I spotted this on C24 asking $6,970

Transitionals are very rare, and thre are not many nice ones. Some of them have lovely aged dials, and a lot have damaged lume.

Lets see this one:


The broken crystal has me wondering, why? But more importantly that lume colour is often touted and valued as "Pumpkin". It is a very rare colour to see in a speedmaster.

So we have to ask, is it natural?

Here we see the 3 marker which has lost half of the luminous material, in a very clean manner. I have seen this kind of "Clean loss" on markers tat have been re applied. Perhaps something to do with the pre cleaning or preparation. In any event it is another unusual thing to see, a dramatic loss on one marker while the others are all full.



The distribution of the material is also unusual.

When I compare the lume in the hands to the lume in the plots, they match perfectly, as though the material came from the same mix.



So in conclusion I would say this watch has had its lume re applied.

What do you all think?

 

I want to share a picture of my -67 which has the same kind of lume loss at 8.

The lume on mine is much more even than on the OP and the hands lume looks different compared to the dial.

I will try to post a better picture later

 

So difficult to tell, but I would agree with your conclusion that the lume has been re applied.
I do find it an attractive watch though!

 

Agreed. The dial has a nice body colour.

Interesting.

 

I've always been wary of any Speedmaster with matching hand and dial lume.
Dials were made by one company, hands by another.

 

I assume relume too.

Honestly, I’m turned off by ‘pumpkin’ colored lume and wouldn’t buy a watch displaying such a color, because the vast majority of these, I think, are fakes and/or manipulations.

 

Also the lume on the hands is exposed to air from two sides but the dial only one, so there is always a slight difference in color/shade in the "original" examples.

 

The "pumpkin" lume looks too aged to me. Appealing but suspicious at the same time.
Also the exact tone of the dial on the hands seems somehow questionable.
Looking at his C24 ratings (some issues), I think I would rather not go for it.
So, I would guess it's a re lume.

 

Nice looking dial, debatable lume but what did they do to that caseback ???

 

Indeed.


And what’s up with its chrono second hand? Something about the shape of the spade bothers me. The bottom is a close up of the one on my -74.

 

With 265575xx the case in point sits within a serial range a few hundreds away from one of my own Transitionals. This one sure doesn't have a similar lume colour, nor does any of my vintage Speedies have matching lume on hands and dial. So, another vote for a relume on this one.

 

I think it's original lume on the dial, because it's almost impossible to create that structure and blurrishment by hand and the hands have been relumed (and repainted?).

 

I tried to take better close ups, here they are:










To me the lume on the dial seems original but I'm no expert...

What do you think?

 

A couple of my -67's also have the same partly lume loss. Here's one of them (a never touched one owner):

 

This is mine and it has a bit of lume loss.

I am interested in hearing from the experts ...

 

You hands don't match the lume which is what I expect.
The C24 watch hands match the lume exactly.
A no go for me.

 

My humble 2c opinion is : when there is lume patination involved (so the factory-fresh cream/canary-yellow lume over time goes darker, towards amber, and maybe picks up some dark spots) the hands change quicker and patinate more/darker (perhaps due to proximity to temperature barrier(crystal) and/or being exposed to atmosphere on 2 surfaces vs 1 for dial lume), as can be seen by most watches in this thread. As such, the OP watch, apart from the color, to my eyes is wrong. It’s also why super mint watches with factory fresh dial lume usually come with same/matching-color/condition/factory-fresh hands (but sometimes one or more of the hands may be a slightly different shade, often not...no hard and fast rule here). As mentioned, just my 2c humble opinion. Please don’t quote me

 

I don’t like the look of the one titled in this thread.
My own “transitional” back in my possession after a no sale to a friend.
I’m so glad he changed his mind.
In my experience a large percentage of this particular model has lovely honey coloured lume and matching hands, more so than any other model.
I’ve has a few over the years and it always struck me how beautiful the 68 “transitional” dial was.