Originally Posted by
Psimet2001
Nice. I have thought of getting a couple just to have them.
There are a lot of nice ones, and they have the advantage over Hamiltons of being less sought-after. Personally, I'm a big fan of the smaller, rectangular watches from the 1940s and 50s.
Indeed. Elgin Watch Company or Elgin National Watch Company was one of the world's largest from like 1850-WWII. Then the Swiss killed it like they did to just about every other watch company.
At one time, THE largest producer of jeweled watches in the world. That's one reason Elgins don't get much respect from collectors - they were too mundane, BITD. People don't collect what everybody HAD. People collect what everybody WANTED. Nobody collects Ford Fairlanes. They collect Mustangs.
It wasn't JUST the Swiss. One big problem was WWII. They produced very few watches for consumers for about 4 years, then it took a while to get back up and making consumer goods. Also, essentially, between 1940 and 1947, Elgin produced the same watches, because their entire R&D department was dedicated to the war effort. Meanwhile the Swiss were able to develop self-winding watches and shock proofing. Elgin tried, in 1950 with the Bumper Automatics, but by the time they hit the market they were already obsolete.