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Best pocket watch6/11/2023 Omega sent it off to their valuation company and it came back with basic information, but to me that was so much more than I knew about it at that point. I’m not gonna lie, I don’t think they really knew much about it. Not knowing anything about pocket watches or of the existence of any Ethiopian market watches I bought the watch and had it sent off to Omega immediately. Being Ethiopian myself I recognised the language, the lion, and if it was real, the importance of owning a little bit of history. This lion, with a crown on its head and holding the cross sceptre looks as if it’s standing in grass, an iconic symbol of past Ethiopian Emperors. On the back of this small 48mm pocket watch stands a lion, but not merely any lion, The Lion of Judah. A great cure for that would be to flip the pocket watch to reveal the intricate engraving on the back. So far this pocket watch would, at best, garner mild curiosity from a few watch admirers. Even more obscurely these words are written in Amharic using the Ge’ez alphabet, the native alphabet of Ethiopia. This doesn’t really mean a lot to people in the watch community, and truthfully it’s just the name of a city and neighbourhood in Ethiopia. On the dial of this typical looking watch were the words Addis Abeba / Bole. A beautiful manual wind Omega pocket watch from 1906/8. So, for the past year I’ve been searching for anything I can find on a piece I stumbled upon on eBay. Emperor Haile Selase and was auction by Christie’s in 2017. After a few pages of this you will most probably end up with the most famous watch with an Ethiopian connection a black dial Patek Philippe 2497. When you first search for “Ethiopian watches” the first few pages of google are going to either be fake watches for sale in Ethiopia or just a watch and no connection with Ethiopia.
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