Little story about a lovely old thing

[.olli.]

Hi all

I got an interesting phone call the other day. My wife’s uncle got in touch as he knows I like anything old and “horology related”. He was having an urgent and inevitable clear-out, due to the imminent sale of his garage in London. He said amongst all the stuff there were a few old clocks, and asked whether I would like to have them as otherwise he would getting rid of them.

His late wife was swiss, and he spent most of his life in Switzerland. By that point my curiosity was suitably stimulated, I couldn’t help but think he would be the kind to own an Atmos clock!

Of course I said I would take a look, not really knowing what to expect. I am a bit of a hoarder when it comes to things which have a meaning to me or my family: old objects, letters, photos, etc… I could not say no!

The items made their way to the south coast courtesy of the mother in law who was helping with the clear-out. Cutting a long story short, amongst the very diverse cargo, (mainly old tat) was this charming little thing:





I initially thought it was some sort of desk calendar (it was set on 4-11). However, after rotating the setting lever , it turned out to my surprise that the bottom number goes beyond 12, you guessed it up to 59, so it is actually a clock!

The movement is marked Junghans, so not quite an atmos, but I cannot complain! A bit of research on the internet taught me that it is called a Flip Ticket Plato Clock. According to my very brief investigations this could be close to or around 100 years old. Not hugely valuable, but arguably fairly rare, certainly unusual. This is pretty irrelevant to me as this clock has already got a place in my heart!



It is not running currently, but I plan to get it serviced and up and running again.

What I can see of the movement looks fairly basic, and it looks pretty clean given that it has been sitting in storage for many decades. With a bit of luck it might just need a good clean.

I will offer it back to my wife’s uncle if we can get it to work, but I sincerely hope he will tell me to keep it! I find it so cool, and it does look great in our lounge, a lovely little piece of family history.

I hope you find this interesting…. Although not watch related as such I thought I would share.