You know what I’m thankful for, here the day before Thanksgiving? Well, lots of things, actually, but one I want to focus on is watch-related. I’m quite thankful our pal Matt Himmelstein scours the crowd-funded crowds, and picks out the interesting watches to bring to your attention. Today, he’s got a very interesting silver (or gold) watch for your consideration.
When someone uses the phrase, “gold watch,” my mind goes to retirement parties, with the (now) gold plated watch being handed to the old timer with decades of service. With the more mobile workforce and the do-it-yourself approach to retirement, why wait to own a gold (or silver) wrist watch. Andrew Glover out of Nottingham England has a new watch project on Kickstarter where he is selling hand crafted watches with solid silver and gold bodies.
Stepping up the materials used (and with it the price), one would expect that a significant amount of hand crafting would go into each piece, and the description of the process does not disappoint. Andrew uses lost wax castings for the case, hand drilled and hand finished to exacting tolerances. The hand made face of the watch is printed using a pad process by (of course) hand, and the movement is polished and decorated by hand.
The movement itself is a brand new old stock hand wound movement from Smiths, made in England and running at 18,000 bpm, not a Swiss or Asia sourced mass market movement. I can not speak to the accuracy of the movement, but you do get something very distinctive over your friends sporting an ETA. An exhibition case back shows it off nicely.
With a gold or silver case (stamped by the assayers office and weighing about 80 grams) you know this is not going to be an inexpensive watch. The silver is 1,200 Pounds, while the gold comes in at 3,600. That equates to about $2,000 for the silver and $6,000 for the gold. Not the most expensive Kickstarter project I have seen, but not cheap either. His funding goal is fairly modest, 7 silver watches will put him over, but this is a tough one to call.
He does not have an image of the gold watch, and he does not list the type of gold, so you may want to ask before you jump in on that level. The detailing is very nice, and the overall look is very clean, with a simple dial and a sub hand for the seconds. Personally, I am not a huge fan of the cushion case style, but this one works well; I like how the case blends into the lugs, something I am more apt to see on a vintage watch. The exposed screws on the back are a curiosity though. Maybe he will countersink them in the final product, but they look they would be a little uncomfortable as shown.
The project ends funding on January 21, 2014. kickstarter.com