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The Elgin Watch Collectors SiteThis website is dedicated to helping people find out about their Elgin watches. These watches were symbols of America's emergence from an agricultural country into an industrial power. Watches are one of the few machines that were made 50 or even 150 years ago that, even today, can still be practical to use every day.
If you are a new collector, you will find answers to many frequently asked questions (FAQs) in the Watch Help section. The What is a watch? web page is a good, short, introduction to what you need to know about mechanical watches. The Documents & Picture section to be a fun place to get an idea of what Elgin was and a glimpse into the past. Advanced collectors will find the information in the Technical and Elgin Database sections to cover many details not found anywhere else, either on the Internet or in print. The Documents & Picture section contains many scans of many hard to find books. I encourage everyone to join the National Association of Watch and Clock Collectors, it is a great organization where you can learn a lot about watches and horology in general. There are also a couple of good message board systems where people get together and chat about watches. I can highly recommend TimeZone Vintage BBS, which discusses mostly vintage wrist watches, but also the occasional antique pocket watches.
A Quick History of the Elgin National Watch Company
Elgin was founded in 1864, right as the civil war was coming to
an end. The first watch Elgin made, an 18 sized B W Raymond
railroad grade watch, was finished in 1867 and over the next 100
years, they went on to produce about 60 million watches. Elgin
produced their first wristwatch around 1910, leading most other
American watch companies by many years.
Elgin was originally called the "National Watch Company". The name never really stuck and in 1874, they changed their name to the "Elgin National Watch Company" because most of the watch trade and public were calling them "watches from Elgin". They kept that name until the late 1960s when they stopped producing watches and changed their name to the "Elgin National Industries".
Elgin was founded on the idea of mass producing high quality
pocket watches using machine made, interchangeable parts. Up until
around 1850, watches were made mostly by hand, which meant that
if a part broke, you had to find someone with the tools and
skill to make a new part.
Elgin never made the very highest quality watches in the world, nor did they make the very cheapest, but together with Waltham (aka The American Watch Company), they dominated the vast middle ground of the watch market. Today, collecting Elgin watches is quite popular. Because Elgin produced so many watches and produced so many spare parts, they can still be easily bought and fixed, so even a 100 year old Elgin can be used, with care, on a daily basis. While mechanical watches can't compete with quartz watches for accuracy, there is something about having a watch that ticks that a quartz watch just can't replace.
Elgin Watch NewsIf you visit this website frequently, you may be interested in some of the things that have changed recently.
Older news can be found in the archive.
Alternative main pages: Elgin Wristwatch Elgin Wristwatches Elgin Pocketwatch Eglin Pocketwatches | ||||||||||||||||||||
Elgin realized that there was a large
market for good watches that could be sold and repaired
relatively cheaply using factory made replacement parts that
didn't require hand adjusting.