Hello Max,
Thank you for sending in this wristwatch to mearto.com for an appraisal. I shall try to help you with that tonight.
TITLE:
Gent’s vintage, 18K Gold filled, vibrating tuning fork, battery powered movement, self-winding, water resistant, Presentation wristwatch with day-date functions and a gold plated expandable Speidel link bracelet, Accutron day-date model, N6 (Bicentennial year), serial number F572553, made by the Bulova Watch Company, Swiss/USA, circa 1976.
DESCRIPTION:
Case: 34 mm diameter, yellow gold plated, two leaf, cushion shaped case with polished starburst guilloche bezel, fluted gilt crown @4, screwed down (6 screws) stainless steel back cover marked with a gift presentation, “With Love to my Husband for Twenty Years, 1978” and above, N6, while below the serial number, F572553, and around the perimeter of the back cover, “Base Metal bezel, Water resistant, Bulova, stainless steel back”. The watch is well integrated with a mid-20th century Speidel gold plated flexible bracelet.
Dial: Cream colored round dial with applied black and gilt baton hour indices and the day/date aperture @3, similarly shaped aperture @9 marked, “Bulova Accutron”, open bar minute/seconds track with luminous dots placed every five minutes around the periphery of the dial. Luminous gilt Baton hands and counterbalanced gold center seconds pointer with the dial marked with the tuning forked logo above. There is a vertical black line running from the twelve to the six-position dividing the dial into halves.
Movement: Not shown but is most likely the calibre 2182G, a battery powered, diapason tuning fork for swinging element, frequency of 360 Hz. The movement most likely marked for the Bulova Watch Company, Swiss, 15 jewels, unadjusted, N6”.
CONDITION:
Case – Very fine surface scratches on the bezel and case back cover. Overall, the bracelet and the case are in good to very good condition. Dial: Very good. Movement - Not shown but assumed genuine, original to this case and functional.
BIT OF HISTORY:
The very brief technical superiority of the Accutron watch is, perhaps, one of the best-known facts about the design. The Accutron improved immensely upon the early “electronic” watch, which replaced the mainspring with a battery but established rate with a conventional balance and balance spring. The Accutron used an electronically controlled tuning fork. The Accutron was, in turn, quickly supplanted by “quartz” designs, which established rate by applying battery current to a quartz crystal and, using the resulting vibration as a reference, powered the analog gear train with a stepper motor. In the conventional wisdom, the much higher quartz frequency made the tuning fork of the Accutron obsolete. What is overlooked in this explanation is that the Accutron did something that has, to my knowledge, never been done before or since. It took the bold step of actually powering the movement with its own escapement. It was as if the balance wheel of a conventional, mechanical watch were used to power the gear train. This was a remarkable idea.
PRICING:
This is a handsome watch in very nice condition but the fact that it is not solid gold holds the price down, unfortunately. In today’s demanding watch market, the fair market value of your Accutron would be in the range of $300-$350 mainly because of its fine condition. I thank you for choosing mearto.com for the appraisal.
My best,
David