being new at this I have been seeing a lot of 29 lone eagles with opened and closed 9's, with 6's and without, different movements, recessed sub second dial's and without. Similarly I have been seeing watches that may be a Charles with similar variations. As I look at more vintage watches I'm finding a tremendous amount of inaccurate work being done to dials as well. when verifying watches it seems that movement, jewel count and serial numbers on cases can closely identify models. But it seems that redone dials create a huge amount of speculation as to whether we are looking at all original pieces with poor redials or Frankenbullys. How can I better identify what I am looking at. And/or how can I, definitively, tell the difference between a Charles and a Lone Eagle, by the dials.
In reply to So were there no tonneau by Richard Callamaras
I think that's what Stephen is saying, and it depends on how we intrepet the ads we have to date. There can be ads used by retailers for inventory they have in stock post production. So we could see a watch advertised under it's older model name post production date (based on case SN of actual watch),. If we had gone in to a jewelery store advertising a Lone Eagle II in early 1932, the watch we may purchase could have a case SN beginning with a zero.
For start dates, we can lean heavier on the ads for watches which are otherwise identical short of case serial numbers (dials can be redone, movements can be swapped). It's the end dates that will have more wiggle room- IMO
Nice catch! And Bobbee has an example of a sound start date based on advertisements in the engraved Lone Eagle vs Trident thread. The first ad showing the engraved Lone Eagle pre-dates the naming of the Trident watch. Most of the start dates for a model based on ads are not as cut and dry as the example Bobbee uses there, but they do mean more than possible end dates on transitions between a pervious and newly advertised model.