1932 Sky King I mean
ad Dated 1931
Geoff,
I will quote a statement You made in reguards to advertising errors in the 1930 - 1939 ad forums
"I'm certain that this happened more often than not. However I don't think it's made a big impact on any of our ID's. Furthermore, I doubt Mr Bulova would much have cared, as long as people hurried into Kay Jewelers to buy a new Bulova."
Yet in this particular instance You seem convinced that the conflicting ad depicts the 'SKY KING', can You please explain?
In reply to ad Dated 1931 Geoff, I will by FifthAvenueRes…
"We learn more from our debates than from our agreements or consensus."
We do Will.
"The panel has decided these watches are Sky King's"
Geoff, there cannot be 2 different Bulova 'SKY KING"s within the same given time frame. By far the majority of ads dated 1930 -1934 show the 'SKY KING' as having a fish engraved pattern Case with Chevron details at the Case ends.
Anyone who takes time to read through this thread and absorb the information put forth will see that the Panel consensus on this XX pattern Case is wrong!
Period.
Fishy or XX - XX - most of the ads show two rows of horizontal engravings- chevrons most of the tme. This watch has one horizontal row of engraving (fishy or xx'e no matter- still two rows). The watch database is replete with inconsistencies on these guys. The ads do show both fishy and XX-XX- but arn't they always with two horizontal rows of engravings?
There are live auctions at this moment showing XX pattern watches touted as "Sky King".
Since the two patterns existed at the same time, it does make sense that they can't both be Sky Kings. It's a minor thing, but this is a common occurrence in Bulova history, indeed, name changes can occur even without any design change.
So either the design teams at Bulova changed the pattern arbitrarily during the run of the watch, or the watch is actually two different models. I suspect the latter is true.
As to which watch is the SK, I suspect the fishy one. Regardless, something is amiss in some of the ads. Just my HO.
edit: Not a lot of info out there, and what I did find was based on what we have here. I even did some digging at Bulova here. The people who would remember or worked back in the day on this are all gone, of course. I strongly believe that somewhere there exists some surviving documentation from Bulova that would clear this up. Someday somebody is going to find the family of a Bulova design member or bigwig, having a garage sale. Or Auction.
In reply to There are live auctions at by Reverend Rob
...or the company reports (either internal or to shareholders) as Bulova was publically traded by this time.....wasn't it? In a basement, in a box, forgotten by time and lack of current interest, some grandkid of a shareholder or someone on the board, horded these documents....and they are just sitting there....waiting to be discovered, or thrown out when the grandkid moves or sells the house.