out. Thank goodness for Wayne's site, because we get to put it all together in a way that helps a lot. If you check out the NAME 333, with the link below, you will see what I mean. GRADING makes this confusing, but seems there are more of these than what has been known before. The grades are 327, 328, 329, 330, 332, 333, 334. Even the models are 10, 11, and 12 more confusion. It seems total produced was 11,000 or thereabouts. ALL were marked as being made for the Ball Watch Co. Check it out here. http://elginwatches.org/cgi-bi...%3D333&action=search Sheila | |||
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Hello Sheila, I think you are missing what is rare about this watch. To say 11,000 produced would be misleading. The fact it is a 18s 17j Ball-Elgin HUNTER CASE makes this rare. The open face is more common. It seems that the 17j hunter is the rarest of these watches. Less were produced than the 21 j models. Talking to Lindell, he has informed me that Ball blocked 1000 serial numbers for this run. But the highest serial number known to exist in this model run is below 200 and no serial number above 200 has been recorded. This has lead some to believe that possibly only 200 were produced & not the 1000 that were blocked for this run. If one reads the chart below they will notice that this run was produced during one year, 1904 and never again. Serial Number SN Range Quanty Name Year grade size code jewels Adj/reg/etc. -------------- -------- ------ ---- ---- ----- ---- ------ ------ ------------ 11958014 11958001 1000 333 1904 329* 18s hfn10l 17j ? j only run of grade 329; 14 of 1000 in grade; 2014 of 10th model in 18s grade total runs first yr last yr class size code jewels Adj/name ----- ----- ----- -------- ------- ----- ---- ------ ------ ---------- 329 1000 1 1904 1904 119 18s hfn10l 17j ? / 333 (*) notes on grade 329: # Made for Ball Watch Co Class 119: 18s HC fp lever model 10 329 1000 made 17j ? Marked 333. Made for Ball Watch Co 330 1000 made 21j Adj Marked 333. Made for Ball Watch Co marked "333" on mvt(?) | ||||
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IHC Life Member  |
James, You have a beautiful and rare watch indeed!!, and since Elgin is my favorite watch brand of all, for many reasons, I certainly will be watching for this watch to come up. Some folks have all the luck and others just get to watch....pun intended... Thanks for sharing this one with us. Jerry | |||
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James, I'm sorry, I see now that it looks like I was saying that I didn't agree, but I DO! I only mean that I (me) could use some more information about this watch and others like it. Elgin's are my passion, and I love to know everything I can about them. I certainly trust what the pro's have to say about them, and they know that I'm limited when it comes to knowing the in's and out's of any watch. I was confused about it, when there is so much more to understand. The jewel counts, the different grades, and all being a 333. That's really IS unusual to me, and I want more information if anyone has more. One name 333, different grades, different model numbers, and jewel counts, so like I said, confusing. Especially the 11,000 part. I trust those here on IHC, more than what we see on any other site, so if there is more to add, I'm really interested. I will be keeping my eye out for these from now on, that's for sure. She sure is a Gorgeous watch!!! Sheila | |||
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No problem Sheila. It's very easy to get confused. Lindell has been of great help playing detective for me. Maybe Lindell could post his thoughts on this scarce timepiece for all to read & learn. Best, Jim PS. you are right, she sure is gorgeous! Even nicer in person... | ||||
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| IHC Vice President Pitfalls Moderator IHC Life Member  |
Beautiful watch Jim. Interesting that the plates are gilt. Ehrhardt's book says they should be nickel, but there it is! Best Regards, Ed | |||
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| IHC President Life Member |
Let's clear a couple points... Ed, those are nicked plates, my feeling is what you are seeing can be attributed to a combination of reflections and other issues. It looks to me like there may be some dulling-down or etching from the movement having spent too much time in watchmaker's cleaning solution. I have seen some that have then been rubbed to try and minimize the etching, but usually anything like that only makes it worse. Once a nickeled movement is dull, that is probably how they will always be, I doubt there is an acceptable cure unless someone has tried plating experiments. Frankly we can forgive less than perfect on a watch this rare. About those number designations... Ball considered all of the Ball-Elgin Official RR Standards to be their model "333" and had the movements marked as such. But, here's the sticking point, Elgin only considered the Ball-Elgin 17-Jewel Open-Face to be the 333 and assigned 334 to the Open-Face 21-Jewel examples. On the Hunters Elgin used 329 for the 17-Jewel and 330 for the 21-Jewel Hunters. Why they chose to do something so confusing is hard for us to understand today, but not really all that unusual. And now to tackle the production guesstimates... We must always keep in mind the various watch companies "blocked" or a better way to say it today might be they reserved or set-aside numbers for a given production run. With slow sellers some of the numbers blocked may take several years to produce, others were never produced. What we find are numbers blocked, such as Sheila found in this situation which can be very different from the total number made. Too many jump to the conclusion that "blocked" and "made" are the same thing. As we are seeing in this instance there are times when we are left to speculate as to the actual number produced, particularly on low production examples such as the Ball-Elgin Hunters, so now read the next paragraph. Perhaps I should add more to what Jim and I discussed this the other day... Ball collectors tend to feel there were probably no more than 200 of the 17-Jewel Hunters like Jim's watch produced, although 1,000 numbers were blocked. On the 21-Jewel Hunter only the first number of the 1,000 blocked which is 11959001 has been reported and accounted for at this time. (Ed Ueberall and Kent Singer in the Bulletin, page 481, August 2002) Based upon that scenario although 1,000 numbers were also blocked for the 21-Jewel Hunter it is certainly reasonable to speculate that perhaps as few as 10 of those may have actually been produced. (OR, COULD IT BE THERE WAS ONLY ONE??? OR NONE, I WANT TO SEE A PICTURE of the 11959001 MOVEMENT!) We really do not know how many Ball-Elgin Hunters were actually produced and quite probably never we never will. But this is why we keep data-bases and record all the numbers we can for these hard to find watches. You will notice I used the term "guesstimates" which is my way of saying GUESS + ESTIMATE = GUESSTIMATE and in watch collecting as in many other collectibles there are guesses and estimates far too often (erroneously) stated as being facts. Hope that additional information is of help, Lindell | |||
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Welcome Aboard IHC185™ Internet Horology Club 185 IHC185™ Discussion Site Main Page Horological Discussions, Questions and Answers Pocket Watch Discussions 18s Ball-Elgin hunter ~ ever seen one?
Internet Horology Club 185 IHC185™ Discussion Site Main Page Horological Discussions, Questions and Answers Pocket Watch Discussions 18s Ball-Elgin hunter ~ ever seen one?©2002-2023 Internet Horology Club 185™ - Lindell V. Riddle President - All Rights Reserved Worldwide
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