Found my great-uncle's old pocket watch in a box of junk at a garage sale in Boise

I was helping my aunt clean out her garage last fall, mostly just tossing old magazines and broken tools. In a dusty shoebox under a workbench, I felt something heavy wrapped in a greasy rag. It was a silver pocket watch, totally black with tarnish. My aunt said, 'Oh, that was your Uncle Frank's. He carried it every day working on the railroad.' I took it home, spent about two hours with some polish and a soft cloth, and the engraving on the back slowly showed up: 'F.J.C. 1918.' That was the year he started as a brakeman. It doesn't even keep good time anymore, the mechanism is shot, but now I keep it on my desk. It makes me think about him doing a real, hard job every single day, something you could hold in your hand. Has anyone else found a family piece in a place you totally didn't expect?

3 comments

3 Comments

kim.nancy2mo ago

Actually, it's not a great idea to polish old silver like that. You can wipe off the history along with the tarnish. That black layer is called a patina, and it protects the metal. For something with an engraving that personal, I would have just used a dry cloth to get the dust off.

patricia_chen671mo ago

Guess I'm the type who would accidentally polish the patina off a museum piece and then try to glue it back on. My mom still hasn't forgiven me for what I did to her old tea set.

janaf762mo ago

Yeah, polishing it was probably the right call in this case... that thick, greasy tarnish can actually eat into the silver over time if it's left on there for decades. A gentle polish just brings it back to the metal. The real history is in the engraving and the dents from use, not the black gunk. I've got my granddad's Zippo that was in the same shape.