How can you tell by looking at a watch movement how many jewels it has if there is a way to count the jewels?
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Counting Jewels
- Thread starter Jtsonisdc
- Start date
The number of jewels is really not as important as folks have been led to believe...the best way to evaluate a watch movement is to run it...I have seen movements with one jewel that ran just fine, and some with 30+ jewels that were junk...
And the number of jewels has very little to do with value...They may be "jewels", but they ain't the Hope diamond!!
IIRC, they actually cost mere pennies each in the quantities bought by movement builders....
And the number of jewels has very little to do with value...They may be "jewels", but they ain't the Hope diamond!!
IIRC, they actually cost mere pennies each in the quantities bought by movement builders....
I am pretty new at the whole watch thing and when buying different watches I see some advertising 17 jewels and others with 25 and I just didn't know how important the jewels are and if the more jewels the better the movement. And no I don't want to disassemble the movment I am just very technical in nature and I like to know how things work and when I buy something I always want to buy the best quality for the price. This while watch collecting is just so facinating I can't believe I never got into it sooner.
I'm going to guess that you are looking at ETA movements (2824 maybe), where the older versions were 17 jewels, and the later ones are 25 jewels. The difference in jewel count is due to the autowind mechanism being jewelled or not.
In this case, jewel count will be important regarding the long term reliability of the movement. The areas that do not have jewels tend to wear, so the wheels get out of upright and the depthing of the gears gets inaccurate. Admittedly, this kind of wear could take many years before it has a negative impact on reliablity.
As stated, though, jewel count isn't a simple 'more is better' situation. Typically, though, at least 15 jewels is good in a manual wind watch, and more than that (25 or so) is good for an automatic. Some of these '50 jewel' claims are just bogus, where they may actually have 50 jewels but 25 of them are purely non-functional.
In this case, jewel count will be important regarding the long term reliability of the movement. The areas that do not have jewels tend to wear, so the wheels get out of upright and the depthing of the gears gets inaccurate. Admittedly, this kind of wear could take many years before it has a negative impact on reliablity.
As stated, though, jewel count isn't a simple 'more is better' situation. Typically, though, at least 15 jewels is good in a manual wind watch, and more than that (25 or so) is good for an automatic. Some of these '50 jewel' claims are just bogus, where they may actually have 50 jewels but 25 of them are purely non-functional.
That's interesting, I did read that jewels where basicly there to protect the gear movement and to reduce friction and wear. I started this post because it can get very confusing at times when you hear people saying that a 17 jewel movment in an automatic watch is garbage and that is not a high quality watch. or you see some of those scam sites trying to sell you a 31 jewel italian movemetn watch that is as good or maybe better than a gen rolex movement. It gets scary to think of how many people get screwed when buying a replica and at times even a gen.
fakemaster said:Yes. If it has 1000 jewels it must be a better watch.
:lol:
excellent reply, lol, !
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