Aiming For Stylish On A Budget

For a couple of years now, I have toyed with the idea of a vintage Omega dress watch as part of a basic personal trio of work watch, dress watch and tool watch.

I already have my work watch for the office (stainless steel-only Constellation Day-Date cal. 1021 from 1972 - yes, I know not a favourite compared to a cal. 5xx or 7xx but, as Desmond Guilfoyle has shown, once you get past the known problems of cal. 100x (avoidable if servicing schedule maintained), the follow-up cals. 101x and 102x are actually very good) and I have already decided what will be my tool watch (Speedmaster 125 ... yes, I know not much love out there for the looks but, to me, it is a tool watch par excellence).

But this time around, I also wanted ‘real’ vintage, too (arbitrarily on my part, that meant ‘pre-me’ i.e. 1968 or earlier). That still left plenty of choice but two other restrictions applied.

First, I wanted something I could wear regularly and not have to worry about damage or loss; this meant I was looking for something inexpensive (for my purposes, a fully inclusive cost of less than AUD 2000/USD 1450/EUR 1250). But, for a little bit of dress ‘showiness’, I also really wanted solid gold (preferably 18K) and rose gold in particular. Although I prefer automatics, manual wind would be fine for a dress watch.

Now, I really liked the looks of the vintage Trésors of the late 40s and the early 50s but, at least here in Australia, reasonable examples were usually above the budget I had set - so I did some digging around for something not too dissimilar in style and eventually discovered an Omega Century with cal. 269 manual wind. For the few who may not know, Omega produced Century models from the first half of the 50s to the second half of the 60s. Interestingly, after Omega stopped using the CENTURY mark, a separate Swiss-based watch company started using it in 1967 and still does so today (making an Omega Century ‘revival’ extremely unlikely).

In the US and Canada, Omega Century watches were often cased either in 14K yellow gold fill or 14K yellow solid gold with many of the cases made by Star Watch Case Co in Ludington, MI. However, I noticed that the corresponding Omega Century watches that were made and sold into European markets (popular in France and Italy in particular) were produced in 18K solid gold more often, including (yes!! hurrah!!) rose gold.

Eventually, in a shop not far from Turin, I found what I wanted: briefly shown in a wrist shot in WRUW on its first day of wear, my new dress watch is a ref. 121.014 (121.0014 in the Omega Vintage Database) with the exemplar being 18K yellow gold (case code BA) but also available in rose, etc. The cal. 269 movement’s 20-prefixed serial number gives a 1963 date, the twilight of that classic Omega 30mm family of movements made from December 1938 onwards.

Some pictures follow. With 18K gold as casing material and with the constraints previously mentioned, I could live with some polishing and so on but I think that, overall, it looks OK. Thoughts? Also, what is your approach to 'stylish on a budget'? And what are your favourite 'stylish on a budget' watches?

Anyway, as my next move, off to find that oh-so-elusive reasonable example of a Speedmaster 125 at a reasonable price and I will have my trio!!! Happy Hunting and Have A Great Day, Everybody!!!

If you don't mind looking at another Swiss brand, I just stumbled on this new listing on Ebay:

Very slightly higher than your price band, but a very different/classic look to your others. (Search Cellini 4114 cal.1601 on Ebay. No affiliation to seller).

Thank you very much for the suggestion - what a great coincidence. I should explain: before deciding to go 'full Omega' across all three watches, I had indeed looked at various Cellini models and I very much liked them. The only thing that held me back was that, on the ones I found that were within (or close to) budget, I was often seeing problems with the dials. Now, I have to say though that the example you have picked out here is way, way better than the ones I saw (only a couple of small marks below the markers at 5 and 6 and just past 11). I will certainly keep looking at these for maybe another purchase.

Well, for me, the decision is made in that I bought the dress watch I wanted at the price I was willing to pay (in fact, the watch in the photographs is now mine). But I am still very much interested to see other watches that people think are stylish on a budget. And, of course, still looking for the tool watch in the right condition and at the right price (Speedmaster 125).

Yes, very much so - the light box photos downplay the coppery tone a bit here (it's subtle). More pink in daylight. But it's not a stark pink and it's not a Mars red in the Sedna Gold way. Thanks, Dan S.

Actually, I do enjoy a good Seiko 'on the side' - in my 'fun box' (for holidays, gardening, etc), I already have a vintage Quartz which has acted as my dress watch to date (a very pretty 9481-5000, re-trimmed to 5 SPY and with a custom bracelet extender for the bigger non-JDM wrist), an electronic transistorised balance (blue dial EL-370, 3703-8001), a Seiko 5626-5020 Executive Chronometer and even an early LCD Chronograph (0634-5001). But some of these new ones look pretty good, I must say.