# I W C Treasure?



## Silver Hawk (Dec 2, 2003)

My neighbour came round yesterday evening to help me man-handle a 1960's 7 foot cast iron bath into a confined space. It was bloody heavy!

And on entering my front door, and knowing I was interested in all things horology, he said something along the lines "I found this old pocket watch; used to be my step fathers. You can have it for spares or something.". It wasn't working and was fully wound.

Now I'm not really into pocket watches but the dial script looked vaguely familiar, so grabbed my loupe, while he was still here, and it said "International Watch Co. Schaffhausen". Blimey! An IWC I thought! IWC watches are good, right? I mistakenly told him it might be worth a bob or two.







And then I spent the next two hours (after moving the bath!) opening it up, photographing it and researching it on the Internet.

It's a Calibre 67 which seems to be the workhouse of IWC pocket watch movements --- one of the cheaper movements but was made from 1933 to 1958 and highly reliable. It has an inner dust cover under the main back cover and the stamped number (1081478) on each match. It seems these case serial numbers are more important than the movement serial numbers --- more in a moment  .

What's that "KM" above "International Watch Co. Schaffhausen"? Well this it where it got really interesting and if you tie this up with that case serial number, it appears that this particular watch was issued to the German Kriegsmarine (hence the "KM" and probably the submarine service) between 13th January 1943 and 21st December 1943. The watch certain ties in with this: it has an all nickel case and the movement plates are plain with no decoration.

Most of this info came from a German website page; Google's translation is here.

I got the watch running no problem at all; a small piece of what looked like congealed Evo-stick was stuck between two teeth. I removed that and off she went but it probably needs a strip down and clean. Its a shame about the damaged dial and that damage of the ceramic corresponds to the dial feet, so something has been going on there and that needs to be investigated when the watch gets dismantled. I'm sure there are dial restorers out there that can patch up the damage.

Anyway, there you have it. If anyone else has any insights into IWC pocket watches of this period, please let me know. The downside is that I'm not sure whether this is now my watch or not. 

Cheers

Paul


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## jasonm (Nov 22, 2003)

I dont know anything about it, but it is nice, and sounds like it has history......

I hope you can keep it


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## Boxbrownie (Aug 11, 2005)

Nice, love the numerals....but damnit why chop the 6 "again"....cracking find...let us know the outcome.

Best regards David


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## James (Jul 17, 2006)

free is always good, you can get those chips fixed up somewhat too


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## kfranzk (Dec 3, 2006)

Here you find the luminous version of the big (there also smaller diameter) IWC deck watch of the Kriegsmarine:

http://www.knirim.de/a0701mod.htm

Greetings Konrad Knirim

www.knirim.de


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## squareleg (Mar 6, 2008)

Great post, Konrad - and 10/10 for thread revival!


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