Elgin Grade 320

This is a fine example of Elgin's grade 320, a 0 size, 7 jewel movement, made about 1911. 

This movement is often found cased as an early wristwatch. This one is a ladies pocketwatch though.

I have always found these movements elegant but problematic, especially as wristwatches. There seem to be directly scaled down versions of larger designs. The mainspring as a result is weaker than it should be I feel.

A gold hunter case like this is typical of ladies watches of this time. They are very fragile and delicate, leaning more toward jewelry and less toward practical timekeeping. None the less, many young urban women of this era had jobs in the rapidly industrializing United States. They needed watches to get to work on time.

This watch was missing it's second hand. I put a black one on there for now. A gold one in the matching style is vanishingly rare.