I have my great-great grandfather’s pocket watch. It’s an Omega and going by the serial number (18xxxxx), dates from about 1900 (plus or minus). I’ve seen gold ones from slightly later on sale for £200 or or so but this is plain metal. It’s not rusted. I therefore presume this one is not of great value. Am I correct, or are such early Omegas really valuable?
Curiously, the 8 of the serial no is placed slightly lower than the rest of the numbers. Almost subscripted, but full size. And below the serial no, on its own, there’s a 5. Does that have any significance?
Yes, I only linked to that one because it was a particularly nice picture. Still, it’s nice to have it confirmed that I’ve not been wandering round with something worth a million or two.
Can you advise on the significance of the positioning of the 5 and the 8?
Omega is one of the few watch companies with meticulous records of all its watches. If you e-mail them with the serial number (you can search the Omega web site to find the correct address) they can provide you with their records. It can take a long time for them to finally get to your request, but when they do, you’ll get back an e-mail like the one I got:
Dear Sir,
from our archives , we have the following information:
OMEGA - gents’ wrist watch - for leather strap 18mm lug-size
International collection SEAMASTER
Mvt N° *********
automatic rotor movement of caliber 351 - 17 jewels (former cal. 28,10 RA SC )
case diameter : 34 mm, bezel opening 27 mm
manufactured and delivered to our agents in Venezuela, September 12, 1951
Those old pocket watches are beautiful, but not tremendously valuable (if it were a Patek, well, then you might need to worry about buying insurance). If you have a good picture of it, you can visit the vintage forum at TimeZone.com and get a lot of good information on it. If you do visit, you may want to change your user name.
If you want to get an idea of the value of watches, you might browse www.coolvintagewatches.com. You can search for Omegas, although they normally don’t have something quite that old (every once in a while though).
The standard pocket watch/wrist watch price guide in the US, Gilbert/Shugart has a pretty good handle on many brands. We buy one every December, when it’s issued. Almost all US pocket watches, and many wrist watch makers have a list of their movement numbers/date of production. Not saying all, but very useful.