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Hi Neville
My watch is in perfect working condition and is numbered 2878.
I obtained it in 1977, paired with a silver Delagoa Bay medallion in original box together with the NZASM Letter of Issue for both to A P Burgers.

At the start of the Boer War Burgers was listed as a Burger and in 1938 he also qualified for a gold medal(No 99) of the "Burgerunie van die ZAR".

Unfortunately the ZAR Burgerunie medal was already missing in 1977 (the one shown is to another recipient) and I have misplaced/misfiled the original box for the NZASM silver medal!
Henk

Henk,
Thank you for your extremely informative post. I had no idea that the watches were presented together with the silver medals. The covering letter implies that these pieces were only given to employees of the NZASM, presumably at management level. It would be nice to have a few more serial numbers. With just three, we can surmise that at least fifty watches were distributed.
Neville

A quick update:

The reported mintage of fifty silver medals has its origins in an article published in The Sphere on 30 November 1901 (p. 228): “Medal 'A', of which some fifty were struck, is of silver. They were given to the chief constructors and engineers of the railway”. The entry in the catalogue for the 1958 "Africana Museum Commemorative Medals of the Z.A.R." exhibition gives The Sphere as its source, and it is this that Hern quotes.
If the article in The Sphere is correct, and if all the watches were presented with silver medals (as suggested by the NZASM covering letter posted by Henk), one would expect around fifty watches to have been issued. The watch serial numbers that I have seen so far would not contradict this.

Neville

Hi Everyone

Sorry it took me so long to reply. The number on my watch is 2872

Regards
Anthony

Thanks for that Anthony,

I now have these numbers: 2808, 2829, 2836, 2872 & 2878. This suggests a run of at least seventy watches. If the reported mintage of fifty silver medals is correct, this would mean that some watches were presented on their own.

Neville