145.022 STRAIGHT WRITING Apollo XI is the limited to Japan?

Found the link and picture of Spacefruit's Switzerland delivered watch:

This makes three types of font used on SWA11: the pointy top 'A' (like Tigertom and davidoff), the slightly flat top 'A' (like the one you posted), and the wide flat top 'A' (like the one I posted, which is more often seen.)

There are other differences, such as the width of the font, which is easier to distinguish in the '1969.' I'm not attempting to thoroughly identify each distinction at this point.

Your Wako watch has a sold date in 1972, even though it has an early serial number. Further demonstrates the difficulty in relying on the serial numbers, production dates and sales dates to determine when a watch was developed.

Thanks for posting this. It appears that the Wako watch is sold?

I passed on purchasing a pointy A font SWA11 because I suspected i wasn't real. Now I regret that.

That watch was posted April 2024 in the thread that keeps track of the serial numbers

No, unfortunately. I own one SWA11 and sold a previous one. I look regularly for more, most often in Japan. I think it might have been sold in Japan, but I am not certain. I have passed on a couple because either the cases were too polished or the lume was too green.

To recap, it's looking like there may be 3 different types of SWA11 case backs, based on different fonts. They appear to be in similar serial numbers, but there are so few (1 or 3) that it's too small a sample to be certain. Regardless, it's difficult to dismiss the non-conforming as not coming from Omega. Omega used different fonts in the gold speedys, which you obviously know, so there's precedence for using different fonts in the steel. I'm curious about how difficult it would be set up the machine tooling. If not too difficult, then it's more reasonable to think Omega may have changed fonts for some reason. A commonsense reason for changing font would be a production run, i.e. use one type of font to produce a few watches and then stop. Another order comes in and retool, but this time using a slightly different font. It doesn't make sense for a manufacturer to randomly switch fonts in the middle of production runs.

What is most curious is trying to understand the development timeline. If we continue to think that the Japanese distributor ordered a larger supply of steel SWA11s (approximately 300 or more), were there already a few steel SWA11s in production, such as these early pointy tops? I can't think of a method to determine the timeline without information other than serial numbers coming from Omega's archives.

Stupid me! It's been in the Moonwatch Only book all along! Three types:


Reminds me of a joke a work colleague said: "You know an easy way to get ahead, Dave? First, create a problem, and the fix the problem!"

Well, I won't soon forget that there are three types of SWA11 casebacks. It still doesn't quite make sense why, but it appears that based on the serial numbers, they came in sequences. Also, based on extracts, a few were sold in countries other than Japan. We don't know how wide spread that was, but it's hard to argue with an extract.

3rd. One of the authors said they hope to add more details on the SWA11 in new editions.


Thanks for being persistent and sharing your watch. I learned a lot. I wish we could still rely on extracts and had more information from the archives, but perhaps there isn't much more. It'd be nice to see correspondence between the Japanese dealer and Omega, but it may not have been saved.

That dial and hands are gorgeous. Most Japanese that I have seen have more light yellow lume with dark spots from mildew or green lume from mold. It looks like your watch benefited from a dryer environment.

Were you able to get an extract before it was shut down?

These discussions are why vintage watches and Speedmasters in particular are fun to own. I missed the wild days of the early 2000's before the books were written and people were trying to make sense of what they were seeing. It's much easier today to simply look up all the variations, but it's a little bit less fun.