It was the style at the time, after all.

Give me five bees for a quarter

The good old nineteen dicketies

Some things never go out of style

how are you going to fit the pocket sand?

These days to take the ferry costs a nickel!

I don't so here's my guess: Pocket watches are colloquially known as cibule (onions) in Czech and presumably English, too, and somebody wants to appear fancy but misses the mark.

Looks good! Can't wait til the wars over and we can finally get some nice white ones, though.