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Numbering System |
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| Serial numbers on watches appear to have been assigned consecutively, probably starting with No. 1 in Belfast. The earliest known complete London watch is in the British Museum. Numbered 453 it is hallmarked 1775, the year James McCabe arrived in London. It can be seen from the list of watches that three of them, all numbered under one thousand fall significantly outside the normal pattern. They are all pocket chronometers suggesting that the early watches designed for very accurate timekeeping had their own numbering system. This practice may have been dropped as pocket chronometers appear in the standard numbering series in later years. | |
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| For some reason the firm did not wish to number their watches with a serial number starting with 20000 so in 1853 the numbering system was continued but with the substitution of a 0 for the 2. This may have been as an added precaution against forgeries or to avoid their clientele from feeling less special when twenty thousand other people owned their watches. All numbers have leading zero's so that there are always five digits in the serial number. Production never reached the next ten thousand marker and it is not clear what would have happened. |
| The firm was extremely consistent in numbering and marking of movements and cases. Any "McCabe" watch which deviates significantly should be regarded with suspicion. Re-cased watches or forgeries should be easy to identify as the date of the hallmark will probably not align well. Three forgeries and one possible one are shown at the end of this catalogue. They are interesting in their own right as they display the lengths to which other makers would go to benefit from McCabe's good reputation |
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