The Hadley Company

Peer down at your wrist (no your other one silly!), does your watch have a bracelet attachment ? then stop and give a thought on just how that bracelet attachment was invented and manufactured. Elgin briefly owned the Hadley company which was founded by Arthur Hadley who invented and patented the bracelet.

Some of the best integrated bands were during those years.

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Companies

During the diversification programme in the 1950s, Elgin purchased quite a number of companies (American Microphone, Bradley, Neomatic, Hadley, Helbros, Welby to name a few) some of these were integrated, some sold off and some just scrapped. We will be providing details about each of those companies before, during and after Elgin and also the products and staff that have been identified. You’ll find them under the Companies section.

Your Elgins

We have added a new page for instagram feeds and will be adding more over time, if you post on instagram and would like to have your Elgins displayed on the site, let me know your instagram account or tags and I’ll add them to the feeds. We have also added a links page, if you would like to have a link posted on it, get to touch.

Time to ruffle some feathers!

Our next article may ruffle a few feathers out there as it challenges what has become accepted history, So we will enable a guest book for you to vent in before it goes live.

We are correcting accepted history and from the previous times raised in a few horology forums, the reception hasn’t be great. If you don’t want to accept what really happened, then ignore the coming articles that we publish – in doing so, you will definitely miss something great at the end of it that is a game changer for the world and Elgin (wonder what that could be ?)

I’m not sure why a guy from Australia that has been collecting watches for less than two years is so determined to upset the horology history status quo, but I’m more than willing to kick the ants nest over in the process of getting it right.

You have been warned

Elgin Model Catalog

Introducing the Elgin Model Catalog, Your one stop for identifying that Elgin of yours.

We are initially focused on wristwatches and if we ever run out of them, we will move onto pocket watches, (this doesn’t mean you wont find them listed already). We are including all elgin products (lighters, cufflinks, wrist watches, travel clocks, etc). We will also list products for all genders (really apart from the 50 Millionth Anniversary Elgin and the Hulburd pocket watch line, the ladies left the mens line in the dust when it came to pricing).

You can find it on the menu or just go here Elgin Model Catalog

We will be continually adding information and will soon introduce the ability for users to submit entries and also have an area for you to upload images of watches to be identified.

Merry Christmas!

Slow Progress This Week!

We have several things on the go for the site and this week has required an extensive time restoring images and articles to make them crisp and presentable, which is why there is no new page up this week, one had taken six hours of clean up work but worth every minute.

Thanks for the positive feedback on the 50 Millionth Anniversary page, we are glad we could share the event with the rest of you all.

Elgin Movement Grades

I’ve added the first real resource for watch collectors on the site, the movement grade list.

Elgin Movement Grade List or off the menu above.

This list has been created from Elgin’s Service Bulletins and exisiting serial number lookup databases, I will not be creating another serial number lookup as there are numerous sites already.

Jeff Sexton’s site at elgintime.com – Jeff has been updating his database over time and has also started to include wristwatch grades into his database, so I consider it the more accurate database on the net currently and it can only get better with time.

Wayne Schlitt’s site at elginwatches.org – This is the oldest database online but I’m unsure if it has been updated with recent knowledge.