Wednesday, September 09, 2009

Odd pocket watch


Stopped by the thrift store and found a pocket watch. Was not running, but the stem felt like a handwind, and I have never seen a quartz marked "antimagnetic". Center seconds means it is more than likely a wristwatch movement in a pocket watch case, and probably a cheap one at that. Not something I particularly want in my collection, but more than likely I can get it running with a few drops of oil and make a small profit on Ebay.


When I opened it up, I found that it was indeed the cheap pinlever wristwatch movement I expected, but I also found a little circuit board, batteries, and a piezo speaker on the case back, a strange combination.

It turns out that with fresh batteries, it plays Greensleeves when opened.

There can only be a few years in the late 70's or very early 80's where this made any sense--any earlier and the electronics would be either unavailable or expensive, and much later and all the cheap wind up movements were replaced by quartz.

5 comments:

  1. _That_ is a weird doodad. Any chance it's a one-off garage tinker's job, using the board and whatever cheap watch was at hand?

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  2. I dont think it is a one-off. In general it looks cheaply engineered rather than tinkered together--the cutout places for the battery and such have plating, which would indicate it came from the factory that way, the chip is integral to the circuit board, and the board is shaped for the application.

    Plus if I was going to spend the time and effort, I would start with a better watch to begin with.

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  3. I have two of these watches, and they are both slightly different from yours. Did you get anything selling it on eBay?

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  4. I haven't done a batch of Ebay watches yet--I generally wait until I've got 10 or so, and sell in a batch.

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