William F. (Bill) Meggers Jr.
HOW TO USE THE
EA-NUMBERED MODEL IDENTIFICATION DRAWINGS & PICTURES
The primary purpose of the EA and ES Diagrams is to take the guesswork out of American (EA) and Swiss Imitation American (ES) pocket watch identification. Such identification is of vital importance to every serious watch collector. However, the process is often puzzling and frustrating, particularly to the beginner, because of incomplete and often incorrect information which has appeared in some existing price guides, as well as the widespread practice of the watch industry to make watches with custom markings and even customized movement plate shapes for many of their private label customers. Seasoned collectors usually are not bothered by these variations because they have learned to recognize the plate shapes that are unique to each company. But the beginner often needs help when he finds a watch that is marked simply: "Made expressly for Adolf Michaal" or one which is marked just with a monogram and has peculiarly shaped plates. Here for the first time is a system which provides that help.
1. Open your watch case to expose the back plates of the movement and read or write down all the words and numbers that appear on the movement except for such common markings as "Fast", "Slow", "Patent Pinion", etc. but be sure to note the number of jewels, adjustment markings and "double roller" if these are present. Usually these markings are on the upper surface of the plates or bridges but occasionally they will by found under the balance wheel or between the bridges so be sure to look everywhere.
2. Next, unless the word, Swiss, is marked on the movement, or you have good reason to think the movement may be a Swiss imitation of an American movement, go to the EA-NUMBERED MODEL IDENTIFICATION DRAWINGS & PICTURES (otherwise, go to the ES-NUMBERED MODEL IDENTIFICATION DRAWINGS & PICTURES) and use the following procedure. Find the drawing that most closely resembles your watch movement by examining the drawing or pictures to see if the arrangement and shapes of the various plates and bridges corresponds exactly to those on your watch.
3. The drawings and pictures are all arranged with the winding pinion at 12 o'clock, so if your watch is stemwind, hold it with the pendant straight up, pointed to the top of the page as you match it with an EA-NUMBERED DRAWING or PICTURE. Keywind movements are always shown as if they were in a hunting case with the pendant positioned at 3 o'clock on the movement's dial. Therefore, the fourth wheel, which carries the seconds hand, will be at 9 o'clock when the movement is viewed from the back. If you are identifying a keywind watch that is in an open-face case you will have to turn it so that the pendant is pointing to the right (3 o’clock) as you compare it to the EA or ES-NUMBERED DRAWINGS & PICTURES. Otherwise, hold it as before with the pendant straight up. For American watches the engraved or stamped markings and the style or regulator on your movement may be different from those shown in the drawing but the shapes of the plates and bridges must be the same. If they are, you have positively identified your watch as to manufacturer and model number. For Swiss Imitation American movements the engraved or stamped markings must be the same as those on your movement for positive identification.
4. For American watches, having found a DRAWING or PICTURE that matches your watch, your next step depends on whether the manufacturer shown under that DRAWING or PICTURE is one of those for whom detailed serial number-grade listings are available i.e., American (Waltham), Ball, Elgin, Hamilton, Illinois, Rockford, Seth Thomas, South Bend, & United States at Marion. If your watch was made by one of these companies and you have access to their serial number-grade listing (NAWCC lending library or one of the horological book sellers) then you can look up the serial number of your watch in that listing and determine its other characteristics such as age, number of jewels, model, adjustments, etc.
5. If no serial number-grade listing is available for your watch then you will have to take the information shown under its EA-NUMBERED MODEL IDENTIFICATION DRAWING or PICTURE and consult one of the pocket watch identification books. There presently are two such books on the market and available from the NAWCC lending library: American Pocket Watches Identification and Price Guide...Beginning to End—Ehrhardt and Meggers, and Complete Price Guide to Watches—Shugart, Engle and Gilbert. Both of these books also are available from the NAWCC lending library. Using these books, you should be able to further refine your identification by comparing your watch with the various listings for your manufacturer, size and model.
6.
The preceding steps will enable you to identify 99% of all
American pocket watches. However, it is possible that you will at some time
find that your watch is not identifiable by following these steps. Assuming that you have not overlooked
something, this means either that your watch has not been previously seen and
recorded by one of the researchers, or that it is not American- made. If, in searching through the EA-NUMBERED MODEL IDENTIFICATION
DRAWINGS & PICTURES, you were able to find one for the same size movement
that very closely resembles your watch then you can arrive at an approximate
value, at least, by finding a corresponding listing for that DRAWING or PICTURE
that also closely matches your watch.
If none of the EA-NUMBERED MODEL IDENTIFICATION DRAWINGS or PICTURES
resemble your watch then in all likelihood it is foreign-made.
If you want to know the approximate age of your watch, look up the movement serial number in the production date table that appears at the beginning of each watch manufacturer's EA-NUMBERED MODEL IDENTIFICATION DRAWINGS or PICTURES. No information is available on watch case serial numbers.
A word of caution is necessary. The possibility of making a wrong identification always exists and nothing dampens a collector's enthusiasm quite so much as the discovery (too late) that he has failed to buy or sold too cheaply a rare watch that he thought was a common one. In this regard the old Chinese proverb, "One picture is worth more than ten-thousand words" certainly applies, but it is a practical impossibility to include pictures of all the rare watches in this database and most of the time a written description is adequate. Nevertheless, you should always recheck your identification to make certain that ALL the particulars of the written description and EA DRAWING agree with those of your watch and if the description includes a reference to a picture in another source you owe it to yourself to look at that illustration too.