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No. 903 / Tissot Railway Pocketwatch - 1930s

No. 903 / Tissot Railway Pocketwatch - 1930s

$2,850 USD
$2,850 USD
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Item information ↓

Tissot
Ping-Han Railway Pocketwatch
ANTIMAGNETIQUE / 1930s

Intro

This Tissot Ping-Han Railway pocket watch is an original mid-1930s example (not the 1998 reissue) built for the railway that connected the old capital of Chinese Peking (Ping) with the central city of Wuhan (Han). The open-faced white enamel dial carries black Arabic numerals with a subsidiary seconds register at 6 o'clock, swept by a pair of blued steel Breguet hands. Tissot's famed "ANTIMAGNETIQUE" marking is printed in French across the dial, and the German silver caseback is engraved with a steam locomotive at full speed.

Fewer than 6000 of these watches were ever made — 5000 in the 1935 order and 900 in 1936. They were issued as working tools on a railway that ran through the war years and the revolution that followed, and surviving examples in original condition are not easily found today.

This is a true memento of a China that no longer exists — significant not only for its beauty, but for the history it carried.

(Photo and information from "The Story of the Tissot Ping-Han Railway Watch" by Dr Estelle Niklès van Osselt, Heritage Communication Specialist, Tissot. Europa Star, May 2023.)

Story

(Mixed-traffic steam engine operating on the Beijing–Hankow Railway line. Constructed by the Belgian St. Léonard Limited company. Early 20th century. Tissot Museum Collection.)

(Caliber 43. Tissot Catalogue n°9 des montres de précision, Clients catalogue, 1934. Tissot Museum Collection.)

Tissot has been in China since 1920, when its first agent began selling watches in Shanghai. Its route to the Ping-Han Railway, however, ran through a problem the wider industry was slow to take seriously.

As electricity spread through daily life in the early twentieth century, magnetic fields began interfering with mechanical movements — a direct threat to the reliability watchmakers sold on. Tissot funded the research, and in the 1930s launched the first non-magnetic watch.

(Map of the Beijing to Guangzhou railway via Hankow. After Pékin-Hankou, la Grande épopée 1898-1905.)

It also had a long track record with railways. By 1909 the company held share bonds in railway companies recorded in its books as "Oriental" and "Russian," and its travelling salesmen worked the rail networks themselves. It supplied comparable utility watches to other lines — Serbian and Swiss examples survive in the Tissot Museum collection.

So when the Ping-Han Railway's administration surveyed the Chinese market for a supplier it could depend on, it chose Tissot. The brand's own historians point to the antimagnetic work as a likely reason, alongside its growing reputation in China and that existing railway experience.

Because of its historical significance, Tissot reissued the design as a limited edition for the Chinese market in 1998.


Detail

MODEL
Antimagnetique

REFERENCE
678730

YEAR
1930s

SERIAL
598700

CASE
46.3mm (excl. crown), German silver

MOVEMENT
Manual Winding, Cal.43 mm.

LUG
13.4mm

Condition

OVERALL A Rank
CASE Small Scratches
CRYSTAL Great Condition
DIAL Little Patina
HANDS & INDICES Patina And Aged
MOVEMENT Running, checked and oiled
ACCURACY Around 1 min. / day (12 Hr. Timegrapher Test)

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