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Election watch / case dating

435 views 7 replies 5 participants last post by  Habitant 
#1 ·
I bought an Election gold cased watch recently and I'm a bit puzzled about the dating of it. According to Dr Ranfft's archive, the calibre 415 was typically from around 1940. But the date code in the case suggests that the case was made in 1931. That's quite a difference. Does anyone have any take on this age discrepancy?

Case marks are: "ff," a crown, "18," and an assay office mark of three bushels with a sword, which denotes the Chester assay office. If this last is correct, then the "ff" date code for Chester is 1931. The crown mark and the "18" denote the fineness of the gold, in this case, 18K. The case was made by Smith and Ewen, Birmingham.

The dial is marked shockproof and there's (I presume) an interesting external anti-shock device over the regulator, not a device I've seen before, although no doubt some here have.

Thoughts on date?

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#2 ·
The movement looks like in-house Election 645 or derivative. Ranfft indicates these movement were made mid 1945 but my guess is that your movement was made earlier - late 1920's to mid 1930's. s. Note - cap jewel spring on Roland's site is not original (as stated there)
 
#4 ·
My reading of the Ranfft entry for the cal 645 is that the particular example shown on the page is from ca. 1945. Some pages have information about production dates, but not that page in particular. Each page shows one or more examples, which are dated, but they don't necessarily represent any particular period of production. So just because he shows an example from 1945 doesn't mean that the movement wasn't in production earlier.
 
#5 ·
Yep, I take your point. My broader question was to the issue of the start date of production. Election, of course, no longer exists and there's not much info out there on the internet. I presume that the movement must date from around 1930-32 to allow for it to match up with the date code....
 
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