Caption to go here. Caption to go here. Caption to go here.

In many ways, stainless steel is the classic material associated with wristwatch cases and the metal which, if you like, the wristwatch made its own. Fine wristwatches have been available in both gold and silver since the World War I period, but these two metals were also offered in the form of pocket watch cases. There certainly are stainless steel pocket watch cases in existence, but these were manufactured typically in the 1920s and 30s at a time when the wristwatch was clearly in the ascendancy and the pocket watch was fading quickly in popularity. In the minds of most collectors, stainless steel is something that is associated with wrist rather than pocket watches and in anybody’s view, the increasingly widespread use of steel cases as the 20th century wore on is important in the history of the wristwatch.

Caption to go here. Caption to go here. Caption to go here.

As a percentage of the total number of vintage pocket watches in circulation, very few are in stainless steel cases, not because of any kind of unsuitability for purpose but simply because stainless steel hadn’t been invented at the time when they were produced. In 1913, Harry Brearley, a technician working at Firth Vickers in Sheffield, England was assigned the task of seeing if it was possible to blend a steel alloy for use in gun barrel manufacture that would be more resistant to abrasion than those typically available. Notice that at this point, Brearley’s objective was to combat wear, not corrosion. Brearley increased the chromium content in the alloy to approximately 12% but unexpectedly found that as a side effect, when he came back to the scrap test samples that he’d discarded in an outdoor bin several weeks later, they hadn’t rusted to anything like the extent that he would have expected.

Initially, it took quite some time for stainless steel to be adopted on any serious scale by the watchcase making industry. Geared up to working with silver and gold, which are both extremely soft, case makers found machining the much harder steel very challenging. Though we have encountered steel wristwatch cases from the final years of World War I, typically by Longines, these are very unusual. Certainly until the mid-1920s, silver and gold remained the norm, with steel housings gradually becoming more common as the decade came to a close and recent advancements in machine tooling became available to the case making factories. Incidentally, newcomers to the vintage watch collecting field should take care not to confuse nickel cases, which were fairly plentiful on lower grade watches during the World War I era, with those made of steel. Both have a similar silver colour and it is easy for the novice to examine a case from this period, notice the lack of hallmarks and therefore correctly assume it not to be silver, but then go on to make the mistaken judgement that it’s in steel.

Caption to go here. Caption to go here. Caption to go here.

It is interesting to note the difference in price at original retail level between steel and silver examples of the same models. We have a large archived collection of several hundred period advertisements from the late 1920s and early 1930s by Rolex, Omega, Jaeger LeCoultre and the other major houses in which prices are often stated. It being a precious metal, we would assume today that a watch in a silver case would have been more expensive new than its equivalent in stainless steel. In fact, again presumably due to the higher costs incurred in processing this harder metal, it can be clearly seen that steel watches cost typically approximately the same amount or just slightly more than those in silver. As an example, a Rolex Prince with flared brancard sides was offered to the public in Rolex advertising in 1931 in silver at 10 pounds and 10 shillings while the same watch in stainless steel was available for just slightly more at 10 pounds and 15 shillings.

Looking through these old adverts in chronological order as this article is written, it is very noticeable that the rise in the popularity of stainless steel for watch cases corresponded directly with a reduction in the use of silver. Again, to employ the Rolex Prince advert as an illustrative example, while in 1931 both silver and steel versions were offered, even by 1937, silver was no longer mentioned and only steel and gold models were listed. We don’t know the exact year in which Rolex stopped production of its Oyster in silver, but we could make an educated guess, based both on period advertising and on the large number of early Oysters that have passed through this business over the last twenty five years, that it was 1932. After this point, gold and steel cased Rolex Oysters were shown in the firm’s advertising, but no mention made of those in silver. Certainly by 1935, silver had effectively disappeared from the wristwatch market as a case material and had been entirely usurped by stainless steel.