We have this old watch of the design worn by nurses, pinned to their clothing and having an upside-down dial so when the wearer lifts it up to see the time, the dial is right side up. I think it belonged to my grandmother (who wasn’t a nurse), but I never knew about it until long after she had died. Beginning in 1932 the Hawley-Smoot tariff made it impractical to import complete Lecoultre watches, so just the movements were imported and placed in American-manufactured cases. I think this watch is from that time, but not too much later. I’m pretty certain this wasn’t meant to be worn by a working nurse, but rather as jewelry.
The metal of the case looks perfectly bright and untarnished, but there are no hallmarks, karat marks indicating white gold, nor platinum markings. The latter are usually something like “Plat.” or “Pt”, but maybe they didn’t start using that until after this watch was made. Nor is there any visible serial number. There could be one inside the back, but I hesitate to open it, since there’s no obvious way to do that.
Another possibility might be silver plated with rhodium or a similar metal. I don’t believe it’s mere stainless steel, because the back is set with what looks like a genuine diamond. Again, this would depend on the date of manufacture, but I’m pretty sure there weren’t any decent diamond substitutes until long after this watch was made. I know, you might be thinking “zircon”, but I’m sure it isn’t that. Zircon is strongly birefringent (back facets appear doubled), and this stone isn’t. Nor does it show any of the scratches one would see in paste or crystal, or for that matter even zircon.
Here’s the front:
And the back, though the diamond or whatever it is doesn’t show up very well:
Note, the metal of the case appears considerably darker in these images than it really is.