1896-1900 – An illustrated billhead and advertisement for two firms that merged to form the Dueber-Hampden Watch Company which operated in Canton, Ohio until it was purchased lock, stock, and barrel by Soviet Russia’s international trading organization in 1930 and relocated to Moscow

Canton, Ohio, 1900. This lot consists of two items. Both are in nice shape:

An 1894 illustrated billhead from The Hampden Watch Company of Canton, Ohio documenting the sale of an “Endstand’. The illustration features a hand grasping a distraught, scythe-wielding Father Time. It measures 8½” x 5¾”.

A clipped advertisement for Dueber Watch Works “Dueber Grand” male and female bicycles that were also made in Canton between 1896 and 1900. These high-quality bicycles sold for $55 dollars, about $1,200 in today’s money.

. Both companies operated in Canton since the 1860s. The Hampden Watch Company, which manufactured high-quality jewel-movement watches, purchased the Dueber Watch Company, one of its watch case suppliers in 1923. Declining sales led the joint firm into receivership where it was bought by the Amtorg Trading Company in 1930. Amtorg was controlled by the Russian People’s Commissariat for Foreign Trade, which served as the de facto Russian embassy until the United States established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union in 1933.

Amtorg, which handled almost all Russian exports, mostly lumber, furs, flax, bristles, and caviar, as well as all imports of raw materials and machinery needed by Soviet industry and agriculture, moved the watch company lock, stock, and barrel in its entirety – 28 boxcar loads – to Moscow where 21 company employees trained Russian workers to run the factory.

The company was renamed the First State Watch Company and produced presentation pocket watches for party officials and other dignitaries. It also manufactured high-quality watches for Soviet Navy divers. It continued operation under a new name, the First Moscow Watch Factory, until 1970.

Amtorg continued in operation until the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1998. During World War II and the Cold War, it served as the central point of Soviet industrial espionage in the United States and was instrumental in stealing atomic bomb secrets.

(For more information, see the website “Hampton Watches . . . The Birth of Soviet Watchmaking,” and Zelchenko’s "Stealing America's Know-How: The Story of Amtorg" in the February 1952 edition of American Mercury.).