Table of case serial numbers and their corresponding years for gold, silver, nickel and steel pocket watches from the Pavel Bure trading house by year of manufacture (1880 – 1917).
The early models of P. Bure’s pocket watches were manufactured at the LONGINES factory, their numbering can be checked according to the Longines Serial Number Catalogue.
| YEAR OF ISSUE | CASE NUMBER |
| 1880-1887 | 1000 – 9000 |
| 1888 | 9000 – 12000 |
| 1889 | 12,000 – 15,000 |
| 1890 | 15,000 – 18,000 |
| 1891 | 18,000 – 21,000 |
| 1892 | 21,000 – 24,000 |
| 1893 | 24,000 – 27,000 |
| 1894 | 27,000 – 30,000 |
| 1895 | 30,000 – 33,000 |
| 1896 | 33,000 – 36,000 |
| 1897 | 36,000 – 39,000 |
| 1898 | 39,000 – 44,000 |
| 1899 | 44,000 – 49,000 |
| 1900 | 49,000 – 54,000 |
| 1901 | 54,000 – 59,000 |
| 1902 | 59,000 – 69,000 |
| 1903 | 69,000 – 82,000 |
| 1904 | 82,000 – 96,000 |
| 1905 | 96,000 – 110,000 |
| 1906 | 110,000 – 140,000 |
| 1907 – 1908 | 140,000 – 223,000 |
| 1909 | 223,000 – 246,000 |
| 1910 | 246,000 – 266,000 |
| 1911 | 266,000 – 286,000 |
| 1912 | 286,000 – 306,000 |
| 1913 | 306,000 – 345,000 |
| 1914 | 345,000 – 378,000 |
| 1915 | 378,000 – 400,000 |
| 1916 | 400,000 – 420,000 |
| 1917 | 420,000 – 440,000 (up to 490,000) |
When purchasing expensive movements assembled in Switzerland, P. Bure was obliged to put the number of the purchased movement on the watch. The movements that came from abroad in the form of a set of spare parts (90% of all Bure movements), were assembled in Russia by Russian craftsmen in Bure workshops and were numbered according to the above table.
The numbering ends in 1917 because the table was drawn up according to the award inscriptions on the Bure watches of the tsarist period. Accordingly, it ends with the year of the revolution, after which watches were no longer officially presented as rewards. However, the assembly factory was still producing watches, and later also moved to Riga, where many watches with the serial numbers 49xxxx can still be found in antique shops. Presumably, from 1919 to the early 1920’s there was a transitional period, during which the company began to produce watches with traditional ‘P-U’ movements, but were also already focused on the European watch market using the signature ‘Paul Buhre’. Later, in the 1920’s, the remnants of production and the trademark were sold to Switzerland.
Source:
A. I. Vilkov “Prize Watches in the Russian Imperial Army”, Moscow, Collector’s Books.
Many thanks to Rastafar for the valuable material!
