🕰️ A Watchmaker’s Life in a Box

🕰️ A Watchmaker’s Life in a Box

Some people collect baseball cards.
Some people collect stamps.
And some extraordinary humans… spend 60 years collecting tiny gears, perfectly sized balance staffs, Swiss jeweling punches, and tools with names like Inverto and staking set that can make any horologist tear up like a proud parent.

This month, we are opening the boxes from a real working watchmaker’s estate — and what we found feels like stepping into the inner world of clocks, time, and patience.

We’re talking THOUSANDS of parts:

• trays of pocket watch dials

• balance staff tools

• K&D punch sets

• Swiss jeweling tools

• vintage movement plates

• enamel dials

• gears tiny enough to make a fairy jealous

All from a lifetime on the bench.

This estate isn’t curated for Instagram — it’s the kind of bench you clean only when your eyes get tired and your cup of coffee goes cold. It’s the real stuff, with real stories.

And now… it’s headed to auction.

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🔧 Who Was This Watchmaker?

This was a classic American watchmaker, trained when you learned by doing, and not by Googling.

His tools weren’t bought all at once from a catalog. They were collected over decades:

• something traded with another watchmaker

• something bought used

• something inherited

• something improvised

• something modified to make it “just right”

You can feel the personality in these tools — the way a file wears down, the shine on a staking block, the edges of a K&D balance staff remover polished from thousands of hours on the bench.

This isn’t just “watch parts” — it’s a lifetime of skill, stored in tiny pieces of steel.

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🕵️ What Makes This Auction Special?

There are plenty of watch parts on the internet.
What you rarely see is a complete estate — the kind where you can:

• buy tools no longer manufactured

• get 100+ sizes of punches in one lot

• find rare pocket watch dials in enamel

• discover 1930s gears mixed with 1950s Bulova plates

• hold something made for hands trained to work under a loupe

That’s why we’re offering this estate as hundreds of individual lots, some starting at $5, with no reserve.

Why?
Because this estate deserves to be rediscovered — by the next generation of collectors, makers, restorers, and jewelers.

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⌚ The Auction Details

🗓️ Auction Dates:
MULTIPLE AUCTIONS COMING THIS MONTH

📍 Platform:
www.ChristieHatman.com

💡 Format:

• 500+ lots

• grouped by tool type

• mixed watch parts lots

• individual specialty tools

• K&D Inverto & jeweling sets

• pocket watch dials

• movement plates

• balance staff tools

• mystery boxes labeled with single numbers like “22”

Every lot is estate-fresh, untouched, and sold as found from the watchmaker’s bench.

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🎥 Want a Peek Inside?

 

 

 

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🏫 And Yes — This is Happening in a 1913 School

If you’re new here:
Hi. I’m Christie.
I live in a 1913 brick school — the kind with original floors, chalkboards, and hidden staircases — and I find myself opening watchmaker boxes next to old school lockers where children once hung their coats.

 

 

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➤ Follow the Journey

 

Follow us on:

• YouTube

• Facebook

• Instagram

• Shopify blog (here!)

And if you’re a watchmaker, jeweler, horologist, or lover of tiny precise things — this auction is your Super Bowl.

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Now it’s your turn to continue that purpose.

See you at the auction.
And yes: I will absolutely be wearing my loupe like a fashion accessory.

—
Christie
Auctioneer — Watch lover — Lives in a school