{{Short description|Inexpensive pocket watch developed in the late 19th- to early 20th-century}} {{One source|date=March 2022}} thumb|right|A Waterbury dollar watch thumb|right|A dollar watch featuring a replacement crystal and dial; the dial, like most all dollar watches, is paper.
A '''dollar watch''' was a pocket watch or later, a wristwatch, that sold for about one US dollar.
==History of development== Attempts to make a watch that could be sold for as little as a dollar began in the 1870s.<ref name=Bruton186 /> By 1880, the Waterbury Watch Company, not to be confused with the Waterbury Clock Company, had lowered costs to the point where they could sell their so-called long wind watch for $3.50.<ref name=Bruton186 /> In the early 1890s the Ingersoll Watch Company started selling a Waterbury Clock Company clock in a watch case for $1.50.<ref name=Bruton186>{{cite book |last=Bruton |first=Eric |date=2000 |title=The History of Clocks & Watches |publisher=Little, Brown and Company |pages=186–189 |isbn=0316853550}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url=https://pocketwatchdatabase.com/guide/trade-names/yankee | title=Yankee Pocket Watch Info by Ingersoll Watch Co }}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.timesticking.com/the-watch-that-made-the-dollar-famous/ | title=The Watch That Made the Dollar Famous | date=25 June 2020 }}</ref>
The one dollar price was reached in 1896 when Ingersoll introduced a watch called the Yankee, setting its price at $1. This made it the cheapest watch available at the time, and the first watch to be priced at one dollar.<ref name="Cutmore">Cutmore, M. "Watches 1850–1980". David & Charles, Devon, UK. 2002.</ref>
Later, Western Clock (Westclox) in 1899 and the E. Ingraham Company also began manufacturing them. Dollar watches were practical, mass-produced timepieces intended to be as inexpensive as possible.
Features of dollar watches were their simple, rugged design, movement (usually with a pin-pallet escapement, although sometimes with duplex escapements) which has either no jewels or just one jewel, width of about eighteen size ({{convert|2|in}}), and sale price of about a dollar from 1892 until the mid-1950s. Many other companies made them, with literally hundreds of names on the dials. From around 1905, Ingersoll started selling their watches in the UK as Crown watches.<ref name=Bruton186 />
To keep costs down, the watches were often sold in flimsy cardboard boxes, which are now highly collectible.{{citation needed|date=December 2020}}
==See also== {{Portal|Companies}} * List of watch manufacturers * Coin watch * Counterfeit watch * Mystery watch
==References== {{Reflist|30em}}
Category:Watches