I've been looking around at Speedmasters for awhile but only made the decision to buy one awhile ago. I set my mind on the 3572.50 - tritium dial, hesalite crystal, sapphire case back and gold-gilt 863 movement. I picked this one up from the eBay seller in Japan sabashioyakiz1 Might have paid slightly more than market but since he was a trusted seller I didn't mind. It took almost a month to get to me from Japan to the UK (UK Customs held it for unusually long - 19 days), but this is it! Overall condition seems to be good, and I don't think that it has been polished (but I am not sure at all). I swapped out the bracelet and put it in a Heuerville strap! Hesalite had minute hairlines, but some polywatch took it out much faster than expected. Only thing I noticed at first was that the tritium on the hands and the dial are patina-ed differently, does this suggest that the hands were changed at some point?
Not necessarily. In fact it is unusual to find perfectly matching hands and dial lume on a tritium era speedmaster.
My 1988 Speedmaster (also from Japan) looks just like that--yellow-brown patina on the markers, hands closer to white. Beautiful watch.
There were some transitional models from 3592.50 to the 3572.50 where they used the gold-gilt 863 movement from what I understand
Not necessarily. I own an SM 200 pre-bond whose tritium hands were never changed, and have also aged a bit differently from the markers.
I can definitely understand that, I called numerous times but they said it's perfectly normal that customs can take up to 3 weeks, sometimes a lot longer than that.
Great news to know that the hands might be the original ones, without being swapped out. For any of the experts, I don't know if the photos are close up enough, but does the case look to have been polished? If it is unpolished then the previous owner probably hardly ever used the watch because the condition is immaculate.
Thanks for the thoughts and comments then , are you active on WUS under a different name? Your avatar looks familiar.
Not at all. Never been there. This Avatar is the result of someone else's opinion of me (or my wrists). He may be at WUS
