This is a small square Bulova with 3 diamonds in a very odd folding case...
The case is leather covered metal, I did manage to remove the case back and see that i's a L0.
Can anyone shed some light on this watch from Bulova in an obviously custom case.
Alan Roseman
Rehoboth, Ma
[email protected]
Hello Alan, welcome to myBulova. This is an interesting little travel clock, it looks like it's done its fair share of traveling already. As noted above this appears to be something that was manufactured using a Bulova watch movement. It's also possible that the Bulova watch movement was put into the case after the original movement failed, it's impossible to know for certain. The size of the movement is common across many watch manufacturers so the Bulova movement may have been used only because it was the right size. It's even possible that Bulova sold the movement to the firm that produced the item, I have never seen anything like it. If this were a wrist or pocket watch we might the use the term "Non-Conforming" to describe it. Non-Conforming means it has been assembled using parts from several different watch models and therefore can't be assigned a known model name. Generally we use Non-Conforming when all the parts are from Bulova.
This is what I've learned.
I visited the small shop of Barry Marcus, a watchmaker for over 71 years. His family owned Marcus jewelrs in Mass. and he began learning at the bench when he was a 10 year old child. Great guy, and a wealth of knowledge on Bulova, his self proclaimed favorite brand.
The little watch in the case is a 10BM / or 10BH movement 17 jewels. The reason it is marked as Bulova USA is that the watches imported to other countires were required to list their country of origin, and this movement was made in New York.
The little leather covered case is made in Germany, and was created to accomodate that movemet which was apparently very common around 1950.
Barry has not seen a travel case like it in his experience but had heard of such things..
Pretty cool find, which I'd be happy to trade for a nice 1952 (the year of my birth) round face.. in decent shape.
Cheers, Alan Roseman