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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;afantiques, post: 444496, member: 25&quot;]I am not familiar with this watch but I do have a couple of general observations. By the time this watch was made Waltham was history, the name survived&nbsp; but the US manufacturing and the link back to some really fine watches was lost. So basically, it is just another Swiss watch of the period.</p><p>Now, about the jewel count. For the best part of 200 years, more jewels usually meant a better quality watch because they were used to reduce friction and wear on pivots in the movement, and usually the faster a pivot moved the more it was prone to wear.</p><p>So better quality Georgian verge watches had jewelled balance staff pivots and as the lever escapement took over as the 19th C. wore on, jewel counts increased as more pivots got jewels and some pivit holes got jewel end caps as well which trapped a microscopic amount of oil around the pivot. This led to the familiar 15 and 17 jewel counts for standard lever movements, even 21 jewels with more end caps being used. 21 or even 23 was about as far as useful jewels could go, until the automatic movement was introduced, when the rotor bearings could be jewelled.</p><p>Then, in the sixties and seventies,&nbsp; things went a bit crazy. makers started adding totally non functional jewels to run of the mill movements just for bragging rights, if 15 jewels was good, 30 jewels must be twice as good, no?&nbsp; I have seen a 64 jewel wristwatch where 50 of the jewels were simply dotted all over the rotor doing nothing except backing up the boast on the dial.</p><p>This practice died out, as did the mechanical watch, but it is what disconnected the jewel count on the dial from any indication of quality.</p><p>If the watch being offered is not automatic, the jewel count is clearly bogus or indicates some useless jewelling. Even if it is automatic, if Patek Phillipe and Audemars Piquet can make fine automatic watches with 25 and 27 jewels, who needs 30.</p><p>The movement is probably a routine Swiss ESA movement. I&#039;d not buy anything without having a look inside, and the back seems to be a screw back that a standard case tool sould remove in a jiffy.</p><p><br /></p><p>As I said , I am not familiar with that specific watch or your local market, but I&#039;d pass on this one based on what you have made known already.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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