Rare 1914 Pocket Watch Performs An Incredible 'Party Trick'

So clearly not a lady's watch. What are you doing with this? This is my grandfather's and he was Colonel of the Scots Greys and his name was William Dugid Macombie and the crest is the Dugid one and the Macombie one. So we've got the dove and the wild cat there. Well let's just start by looking at the lid of the box. Borodin Lund, London. Great makers. So let's have a look at the watch. As we've said these two lovely enamel crests and it's hunt encased, in other words enclosed on both sides. The movement hopefully will be signed and it is fully signed. There we are Borodin Lund, Bishopsgate, London. And the amusing thing is there it says partly Swiss because by the sort of first few years of the 20th century they had to declare the country of origin. So the escapement will be Swiss. Just looking very briefly at the case, the hallmark London 1914 and the case maker very importantly a man called Toms. So this is a great quality item by Borodin Lund but the case maker Toms was the last great English case maker. Unusually it has a funny little what we call a slide on the side. Do you know what that does? Well what we'll do with a watch like this is to advance the time to say a couple of minutes before 11 and then I'm going to pull the slide in a second and you can see and hear what happens. And if you haven't seen this before here's your first go. Isn't that great? That's wonderful. This is a minute repeater so it's doing the hours ding dong. Those are the quarters and then ding ding. On a smaller gong for the minutes. So he could have had that in a pocket or something or in a dark room and just moved that slide and it would have told him the time. But what he would probably more likely have done is to have had the slide like that and said to some youngsters blow on this watch and there it is starting to repeat. That's the sort of party trick he might have done. Well listen the main thing is it's a cracking good watch, lovely family history and the finest quality English watch just before that firm finished business. So I'm here to tell you the price. Do I want to know? I hope you do. It's everything you want of a really nice quality English watch. One of the last examples. Minute repeating, beautifully enameled crest on the front. It would have no problem at auction making between four and five thousand pounds. Goodness me. Happy? Well it won't be so. I'm very glad to hear it.