An Abercrombie & Fitch Shipmate From Grandpa

Matt Blood, the capital projects manager at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn, New York, was left a watch by his father, who in turn had received it from his grandfather. “My greatgrandfather worked for a wealthy family from Connecticut who had a large family estate in Vermont,” Blood wrote us. “I’m guessing it was given to him by the family patriarch back in the 1940s.”

The watch is an Abercrombie & Fitch Shipmate, an automatic timepiece sold for a few decades in the early to mid-20th century. Blood didn’t know much about it, so Pursuits connected him with James Lamdin, founder of vintage retailer Analog:Shift and a vice president at Watches of Switzerland Group Plc.

“Basically what we’re talking about is the glory days of Abercrombie & Fitch, when it was a men’s outfitter and you could buy your elephant guns and your safari tents and all your equipment for your big game hunt,” Lamdin says. “They prided themselves in having high-end products, so their timepieces were really high quality.”

A lot of Abercrombie’s watches were contract-managed out to Heuer, which would make them using Swiss movements. Heuer went on to introduce the iconic Carrera and Autavia models before it was sold and became TAG Heuer, now part of LVMH. Lamdin estimates the watch would sell for $1,500 to $2,000 today.

“I grew up hearing my father’s stories about my greatgrandfather,” said Blood, who’s a father himself and plans to keep the watch after having it restored. “He was a largerthan-life kind of guy. He used to stock game on the estate and lead pheasant hunts. He was a practical joker and the chairman of the road crew—so our own family version of Hemingway.”