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TIMEX watch "crystals" - from Scotland - hidden treasure found :)


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I managed to buy a few boxes of Timex watch crystals, they once belonged to someone who worked for Timex for all his life and sadly is not with us anymore. They came from Aberdeen and the gentleman worked for the Dundee Timex factory in the sixties. They have different sizes and shapes and it seems they were actually samples for quality control. I cannot take out the writing on the "TIMEX inspection report"s as it is faded away but the smaller sized "Final Inspection: is dated as 1978 and I can read/take out the same year on the TIMEX  inspection reports too as far as I can see it. I found it very interesting so I thought I would share with you. I know there are Timex fans out there.

An interesting BBC documentary: The Rise And Fall Of Timex Dundee - Full BBC Broadcast - October 2019 There is some glitch with the voice at the end, unfortunately you cannot watch it on the BBC at the moment.

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I watched the Documentary twice and found it a stark reminder of the methodology of the management at the time and the bull neck approach of the unions Indicative of the British Auto industry and the Railways, hopefully never to be repeated.   Dundee was a good factory with skilled workers its demise was a great pity.

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@AndyHull Could you please go there and check if you could pick these jigs up? ? Are all of the buildings completely gone? I would want to see both sites, where the tools were made and also the assembly line. Maybe there are some tools in garages just like these watch crystals were.

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1 hour ago, AndyHull said:

Believe me if there were still bits of old Timex lying in the bins there I'd have grabbed them.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@56.4847228,-3.0190493,3a,75y,279.18h,92.19t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sfYBm3nTCOUG_q2y0xATfXg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

 

Seems the fence was made for eternity.

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I got them today, some of them are damaged as they were put into the same plastic bag and the sharp legs scratched the faces. I was kind of expecting that when I saw them in the same bag on aBay and the royal mail also helped with the damage, most of them are ok though. If you still would like to trade i am going to pick those where there is no damage.IMG_20201203_175903.thumb.jpg.86560bdf6745bae7bddfd99a9c8766c6.jpg

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taking a closer look at those Snoopy dials I see the movement number is 100.  That means they are for the smaller version of the watch made for children or ladies. The dial code starts left to right. the first grouping indicates the model and features. the second grouping is the movement number followed by year of production. so in this example movement 100 and year made 1981.

 

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 The bigger question is what to do with all these dials? To try and build complete watches from them will take a bit of luck to come across the missing parts. Case, crystal, movement, hands, stem, case back. Or as I once saw them reused as the front decoration on draw pull knobs!  Think of having a Snoopy collector see those as "I've got have them"...:0

 

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