Hello Versietta,
Thank you for sending in this gold pocket watch to mearto.com for an appraisal. I shall try to help you with that today.
TITLE:
Ladies/Gent’s, keyless, 18k gold, Art Nouveau, pendant wound, savonette, hunting case pocket watch, cuvette marked, “E.G. Danforth 1872, No. 38401, Patek Philippe & Co., Geneva”, dial/movement unsigned and therefore this watch is attributed to Patek Philippe, Geneva, Switzerland, circa 1870s. Accompanied by a short solid gold link chain and multicolored gold ball fob.
PROVENANCE:
The pocket watch is believed to have belonged to one of the women in the Danforth generations named Elizabeth Danforth. The Danforth generations came from Framingham, Suffolk, England in the late 1500s, and later moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts in the early 1600s. The inscription inside reads, in part, E.G. Danforth 1872.
DESCRIPTION:
CASE: 37.5mm diameter, four leaf, hunting case pocket watch with the outer cover engraved with a plethora of flowers, rosettes, along with vines and leaves, a Fleur-de-Ly, an interlocking chain design and the barrel of the case filled with geometric pattern engravings. There is full fluted gold ball pendant and round bow placed at the three position (savonette) opposite the case hinge. One of the outer covers, on the inside carries the mark of .759 in a cameo for 18k gold alongside the illegible initials of the case maker, perhaps it reads P.P. Co???. (Whoever made those initials made the case. Patek never used ‘PPCo.’ as a trademark. The closest they came was P.P. & Co with a drawing.) In addition, there are no Swiss Hallmarks for 18k gold on any cover I was shown, in fact, one cover had no gold markings at all, perhaps the cuvette. (The Swiss government required hallmarks to be placed on any gold item that was manufactured and certainly all that were exported.) Two covers carry the case number 38491 while the third, with the gold mark, is #91. . .The hinged cuvette is engraved, “E.G. Danforth 1872, No. 38401, Patek Philippe & Co., Geneva”. (I have never seen a full fluted ball pendant back as far as the 1870s. They usually appeared post 1890-1895.) . . . One other comment on the cuvette is that whoever engraved the Danforth date was a different engraver that the one who did the serial number for Patek Philippe on the cuvette. . .
DIAL: White enameled dial with Roman hours, bar minute ring with red Arabic markers placed every five minutes along the edge of the dial, sunken subsidiary seconds @6, Continental type steel Spade hands and the dial is unsigned. . .
MOVEMENT: This is a split plate and finger bridge movement with curved center Wheel Bridge, mono-metallic balance wheel, wolf’s tooth winding seen on the ratchet and crown wheels and a mustache pallet lever escapement noted. The plates are totally unsigned and unmarked, very unusual for a Patek Philippe who almost always engraved their name and place in gold on the barrel bridge and frequently used a cam switched micro-regulator rather than the simple index Swiss made regulator we see in the client’s watch movement. For a comparison please see:
https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/7237189_59-patek-philippe-18k-gold-hunting-case-pocket-watch#&gid=1&pid=5
CONDITION:
Case – Beautiful gold case in very fine condition. Not all covers are marked for gold, covers have different numbers, and no Swiss hallmarks are seen. . .
Dial – Unsigned, chip at the VII hour and fine hairline fracture extending from the base of the hands toward the fifth hour. . .
Movement: A movement made approximately during the last quarter of the 19th century and lacking the fineness of Patek Philippe. When it comes to Wolf’s tooth winding some of the companies that chose to use it were of course, Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin, A. Sandoz, Agassiz, Henry Lavalette of Geneva and many others. The mustache lever was also made by other Swiss watch companies. I do not believe the quality of this movement shows the work of Patek Philippe and that is one of the reasons the watch is attributed to them by me. . .
COMMENTARY:
I have questions about this watch on several levels. First, ideally one would choose to have the dial, case and movement signed properly. But short of that at least one should find two of the three signed properly. They should be properly hallmarked, numbered and signed, and no company was more meticulous about that than the Patek Phillipe organization. The dial is damaged and that is a major issue. My basic feeling about this watch is that there remain too many questions about the originality of the major parts and whether they began life together or not. It is relatively easy to change cuvettes in pocket watches and add it to the current hinge. Dials, cases and movements can be switched around and nowhere do we find this more than in upper end watches for obvious reasons.
PRICING:
Solid gold pocket watches with signed cuvettes and movements generally will sell at auction in $1500-$2000 range on the watch market (we are not talking about the value of the gold or selling it on the gold market). When these watches are fully triple signed the price skyrockets into five figures. Back in 2011 a watch signed by Patek Phillipe & Co. only on the cuvette sold for $1500. A fine example of another solid gold pocket watch signed only on the cuvette sold in 2018 for 1500 Euros (then about $1800), but it did not have a damaged dial which really does hurt the value. See: https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/62758158_patek-philippe-and-co-18k-pink-gold-pocket-watch
I feel that your example with the fine heavily engraved Art Nouveau covers and a movement that heavily resembles a Patek example with the markings present on the cuvette would sell in the $1000 range, perhaps a bit more with the watch chain and the fob. But serious watch collectors would have serious questions about the piece.
I hope this has been of some help to you despite my picking the watch apart, but I can only relate what I see and feel about such objects.
My best,
David