How do I get the crystal oscillator out of a clock to use it for other things?

I'm building a radio transmitter, and that requires a crystal oscillator. Knowing that clocks use these too, I took apart a clock and removed all the gears to find a working oscillator connected to a coil of copper wire which when hooked up to a AA battery makes a small blue gear vibrate every second. There is a metal cylinder which I believe to be the oscillator, but I'm afraid of damaging it and I'm not sure how many Hz it is, and I'm not sure of the significance of the copper wire (is it a transformer?). Help in this endeavor would be much appreciated as I can't find a decent place to buy an oscillator