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This 18 size 24 jewel grade 64 Illinois was made for A.N. Anderson of Minneapolis, MN. A.N. Anderson did a fairly high volume of private label business with Illinois and Hamilton. There are at least 12 different grades of Illinois watches which have been seen with the Anderson private label. This movement is one of only 50 made in this jeweling and grade. In fact, these movements are the only 24 jewel hunters, other than the Bunn Special, ever made by Illinois. They may all have been made as private labels and may all have been made for Anderson. As with the 24 jewel Bunn Specials, the jewel on the barrel arbor in the big setting does not serve any real mechanical purpose.
Why would Illinois make a small run of a nonstandard movement like this? Nobody is really sure, but an educated guess is that many of these watches were made specifically to satisfy a customer who wanted a watch for less money than Illinois would sell their similar, standard watch. The Bunn grade would have cost much more than this watch, and if Illinois would have reduced the price for Anderson, they might have been forced to do it for everyone. They wanted to maintain their margins on the high grade watches.
A big thank you to the kind collector who has allowed me to photograph this extremely rare and beautiful private label from his collection.
