The serial number on the watch works, called the 'movement', can be used to look up production information on watches made by the Elgin National Watch Company. Note that the numbers on any part of the watch case, such as a serial number on the inside of the back cover, is a number that goes with the watch case only, and reveals nothing about. On your pocket watch you should see two serial numbers, one on the case and one on the inner movement of the watch. To determine the year that your Elgin.
- Elgin Pocket Watch Case Serial Number Lookup Free
- Elgin Database Serial Number Lookup
- Elgin Pocket Watch Serial Numbers
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Look up your Elgin watch serial number using this easy online database!
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The National Watch Company, later known as the Elgin National Watch Company, was founded at the end of the Civil War, in 1864, in Elgin, Illinois. The company's first model was a large, 18 size, movement priced at $117, which was a high price for that time. Between 1867 and sometime in the 1960s when domestic manufacturing tappered off, Elgin made 10s of millions of pocket and wrist watches. The Elgin National Watch Company went completely out of business in 1968. Even though it had been, for a time, one of the largest industrial concerns in the world, today many people have no idea that America was once the world leader in quality timepieces.
Find out more about the Elgin National Watch Company hereElgin Pocket Watch Case Serial Number Lookup Free
Learn About Your Vintage Elgin Watch
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Using this site you can learn a good deal about your antique Elgin timepiece. The serial number on the watch works, called the 'movement', can be used to look up production information on watches made by the Elgin National Watch Company. Note that the numbers on any part of the watch case, such as a serial number on the inside of the back cover, is a number that goes with the watch case only, and reveals nothing about the watch movement. Elgin did not make pocketwatch cases. The watches were sold as bare movements only. Customers selected their watch cases separately at the retail shop, so the important number is inside on the mechanical part of the watch. Enter your watch movement's serial number and click 'Search' to lookup the watch.
Elgin watch serial numbers begin with their earliest watch, number 101, a B. W. Raymond model made in 1867, and range up to just over 50,000,000. Some later serial numbers begin with a single letter. If you have one of these, check here for more information. In the later years, Elgin sold imported movements, mostly Swiss. Many of these are not marked with a serial number and so less can be said about those individual pieces. Some later grade without a serial number are marked with a grade number though. If you know the grade of your watch, look it up here!
This database contains less information on later models, but updates and corrections are added all the time so it is getting better and better.
Our knowledge today of the year of manufacture of Elgin movements is quite good, but still should be taken with a grain of salt. There is conflicting information on many details. Also, Elgin frequently made, and numbered, plates which were stocked for later use - sometimes years later. The information presented here is frequently updated with notes on exceptions, anomolies, private labels and details of specific movements.
Elgin National Watch Company
In the spring of 1864 half a dozen ambitious Chicago businessmen decided that if Massachusetts could build a factory that built watches – Illinois could, too. Harper’s magazine summed their sentiment perfectly: “It was the genuine, audacious, self-reliant Western spirit.” By August of that year this consortium, including then-Chicago mayor Benjamin W. Raymond, purchased an abandoned farm 30 miles north of Chicago and built a watch factory there. After a year of designing and building the lathes and machines to achieve seemingly impossible levels of precision, a team of watchmakers and mechanical engineers produced their first pocket watch movement, named for mayor “B.W. Raymond.” The watch was exquisite: Elgin National Watch Company was born.
Elgin Database Serial Number Lookup
By 1910, word of Elgin’s obsession with precision had spread around the world. Elgin engineers built their own Observatory to maintain scientifically precise times in their watches. Later, their accurate “wristlet” watches proved to be vital to the WWI war effort, helping to fuel a craze back in the states for something called “The Wrist Watch.” By the opulent Jazz Age, if you weren’t displaying the exuberant symmetry of an Elgin wrist watch or carrying a svelte, distinctive Elgin pocket watch, then who were you? Elgin had helped define the American pocket watch as unsurpassed in “Railroad Accuracy.” By 1930, the post Civil War dream factory imagined by a handful of American entrepreneurs had produced 32 million “time machines.”
During World War II, all civilian manufacturing was halted and the company moved into the defense industry, manufacturing military watches, chronometers, fuses for artillery shells, altimeters and other aircraft instruments and sapphire bearings used for aiming cannons.
While their altruism was vital to the war effort, Elgin’s patriotism ironically opened an opportunity for the Swiss. By 1964, after a Mid-Century decade that saw the rise of the elite “Lord and Lady Elgin” series, the original Elgin factory closed. Over the course of a century, the dream factory just north of Chicago had produced half of all jeweled pocket and wristwatches manufactured in the United States.
The legendary Elgin watch has become woven into the fabric of America:
Elgin Pocket Watch Serial Numbers
- Robert Johnson, pre-eminent Delta bluesman, sang “She’s got Elgin movements from her head down to her toes” in his 1936 recording of “Walkin’ Blues”.
- NBA Hall of Famer Elgin Baylor was named after the Elgin National Watch Company.
- Daniel Beard’s sketches of an angel at the end of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court are based on the Elgin National Watch Company’s logo.
- The Steeleye Span album Bloody Men contains a track titled “Lord Elgin”: ostensibly a love song, it is, in fact, about the Lord Elgin Watch.
- Elgin Watch Company is referenced in the video game L.A. Noire, which takes place in post-World War II Los Angeles.