As the gold cases for pocket watches get melted there is building up a surplus of good working watch movements. To be made into a wrist watch the original watch needs to be a hunter configuration (winds at the 3:00 o'clock instead of 12:00) and needs to have a detent stem (a stem which has a positive link to the setting mechanism).

I have seen these new wrist watches made from beautiful Patek and Vacheron movements as well as from some of the higher grade American movements such as the Hamilton 923 and 921. I buy as many of these movements form the gold melters as I can. There seems to be a ready market for them. The sad thing is that many of the melters simply smash watches with hammers to remove the movements. I try to get to whole watches before they get smashed as much as possible.

JohnCote