A 14k Gold Watch!

[CPT_GhostLight]

Wow, SwiftSword, that is a beautiful find! It's a proverbial retirement gold watch, well done indeed!

 

 

[rvpopeye]

Beauty !👍

[NCtoad]

Hell Yeah!   What a great find!

[Againstmywill]

https://pocketwatchdatabase.com/search/result/e.-howard-co/234532/link

Looks like the movement and case have separate serial numbers. Looks like a rabbit hole for sure!

 

[SwiftSword]

23 hours ago, JCR said:

Can you trace it back to a past owner of the property?

I'm trying! The last initial, R, matches with the family that would have lived there at the time. However, I can't find any member of the family who would have been an adult in 1928 with the first names F. A. 
 

It may have been a member of the extended family that I'm yet to discover. Or I'm barking up the wrong tree entirely: The farm was used for an unrelated business with lots of traffic starting in the 1950s. So it could have belonged to a customer.

There are no less than seven service marks in the lid, one of them in form of a date: 7/14/40. Whoever F. A. R. was, they wore and cared for this watch for decades.

I have thought of restoring the watch, but that would entail significant expense, so I think I'll just clean it up as best I can and preserve it. 

[SwiftSword]

3 hours ago, Againstmywill said:

movement and case have separate serial numbers

Indeed! But unlike the movement serials, which were published liberally to assist watchmakers with repairs, the case serials were purely internal, and very few records survive. 

[Compass]

Beautiful! Congrats on a find that is a bucket-lister for many (most) of us! 😮