May be I'm wrong, but pretending this is a military marking for a stopwatch is a bit too far. I think that they simply damaged an otherwise nice stopwatch. May I have your opinions about ?
Posts: 277 | Location: Cardano al Campo in Italy | Registered: March 29, 2008
Hi Greg. In any case I think that they tried very rougly to punch the Admiralty way for crowfoot, but the forgot that Admiralty had always straight lines and a rather careful punching: Army and Air Force were quite more relaxed at that, as far as I have seen. May I have your opinion ? BTW from the age it should have even NATO codes ...
Posts: 277 | Location: Cardano al Campo in Italy | Registered: March 29, 2008
My first impression is that this is a fake and that an otherwise nice case has been damaged with it. The carving is unsteady and unlike any other Navy crow's foot I have seen.
Posts: 874 | Location: Baltimore, Maryland USA | Registered: September 20, 2004
Jim, Greg thanks for your thoughts. I wonder why Admiralty was more careful than other branches of British Army. It could be very British if all came from some harsh remarks by admiral X to Chatham Commissioner in 17XX ... may be sooner or later a piece of paper will come out and tell the story
Have a nice day
Posts: 277 | Location: Cardano al Campo in Italy | Registered: March 29, 2008
There seem to be a number of watch sellers in some eastern European countries and southeast Asian countries that are making quite an industry of taking large numbers of old civilian pocket watches and wrist watches and adding fake military markings to them, then selling them on Ebay and in other places as military timepieces to obtain higher prices for them. I do not know if this is one of those, but it reminds me of ones that I see from some of those sellers.
Posts: 874 | Location: Baltimore, Maryland USA | Registered: September 20, 2004
Yes, Jim, and this situation is becoming increasingly difficult because they use watchsmiths, qualified people, to make forgeries. The only way to defend yourself is to play on their ignorance of details: thay make things horologically looking alike, and reasonable, but, luckily, historically wrong. I have seen a nice Longines of late twenties told to be "a prize to an officer given by the Tzar himself" and having a huge, complicate thing pasted on the back of the case with an eagle and cyrillic lettering. The point is that the Tzar abdicated in 1917 and by the time of manufacture of the watch was dead since a few years, and the eagle had only one. head.If you know tzarist Russia history, that thing is simply a ruined nice Longines, if not you're going to overpay (12 or 15 hundreds) a 3-4 hundreds good Longines, and a spoiled one. I am most worried by this kind of junk.
Posts: 277 | Location: Cardano al Campo in Italy | Registered: March 29, 2008
All too true about the fakes. At times I would like to point out the obvious errors in these fakes. But forgers are learning from forums like this one and I see no need to educate them in ways to make better fakes.
Posts: 2017 | Location: East Lansing, Michigan USA | Registered: November 24, 2002
You are too right, Greg, they learn fast. But there is one more point to be considered: making fakes gives profit if people buy them, and if the profit goes down and costs up because people become more cautious and so more work & research is needed, you throw handfuls of sand into the mechanism. My question is whether is more damaging to fake business to show it conspicously and make people as aware as possible about or to ignore it and thus not give hints to fake-makers. In any case, I think, in any case, that the goal, among others more pleasant, is to try to make fake-makers life as hard as possible, and I am hope many collectors share my opinion.Ther question is how ...
Posts: 277 | Location: Cardano al Campo in Italy | Registered: March 29, 2008