It was in 1887 that Georges Eberhard founded the Manufacture d'horlogerie Eberhard & Co. in La Chaux-de-Fonds.
From this date on, the Swiss Maison has been synonymous with excellence and innovation, which find expression in highly technical timepieces that have marked important evolutionary milestones: the pocket chronograph in 1919, the first wrist chronograph in 1935, all the way up to the double timekeeper of 1939. This was a new revolution: the Maison created a wrist chronograph equipped with an innovative split-seconds device that enabled, precisely, double split-seconds timing, with a mechanism from the manufacturer Valjoux inside.
The Eberhard caliber 1600 (or 16000), produced exclusively for the Chaux-de-Fonds company on the basis of the Valjoux 65 movement, in the push-button plus slide variety, has a diameter of 36.0 mm, equal to 16"' lines, manual winding and 30-minute register. The watch has 17 jewels, anchor escapement, monometallic balance wheel with screws, no shock absorber (in the newer examples it is present), Breguet (or flat, in the newer ones) 18000 Alt/h balance spring with 1/5 second resolution, and allows measurement of intermediate times, with stop and restart without resetting.
The utmost attention to detail sought by Eberhard for this caliber is evidenced by the beveling ("anglage") work on levers and bridges, conducted with great skill. By now many years the Eberhard name is synonymous with great reliability, continuing to be used by many people whose passion passes on history.
The splitter we are illustrating is in rose gold, of extreme rarity, with its exceptionally well maintained condition after some 80 years, it gives the owner the opportunity to preserve something unique.
We at Bonanno Jewelry enclose a photo of the watch and, as is our custom, we illustrate with a graph the trend in value over the various years, showing the cost the item originally had and the amount it pays today, also pointing out how much it has appreciated over the years.
A standard model of the watch in question, costing about 15,000 Lire in 1930, corresponding to today's purchasing power of €13,745.00, today has reached a value of about €30,000, about twice the starting price. This shows the great revaluation and thus the great investment this watch has made.
