I recently fully serviced this beautiful 1950's Waltham Premier 65 with an interesting modified A. Schild (AS) calibre 1580 movement. This watch was originally worn by the customer's father. This watch was full of pleasant surprises during servicing and was a joy to work on. First, this watch has 65 jewels. While arguably a marketing effort to win the jewel count race of the era, do not be too quick to assume this watch isn't in-fact designed to leverage them. From the time when all companies were racing to develop automatic movements (~1955) this movement has a number of high-end innovations. It contains original patents that went-on to become the basis for modern automatic mechanisms. First and as the most unusual attribute, we see the rotor is lined with cap jewels. Yes of course this raised the jewel count but here's another observation-- the automatic mechanism is one of the quietest and smoothest I've encountered. During rotational winder testing, it wound the mainspring with extraordinary speed. Next, we see that the automatic winding is done through a sophisticated, and more expensive to manufacture, milled ratcheting wheel on the underside of the barrel arbor. This design performs very nicely. In the automatic module we see reversing wheels that set the stage for what was to become the reversing wheels of today's ETA based movements and others. All automatic components showed little to no wear and performed very nicely. Finally we see the patents shown on the automatic bridge and, as a final touch, a cap jewel for the wheel transmitting power to the ratcheting mechanism under the dial. After servicing, the watch's performance exceeds that of many new watches with superb amplitude and accuracy.
