I have an Illinois pockets watch#3869277. I believe it is one of only 50 produced with aluminun movements. Any information, including value, would be appreciated.

That is a 12s, 17J, Grade 525 Aluminum Movement, signed "The Marquis", part of the first and only 50 ALUMINUM plate OF movements ever made(1921)! In 1923 2400 Marquis were made with nickel plates.

It should be factory cased. Since there is only one mention of this and that is in the data disc, these must have been thought to be extinct. It is therefore priceless!

How about some pictures!

George you have a really rare watch. It is a museum piece. I know there was another company Kelly? that tried aluminum watches but does anyone know of another aluminum watch maker? I always assumed the aluminum was harder to work with or subject to temperature variations but why was it not used for plates etc?

Deacon-

Rockford experimented with it at some point too if i remember correctly. a couple years ago one of the "prototype" aluminum Rockford movements showed up on ebay and brought a handsome sum in the low 4 digits? It was a standard 18s full plate model for Rockford, just made in aluminum.

Thanks,

Jared

George, the file Tom shows underscores the rarity of your watch. In fact it may be the only one known, and if it has an aluminum case, it is truly XXXXXXXXXX star rare! I took a camera "screen shot" of the"Production" tab shown in Toms screen shot above (tom how do you do a screen shot of a blocked file?)

The "Production" shows exactly what I am talking about regarding the first fifty being the ONLY Aluminum movements;

Here is my aluminium-cased V&C with a nearly all aluminium movement.

Back

Movement. The entire watch weighs 21 grams, less than half a similarly sized watch normally would weigh. It feels like an empty watch case.

quote:

tom how do you do a screen shot of a blocked file?

Dave: Windows 7 has a "snipping tool" that allows me to take screenshots of selected areas.

Oh . . . I am still learning XP after 12 years. Guess it'll have to wait.

You dont have much time left Dave, XP is scheduled to be obsolete in April 2014. After that no more security patches, It will be virus city soon after that.