You’re shopping for a vintage Elgin watch to add to your collection. You keep seeing some kind of code listed in each watch’s description: 17 JWL, 7j, 15 Jewels. You can’t see any glittering diamonds in the bezel or watch face. What could this code mean?
The answer is that there are minuscule jewels within the Elgin’s movement. Because they’re so tiny and can’t be seen, you might wonder why they could possibly be there. In fact, you have many questions: What kind of jewels? Are they valuable? What’s their purpose? How many are there?
Hold tight—we’ll tell you everything you need to know about watch jewels.
What Kind of Jewels Are in My Watch?
Whether you’re wearing a vintage Elgin or another watch from your collection, chances are that your watch has jewels within its movement. The age of your watch does determine the type of jewels inside, though.
Decades ago, watchmakers used natural rubies when crafting a watch movement. With modern technology, however, it’s much cheaper and easier to create synthetic rubies. So, if you have a vintage watch, it’s possible there are natural rubies inside. If your watch is newer, it most likely has lab-created jewels.
Are My Watch Jewels Valuable?
Despite their name and nature, watch jewels are so tiny that they wouldn’t be worth much, even if they were natural rubies rather than synthetic stones. However, the process of cutting and shaping them is incredibly intricate and involves diamond-tipped tools.
Why Are There Jewels in My Watch?
While your Elgin’s jewels aren’t valuable, the purpose they serve is. A watch’s movement (or inner workings) consists of many metal gears and other parts that grind together. Over time, this grinding wears down the metal and causes the watch to stop working.
However, when a watch has jewels, they replace watch bearings and act as barriers between the metal gears to reduce friction. Because watch jewels are much harder than metal, they can withstand all the grinding without wearing down.
What Do the Jewels Look Like?
Another reason synthetic jewels are widely used in watches today is that when jewels are grown in a controlled environment, watchmakers have much more control over their shape, size, and durability. Once the jewels are grown, watchmakers then cut, buff, and polish the stones into different shapes to fit into various parts of the movement.
Hole jewels almost resemble angular donuts. They’re custom-sized and fitted into a gear train wheel. Hole jewels are used in staff pivots, center wheels, escape levers and wheels, third wheels, and fourth wheels.
Cap jewels resemble a flat disc and act as a cap in a bearing structure for oil to lubricate parts. They’re also equipped with shock protection to help keep the movement from breaking if you drop or knock your watch. Cap jewels are used in conjunction with hole jewels.
Roller jewels resemble a cylinder that’s been cut in half lengthwise. They work to connect the escape wheel to the pallets, which are located within the pallet fork.
Pallet jewels resemble a brick and can be found in the escape lever pallet.
How Many Jewels Are in a Watch?
The number of jewels your watch has depends on the type of watch as well as the model.
Quartz watches tend to have fewer parts than mechanical or automatic watches, so they naturally need fewer jewels. Some quartz watches don’t use any jewels at all. Some higher-end models, like the Rolex Osyterquartz, use more jewels than is typical for quartz watches to ensure highly consistent and accurate timekeeping.
Mechanical watches generally have around 17 jewels in their movements. Automatic watches have more parts, so they can contain up to 27 jewels. Romain Gauthier makes a model, The Logical One, with 63 jewels!
How Does the Number of Jewels Affect Functionality?
Something to note about the number of jewels in a watch is that, even though watch jewels aren’t inherently valuable, watches with more jewels can actually have more value than those with few to no jewels. This is because jewels reduce friction and help a watch last longer.
A 27-jewel watch will experience less wear and tear than a 12-jewel watch. Therefore, a watch with more jewels—a watch that’s built to last and requires fewer trips to your Elgin watch repair shop—will most often be worth more than a watch that frequently breaks down due to a lack of protection from jewels.
How Many Jewels Are in My Elgin Watch?
Now that you’ve learned all about jewels and their function in a watch movement, you’re probably curious about the number of jewels within your Elgin.
If you have a vintage wristwatch or pocket watch, the number of jewels may be inscribed on the watch’s face or engraved on the caseback. This was standard practice when watchmakers used natural sapphires, rubies, and emeralds. Engraving the number of jewels was a way to comply with the exporting and importing of fine jewelry and precious stones.
Nowadays, this isn’t as common. If you’ve examined all the fine print on your watch face and caseback and still can’t find any number followed by the letter J, you can always take it to your Elgin watch repair specialist next time you’re due for a service and ask them to tell you your watch’s jewel count.
Elgin Watch Jewels
Watch jewels serve a much greater purpose than to adorn your watch’s movement. Next time you search for the perfect Elgin watch to add to your collection, see if you can determine its jewel count. If you find one with many jewels or a very old model with natural rubies, you’ll know you’ve got a remarkable timepiece to add to your collection.
