This site cites its sources. Every factual claim is checked against them, and attributions are rated for how strong that sourcing is. This page states the standard.
Much of what appears here traces to primary material: the Swiss federal patent register and the Schweizerisches Handelsamtsblatt, period catalogs and letterheads, civil records, and correspondence and photographs from CEJARE's fonds Gabus Frères. Where a claim rests on secondary research instead — a compiled genealogical chart, a specialist register consulted through published reference, a collector's compiled serial-number chart, a specialist forum thread, a dealer's own listing — that source is identified as such, not presented as equivalent to a primary document.
Both kinds of source appear here. Citing secondary literature does not weaken a primary-source archive; treating the two as interchangeable would.
Case attributions and collection pieces are rated by how well they are corroborated, not by whether they are plausible. One tier system applies across this site:
A dealer's listing constitutes evidence, but not an auction house's independent record; it is rated accordingly rather than counted as Documented. These ratings assess the sourcing, not the piece itself — they record how far the documentary trail currently extends.
A date, a name, or a detail is at times genuinely unresolved: a serial-number range that narrows a year only to an estimate, an attribution that names a firm but not which entity within it, a figure repeated often enough to appear settled though never independently verified. Where this is the case, the site states the uncertainty rather than adopting the more convenient version.
New documents surface. Family collections get photographed properly for the first time. A forum post turns out to name the right case-maker's mark. This archive is corrected as that happens — sometimes upward, from Collector Research to Documented; sometimes the other direction, when a long-repeated detail turns out not to hold up.
The goal isn't a finished account. It's an honest one, kept that way as it grows.