Glossary: Serial Number, Grade, Model, Class, etc.
From the very beginning, Elgin was finishing and selling over 100
watches per day and were working on thousands more. So, it isn't
surprising that they needed some way of organizing and classifying
these watches to make it easier to manufacture, for marketing purposes
and for watchmakers to order parts to repair them. These three needs
overlapped, and in some cases conflicted with each other, more over,
things changed as the decades went by. The result is the somewhat
complicated and confusing set of systems we find today.
Over the years, Elgin used the following systems to classify their
watches:
- Serial Numbers, organized into "runs", such as
the run of serial numbers from 16311001-16312000 were all grade number
392 watches.
- Grade Numbers, such as 180 or 478, which were
B.W. Raymond named watches.
- Grade Names, such as the B.W. Raymond
railroader's watch, or the G.M. Wheeler gentleman's watch.
- Watch sizes and model numbers, such as 16s
model 9, which were all open face, 3/4 plate three finger bridge
models, with lever setting.
- Class numbers, such as 114, which were all
medium to low quality 12s model 3 watches.
- Other systems
If you are interested in more details on this subject, see the Technical Discussion on
Watch Classifications.
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| Movement serial number is highlighted |
- Originally used by:
- Manufacturing and later by watchmakers for repairs.
- Today's use:
- Required to correctly identify the grade and to estimate the age
of a watch.
- Summary:
-
Elgin placed unique serial numbers on their watch movements. The
serial numbers were allocated in "runs" or blocks of identical grade watches. Starting in the late 1930s, Elgin
added a letter prefix to the serial numbers of some watches and around
this time, Elgin also started to mark the grade
number on some of the movements in addition to the serial number.
In the late 1940s, Elgin started to sell Swiss made watches and around
this time, Elgin stopped placing serial numbers on some watches they
made in the USA. The Swiss didn't place serial numbers on any of the
watches they sold to Elgin. By the late 1950s, Elgin had pretty much
phased out the use of serial numbers.
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| Movement grade number is highlighted |
- Originally used by:
- Watchmakers for repairs, manufacturing and, when first introduced,
for sales.
- Today's use:
- Used to identify the quality and rarity of a watch.
- Summary:
-
You can think of the "grade number" is being a product code. Watches
with the same grade number were almost always manufactured exactly the
same. Generally, any time the slightest thing in a watch changed,
Elgin would change the grade number, but in a few cases, Elgin changed
minor things such as added jewels, or changing how closely a watch was
adjusted. In a handful of grades, there were radical changes, but
these watches were generally manufactured before grade numbers were
introduced.
After a somewhat chaotic start, Elgin assigned grade numbers
sequentially with little regard to how the grade numbers related to
each other. So, knowing what a grade 273 watch looks like won't help
you to figure out what a grade 272 or a 274 watch is like. Well,
other than knowing that those three grades were probably created
around the same time.
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| Movement grade name is highlighted |
- Originally used by:
- Sales, and initially watchmakers for repairs.
- Today's use:
- Similar to the grade number, the grade name can be used to
identify the quality and rarity of a watch, but it is often too
general to be as useful as the grade number.
- Summary:
-
Certain grade numbers were also given a name, such
as G.M. Wheeler, Lord Elgin, B.W. Raymond, or the
watch could be "nameless" with just the Elgin name placed on the
movement. For sales, these names were used to target customers, for
example the B.W. Raymond was the Railroader's watch, while the
G.M. Wheeler was the Gentleman's watch. Before grade numbers were introduced, names were used by
watchmakers to order parts.
Most of the time, all watches of a certain grade would have the same
name, but sometimes a grade could be marked with one of several names,
for example, either "Veritas" or "Father Time". The names generally
implied a certain level of quality. For example, the
"G.M. Wheeler" grade was used by Elgin for their gentleman's
watch, while the B.W. Raymond was used for their railroad
watches. As the standards required by the railroads changed, Elgin
created new grades with the B.W.Raymond name to match these standards.
Likewise, not all G.M. Wheeler's were the same quality, but they
were usually higher quality than nameless grades. In any given year,
the G.M. Wheeler's that were made were always of lower quality
than the B.W. Raymond's. Most names were used on several
different grades, and could be found on watches of several different
sizes and models.
- Originally used by:
- Watchmakers for repairs, and probably manufacturing
- Today's use:
- Used when describing a watch, identify if a watch was a men's or a
women's watch, and to determine which cases will fit the
movement.
- Summary
-
Elgin made quite a few sizes of
watches and in each size, there were different models. The model
numbers determine things such as the general plate layouts, whether
the watch was made for an open face case or a hunter case and the
thickness of the movement. Between sizes, the model numbers are
unrelated, so a 12s model 4 has no relation to an 18s model 4 (which
was created decades earlier).
- Originally used by:
- Watchmakers for repairs
- Today's use:
- Rarely used to today, but can be used to estimate the quality of a
grade based on other grades in the same class.
- Summary
-
The "class number" was a way of grouping grade numbers together. All
the grades in a particular class would have the same quality of parts,
both in terms of materials used (brass, gold, steel, etc.) and in
finish and tolerances. The "class numbers", somewhat like the "grade
numbers", were created sequentially and you couldn't tell much about
the watch grades in class number 32 by knowing about class number 31.
- Originally used by:
- Sales
- Today's use:
- Little understood and rarely used today.
- Summary:
-
Elgin used several other systems to classify watches for sales, most
of these are not well understood.
One of these was the Streamline series of factory cased pocket
watches, and the related Crusader and Corsican watches. These names
appear only in marketing literature and watch case, not on the watch
movements. The Streamline series started to show up in ads during the
1910s, while the other two show up in the 1920s. It appears that
these are all 12 size model 4 watches. Similarly, Elgin appeared to
have created a "Parisienne" series of lady's wrist watches in the mid
1920s that were all 18/0s watches.
Later, with their wrist watches, they started to use "case style
numbers", but other than a few cryptic references in their 1958
Service manual, I have found no more information on this system.
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