Vintage Elgin 328 Swiss movement Legit?

[Micah]

I recently purchased this vintage Elgin watch off Ebay for cheap as a project/learning watch. However, I have not been able to find much information about it. I bought the watch to help hone my skills at watch service and tuning, but I would like to know where to look for spare parts or details about the movement. To be honest I am also just curious to know more about the watch itself as well. It is currently running and keeping time pretty well after I made some adjustments (gaining about 5 sec per day according to watch tuner app).  Please see images attached and let me know if it rings a bell! Thanks!

IMG_5538.HEIC

IMG_5537.HEIC IMG_5535.HEIC

[jdm]

FYI, we have a section here where it's considered polite for new members to introduce themselves first.

Also, when posting pictures on the Internet only use .PNG or .JPG formats.

[Micah]

Ahh ok gotcha sorry, rookie mistake I guess. I'll go introduce myself, and here are the pictures. Thanks!

[JohnR725]

Nice of you to convert the images to JPEG's so we can see them really frustrating when people make it difficult to answer their questions.

Unfortunately this is an Elgin watch? The Elgin watch company at the end suffered in the hands of greedy people who basically liquidated the bits and pieces of the company. So all you have left now is a name. You notice on the movement the word Swiss that gives you a clue. Then I have a link to the parts cross reference and this gives us a clue as to what the movement actually is which is an  STA 96-4

http://cgi.julesborel.com/cgi-bin/matcgi2?ref=ELG_328_11.5L

 

[Micah]

15 hours ago, JohnR725 said:

Nice of you to convert the images to JPEG's so we can see them really frustrating when people make it difficult to answer their questions.

Unfortunately this is an Elgin watch? The Elgin watch company at the end suffered in the hands of greedy people who basically liquidated the bits and pieces of the company. So all you have left now is a name. You notice on the movement the word Swiss that gives you a clue. Then I have a link to the parts cross reference and this gives us a clue as to what the movement actually is which is an  STA 96-4

http://cgi.julesborel.com/cgi-bin/matcgi2?ref=ELG_328_11.5L

 

So to summarize do you think that this particular model (allegedly from the 1960's) was produced after Elgin was purchased and liquidated and is thus not of the same quality as older Elgin watches? Did Elgin not use Swiss movements before they were bought out? I am asking for my own curiosity, as some of this information about specific models is hard to come by on the internet. As I said I bought this watch to open up, take apart, and fiddle around with to learn the basics of watch repair so if it is not very valuable it wont hurt my feelings. 

Thanks for very much for the reply!

[jdm]

1 hour ago, Micah said:

So to summarize do you think that this particular model (allegedly from the 1960's) was produced after Elgin was purchased and liquidated and is thus not of the same quality as older Elgin watches?

 

I don't know much about Elgin but your look really nice, especially the dial working. Thank you for the now visible pictures and introduction.

[Nucejoe]

20 hours ago, Micah said:

I would like to know where to look for spare parts or details about the movement.

Correctly identified by John its a variant of ST96,  See some spec on Dr ranfft's site. 

Long list of brands that used ST96 are practically unknown. It's currently made in India, your best bit for spare parts is a franken watch form India on ebay for aprox 10-15 bucks.

You can pick up a brand new ST96 for $30.

Good luck

[JohnR725]

6 hours ago, Micah said:

So to summarize do you think that this particular model (allegedly from the 1960's) was produced after Elgin was purchased and liquidated and is thus not of the same quality as older Elgin watches?

I don't think I'm going to give you the answer you're looking for.  What exactly do you mean by quality?

As I said the history of Elgin is interesting new management starts in the 60s with the intent of saving the company. The definition of saving the company is interesting in that saving the company for who or what? If you read the stockholders manual's it appears to be the purpose of saving the company was for making a profit. So terminating manufacturing in the US was seen as a good thing. Casing up watches from other parts of the planet was a good thing slowly liquidating everything a profit was a good thing for the stockholders. As far as maintaining any sort of quality standards I'm not sure that fit within the stockholders view of saving the company.

Usually finding timing specifications is interesting as it's not usually specified. But I do have something from the 50s at that time and they would've been manufacturing their own movements specification was -10 to +50 seconds per 24 hours.

On the other hand what about this this is a wristwatch you of a wristwatch I wonder if they would do the same timekeeping?

https://www.elgin.watch/enwco/watch-lines/b-w-raymond-wristchronometer/

As you're new to watch repair something that may not of been explained yet. Who made your watch? Not just your Elgin watch but who made any of the watches? There are basically OEM companies manufacturing movements. The movements are sold to companies that case them up they put their name on the dial maybe even the movement and they get credit for making the watch. So as Nucejoe Commented above you have a very popular movement it was used in lots of various companies watches. At the link below which he mentions I see a date of 70 so it may be later than we think it is.

http://www.ranfft.de/cgi-bin/bidfun-db.cgi?10&ranfft&0&2uswk&Standard_96_4

Then another link here's a listing of Elgin watches you'll notice it goes up to about 1965. It also see a lot of Swiss watches in 1965 anything beyond that really is just a name on the dial unfortunately. I doubt the stockholders were thinking about Elgin quality when they were having those made. But at least because it's a popular watch it can't be all bad.

https://www.elgin.watch/enwco/elgin-movement-grades/

 

 

 

[Nucejoe]

Swiss offered skilled workers and guality at lower wages compared to the USA, so ST96 was/ is good and Americans couldn't beat it for the price versus quality and I am not even sure if it was assembled in Switzerland, rather made under Swiss licence in Asia.

The movement in your watch is certainly not a chrono or top grade if thats what you mean by quality. Though a good work horse, never seen complications such as chronometer or moonphase, alarm etc on it, nor have I seen one adjusted in several positions. Its a decent piece but no grail. 

Regs

Joe

 

[JohnR725]

23 minutes ago, Nucejoe said:

Swiss offered skilled workers and guality at lower wages compared to the USA,

Yes this was definitely bad for the Americans. For instance if you looked at the Elgin factory in the 50s there's a lot of cars out there they were all driving their cars. If you looked at the Swiss factories there'd be one car may be bicycles. Bicycles for everybody else. The Americans repricing themselves out of business their machinery was old and outdated.

This is why the Elgin watch company was busy diversifying into other stuff. They were getting into electronics they were making microphones as, side business but they still made microphones. They made relays miniature relays are used in all sorts of stuff including military NASA was using the relays. Their abrasive division still exists it's under a new name but it still exists. Elgin was busy diversifying into fields that they could make money at them as they could no longer compete with manufacturing watches in this country.

Unfortunately for Elgin they had a name that was well known worth money and in overfunded pension plan. There is no pension plan control which meant that money could be diverted into other things. It's actually quite clever managed to get on the board of directors of the company spend their money to buy other stuff that benefits your friends and run the company into the ground all with the intent of saving the company supposedly.

So today you combine Elgin watch and the only thing it relates to the original Elgin company is the name. They can buy a lot of American named watches today and they'll have no resemblance at all to the original company. I suppose you will be technical Hamilton still exists sort of. It was purchased by the Swiss but in the end all they really wanted was name or at least that's all they have left.

Providing your watch has had a reasonable service history and no one's done anything bad to it. This would may never reasonably decent 17 jewel wristwatch as pointed out by Nucejoe. In other words you should build a service said get it back running and should keep decent time. It's not a railroad watch is not a chronometer watch and unfortunately the only resemblance it has to Elgin is its name.