First time on here, but have been a big UG fan for a while. I was wondering if anyone has ever seen a 1945 Compax with this face before. I got it while I was overseas after seeing it in a well known antiques dealers window. I've looked a bit and have never seen one, but also didn't have $350 to spend for the UG book.

Thanks!

DL

 

I am not sure about the originality of the hands (main hour and minute) but the dial does look quite nice and original. But better get opinions from the experts around here who will chime in.

 

First thing's first, welcome to the forum! In order to give you a complete assessment, we need more pictures (caseback, movement, dial close-up, and maybe even the crown), but I'll try to be as helpful as I can. The hour and minute hands are replacements for sure. As far as the dial is concerned, I've never seen a pulsation scale on a non-Medico dial, let alone a base 30, but the numbers, letters, and markers look crisp and original. I think you've found yourself an uncommon dial variation. As far as I can tell, the luminous looks like it has either been scraped off of the hour markers or re-lumed, but it's hard to be sure which from your picture. Crown also looks like it could be a replacement. it should have an unsigned crown, but this one looks to be a signed crown of some sort.

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hey @jordn thanks so much for the welcome and the link to the book! Everywhere else I had seen it such as Amazon had been significantly more than that. I agree I had never seen a base 30 on any Compax before. The Ref (12558) and case numbers 1.188 seem to match the Compax model and year 1945 but still thought it was pretty unique and worth a shout out to the community to see what they thought. I had a feeling the hands might be replacements as they are a little long and go into the Pulsation scale. Here are a few more pics, wasn't feeling super confident in taking the back off myself to get a picture of the movement but if there is a semi-idiot proof way of doing it would be happy to try.

 

The watch looks infinitely better on a wrist . I retract my previous comment about the hour markers. They look untouched and have aged evenly. The crown is indeed a replacement (not the worst I've seen though) and after a second look, the sub-second hand appears to be a replacement as well. Having said all of this, it's still a gorgeous watch, so wear it in good health.

 

I think Jordn has summed this one up nicely. The Medicos are a very complex subspecies to nail in the UG repetoire, as there were some Medico references that were born medicos at the factory; others were Compax and Uni-Compax models that were turned into Medicos as factory or dealer upgrades at the customer request at the time of sale. Hence, these customer-requested Medicos are correct and original in my view.

The trick is in sorting these from the later, opportunistic "upgrades".

Regarding the crown and sub-seconds hand, I believe the latter may be okay--though I see where Jordn may have found it a bit short in one of those pictures. The crown is certainly a signed UG crown, which may very well be original, or may be a later replacement. I'd want to see it in the metal.

Gorgeous watch in any case.

Will this pulsation dial be put to proper use by a medico? Introductions are in order from our new members.

 

@woodwkr2 thanks for the information, always so interesting and helpful. I am certainly not a Medico and therefore the function wont get used for its intended purpose but I still feel like I saved the watch from obscurity. I was recently in Italy and found it in a nice little antique jewelry store window next to the big names like Rolex and Omega etc and get the impression that no one else had really ever walked in knowing a single thing about Universal Geneve. After some negotiating I was very excited to get this into my possession. I've been a collector of some older specific versions of Rolex and have newly gotten into older IWC's but haven't bought any yet. I've been admiring UG's from afar but excitedly this is my first hands on (besides vintage watch stores) experience and love it!