Hello all,

I have this Zenith A3818 which seemed to me all original except the crown, but I realized recently that the hour and minute hands are not exactly like on the other examples. Indeed, usually the white stripe is thicker than the tritium and on mine the white stripe is thinner. Is it correct ? Service hands ?

Thanks a lot

 

To compare : hands usually seen on other examples :

 

Crops :

 

I am not a A3818 expert but from what I saw on Instagram, most A3818 have other hands like you said with thicker white stripes.

Crown should be the same as the A386 (Nato star with big circle)

it remains an outstanding A3818 with amazing dial and super clean and fresh patina.... DIBS please

 

I believe yours to have service hands for the hour and minutes. As you have observed, the white parts on the original are the same width as the lume. Also, your subdials hands are replacements as they are shorter than they should be.

On the plus side your dial and tachy bezel are beautiful. Often these blue dials have paint flaking off them.

 

Thanks @Frederic_gva et @sailor !
What made me doubt about service hands is the perfect matching between the patina of the hands and the dial, so I was hoping someone could tell me that there were several types of hands for the H and M.
So now I have to find correct crown and hands : not too difficult about crown but harder about hands !!

 

I'm not so sure that crown will be easy to find. I've been hunting for an A277 crown for ages!