Seth Thomas Research

Welcome

The Seth Thomas Research website is the most accurate and comprehensive online resource for the factory's 29-year output of pocket watch production from 1885 to 1914, featuring:

Serial number lookup and search returns for date, model, grade, and jewel count
Over 40 charts for serial number blocks and production totals and percentages
A separate page for each model to explore dates, run totals, and known variants
An entire section devoted to private labels, sorted by name, dial, SN, and state
Pages for factory dials, cases, period adverts, catalogs and surviving records
A section describing the known patents, including links to the US Patent Office
A Store for replacement parts by model, complete with the original factory number

Data Submissions

Photographs of new examples are always needed.

If you have any watches or paper records in your collection then please share them with us.

Catalog prints and period ads will be posted to the Records page, and your watch will be logged on the appropriate chart, adding to the totals and making the search functions more accurate.

Pocket watch dial and movement photos only, please.

The PW Database

When it comes to the grade and run totals of Seth Thomas pocket watches, the Pocket Watch Database, owned by Nathan Moore, is lying to you. Don’t think so? Then ask yourself just where Nathan is getting his numbers from.

There are no known surviving Seth Thomas records regarding pocket watch production, other than a few factory catalogs and period ads. This is verified both by the Historical Society in Thomaston, Connecticut, thanks to a bad flood there in 1955, and seven-times-grandson Seth R Thomas, who supplied the genealogical records back to James and Martha, parents of the original Seth Thomas in 1785, and confirmed that no one in the family has any surviving factory papers.

This website has logged over 11,000 examples, barely enough to form a rough framework as to grade and run totals, as well as overall production of the various models. The numbers found on this site are based on actual examples, backed with photos. When there is a gap in the data, a search return shows the word Unknown.

So exactly where is Nathan getting his totals? He’s inventing them out of thin air. The 17-jewel Grade 506 Model 3 (pictured) is a perfect example. The PWDB states that 1,600 of them were produced, a ridiculous number for this second-highest grade that spanned around only four years, when you consider that just 250 of the highest grade, the Henry Molineux, were made, and that the total production of the Model 3 in all grades was fewer than 40,000. So far the data suggests that some 300 of the Grade 506 were made, which is reasonable and makes sense.

Nathan has awarded himself seven different badges on his own site, including Founder and Expert, which is very telling. If he can get the masses to blindly parrot everything he says, invented numbers and terms included, then it’s an enormous ego boost for the rich guy who so badly wants to be regarded as the final word in vintage American pocket watches.