Antique Railroad Pocket Watches

Jewels are bearings on the various gears to reduce friction. A watch with no jewels is metal grinding on metal and soon will stop.

On a very high-grade watch, every single wheel or gear would have a jewel, one on the front and one on the back, plus cap jewels to prevent it from going up or down.

Lower-grade watches would only have them on the gears moving the fastest and a really poor quality watch would only have one or two jewels or maybe none. These are not gem-quality jewels, but industrial type jewels (rubies, sapphires, and diamonds are so hard they make very good bearings because they don’t wear). A watch must have at least seven jewels to be considered a jeweled watch, and standard high-jeweled watches have 23 (and sometimes even more – the McIntyre Watch Company had a watch with 25 jewels). High-jeweled watches are rare, and therefore sought-after by collectors.

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