Pocket Watches with PC

[Troglodyte]

As with wrist-watches, pocket watches come in various styles and levels of formality.

Whether your pocket-watch is plated, solid silver or gold is a matter of taste and budget, but evening watches are generally finer quality and size - that is, thinner or flatter so as not to bulk out the pockets of the waistcoat.

It naturally follows that eveneing watch chains are also finer in the same way.

If you are lucky enough to have a minute-repeater in a solid gold hunter-case - an incredible exercise in the skill and craftsmanship of watchmakers - everyne is going to be envious, even if their own evening watches are thinner and more delicate. Most of the time, only the chain can be seen so keeping a small selection for different uses was the normal practice at one time.

These could be a metal clasp and T-bar attached to a leather strap for hanging from the lapel button-hole so the watch can be carried in the breast pocket of the jacket, an all-metal chain for hooking to the waistcoat buttons in some way, and a fancy chain (not unlike a necklace chain) that you could use for smarter evening events.

Very few, even at the very highest levels of society, lead the kind of life where such choices are even a consideration, and most pocket-watches for normal civilian use would fit the bill. The likes of eBay is probably the best lace to find somwthing to suit.

Wonderful though they are in their way, I would recommend avoiding the large, chunky 'railroad' watches which keep time excellently.

Most pocket-watches fall into a 'standard' size, and the movement can be judged by the number of jewels, or rubis, they are built with. A 17-jewel movement in a solid gold case is going to be better quality than a 7-jewel, gold-plated version of the same watch by the same maker.

But as even the cheapest mechanical watches will keep good time - to within a few seconds a week - if kept properly wound, all pocket-watches are worth considering. It is your own budget and personal taste that will be the deciding factors.