I really enjoy finding old items that don’t seem to fit at first. This item was the perfect example of an item that didn’t make sense when first found. When I first saw it, I thought it resembled nothing more than a broken pocket watch with a very unusual hand-drawn face. When you turn the crown and allow it to be wound up, the hand will spin and will tick for awhile and stop at some arbitrary point. This is a rather odd occurrence. However, after taking another look at the face, the answer was quite evident.
It’s a broken pocket watch which was most probably a useless piece of junk. However, it had been repurposed by someone to become a completely random choice maker for a football pool. Football pools are essentially betting pools where participants predict results.
A Broken Timekeeper Finds a New Calling
As you can see from the pictures, the pocket watch appears to have failed much like any other. The internal mechanism for maintaining tension no longer works. Therefore, when you turn the crown and wind it up, the hands spin wildly and randomly instead of keeping track of time. It is no longer useful as a time keeper. However, it is ideal as a spinning device.
The person who created this also clearly utilized it in such manner.
The hand drawn dial reflects the repeating sequence of 1, X, and 2. If you’re familiar with football pools; those sequences should immediately make sense.
1 = The Home Team Wins
X = Draw
2 = The Away Team Wins
The numbers surrounding the edges were probably corresponding to the numbers listed next to the matches on a standard football pool coupon. Instead of having to pick each individual result manually, the user simply wound the clock and allowed chance to determine their selections.
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