Thanks to those who helped me identify Grandpa's old Tudor
Got the case back opened by a specialist today and wouldn't you know it!
The dial is branded "Solar Aqua King-of-Wings" - an imprint used exclusively in one market by the now-extinct Canadian department store, Eaton's. Not all Solar watches are Rolex/Tudor inside, but the waterproof Aqua line are.
I was initially not excited that my one family heirloom watch has an Easy Reader style design with very few crufty "vintage" design touches... I haven't found another Solar Aqua online exactly like it. But the plain, bold dial layout has been growing on me - must have been at the cutting edge of modernity when it was sold in the 1950s.
* I'm not too proud to say that I entirely relied on other people's help to identify and appraise this thing. Guess how useful the Google results for "solar watch" are.
child of the 90s... collector on a budget... happily married and loving the socially acceptable way for men to talk about their jewelry habit
Absolute class
I wonder if he ordered it from the Eaton's catalog.
I remember when Eaton's was more than just the shell it was by the end, though it was declining rapidly by the time I old enough to be paying attention to such things.
I wonder if he ordered it from the Eaton's catalog.
I remember when Eaton's was more than just the shell it was by the end, though it was declining rapidly by the time I old enough to be paying attention to such things.
A very similar reference for $48.50 in 1949 - the Bank of Canada says that's $625 today. Not bad for the Polish dirt farmer side of the family.
Eaton's was enough of a cultural institution that there is an "Eatonia" in Saskatchewan, explicitly named after the department store. The town also seems to be in terminal decline, although it's outlived its namesake.
That is such a cool little bit of Canadiana.
The names for the models are interesting... It's not hard to tell that a lot of Canadian men had just come back from the war, or worked at home to support it only a few years earlier.