Posted 13 years ago
the-timeke…
(1 item)
the silver case is marked on the inside of the back cover 440 S 498 the "S" in between the Calibre and the Case number indicates it is Sterling Silver.
These were only made for a short while during 1941 when the sheet brass for the cases was commandeered by the US government for the War effort After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, Gruen case makers, (Wadsworth) not wanting to lose the Gruen case contracts used Sterling Silver plate to make the cases until Brass was again available to them in 1942
So the Silver cases are quite rare only being made during 1941. Very rare item
What you have is a Gruen Curvex Captain. You can see it identified in my Gruen book "The Gruen Watch Model Identification Guide, Volume 1". They started production of this model in 1941 and continued to advertise it until 1944. A pretty good run for one specific model.
The case, dial & hands on your watch are the ones found on just about every Captain I've seen. You typically see a lot of brassing on these cases, especially there the rolled detail that sticks up at the 12:00 and 6:00 positions. The model itself is not extremely rare. You'll find them on ebay often, but the cases typically show this brassing I mentioned.
There has been a good amount of discussion of Gruen's use of Silver in their cases on the Gruen enthusiast's site at http://www.GruenWristwatches.com . The forum area is where you'll find discussions such as your watch and much more. One specific post about the Curvex Captain and the "S" designation can be found here:
http://forum.gruenwristwatches.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=709&p=2976&hilit=captain#p2976
There is further discussion in other parts of the forum, such as this rather lengthy and educational set of posts:
http://forum.gruenwristwatches.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=312&p=1045&hilit=captain#p1045
I hope this has been somewhat informative.
-mike