As a side note, the country of Switzerland and its watchmakers use three languages: German, French and Italian. My foreign language skills are not that good and our American keyboards do not include characters with dots above the letters. So I apologize to foreign collectors for the inexact translations and incorrect spellings.

Shooting festival watchEs / shutzenfest uhren

This website is primarily a collection of watches that were originally purchased by or awarded to participants at shooting festivals from the mid-1800s to pre-World War 2 Europe, although there are a few more recent watches. The majority of this collection is from Switzerland but there also are watches from shooting festivals in Germany, Austria, Russia, and Belgium. Approximately 25% of the watches include their original cases.

Shooting festivals in countries like Switzerland have been very significant events and they remain quite popular today — although not with quite the same amount of hoopla as in the past. The main event was essentially competitive marksmanship, and there were parades, banquets and other events as well. Participants could purchase catalogs, medals, watches, tokens, cups, posters, and other memorabilia. Some of the top awards included considerable sums of money. Watches and guns were also top prizes.

The watches are listed by canton and by Martin number, that is, the listing from the landmark book on the topic, written by Jean L. Martin entitled, Swiss Shooting Watches 1836 - 1939, and published in 1976. Mr. Martin has published a total of 8 different books on Swiss watches but the first volume is the most complete, and exclusively devoted to watches from shooting festivals. I have all 8 books, which are signed by the author, and most of them personally signed to me. As many people know, Mr. Martin also wrote books on medals and cups from shooting festivals.

This website also will include other non-shooting festival watches as well, although smaller in number, most of them from Germany. It is a goal to include rotating exhibits, primarily being Swiss shooting festivals medals, talers cups are related ephemera.