Seth Thomas Trade Price List No. 676 October 1, 1909

The Seth Thomas Watch Movements Trade Price List No. 676, October 1, 1909, shown here looks different from the version published in Seth Thomas Watches 1885-1915 by Chris Bailey. That is because the front pages/covers on the Trade Price List 676 and the Trade Price List 671 were accidentally swapped in that publication. How am I so confident that my copy doesn’t have the wrong front page?

The original Seth Thomas Watch Movements Trade Price List No. 676, October 1, 1909, is a very small four-page advertising document, with all four pages printed on one sheet of 6-inch by 7-inch paper, with Page 4 and Page 1 on one side of the sheet and Page 2 and Page 3 on the other. When the paper is folded in half you then have Page 1 on the front with Page 2 on the back of it and Page 3 next to it with Page 4 on the back of page 3. In its folded form it is only 6 inches tall and 3 1/2 inches wide, approximately the size of a modern cellphone. If the pair of side-by-side pages below look taller than they are wide, it is an optical illusion caused by the vertical orientation of each individual page. Hold a ruler up to your screen and you will see that the pair of pages is actually wider than it is tall.

With the entire advertisement printed on one sheet of paper it isn’t possible for a seller to accidentally include the wrong first page in an original Seth Thomas Watch Movements Trade Price List No. 676. Through cutting and pasting in the publishing process it is entirely understandable how pages that look almost identical could be accidentally swapped during the editing phase of publishing a book that contains multiple similar Trade Price Lists.