Another eBay gamble pays off. This little treat has a nearly flawless porcelain dial along with a remarkably clean movement with a free swing to the balance. Tickled to death over this one.
Hi, Nice pick (you're Lucky, it happened to be impossible to place bids from France on this item.... ). It's probably one of the earliests 26.5 SOB. Are they soldering marks that we can see on the lugs? It could be a ref 899 (here in a 1930 catalog) :
At that time pocket watches were made in gold, silver and the most common/cheap was nickel. So were the wrist watch cases. The stainless steel was in the process of being recognized and then introduced to the market in late 20's early 30's.
Nickel was common and the next in price range was silver. Stainless steel was rare during that time. Today we see Platinum, Gold and Stainless Steel.
Nickel is a nice metal, and polishes to a yellowy-silver shine which is quite distinctive, but it does tarnish and dull very quickly. Nickel-plating was common on vintage cars before chromium plate replaced it.
In vintage watches, the cases that are gold plated or chromium plated are extremely affected by perspiration. The process is irreversible. There are some extremely rare watches in similar situations. Ie. vintage Omega chronographs, Omega Ranchero gold plated with steel back (only 2% of total production), etc. The cases that are gold over stainless steel or over nickel and even silver last like forever. Nickel and silver have similar density and they sometimes get confused but the yellow green patina and the smell gives nickel away.
HI, As a complement, the catalog I showed dates from 1930, and makes reference to stainless steel (acier inoxydable). In the Omega Catalog, this model existed only in stainless steel, but if you look at other models, the lowest price were nickel cases, then silver then gold plated then gold. Stainless was, in this catalog, in the same price range as silver. There are also a few chromium plated nickel cases, at the same price as silver. In 1932, Omega started to use staybrite steel. Just for fun, here is the advertising brochure from 1932 introducing the new super-stainless 'staybrite' (sorry, it is in French). You'll see here the very first models in Staybrite, and even the first Omega staybrite strap :
Quite unusual I would say. I never crossed another Kalonium case, nor any reference to Kalonium in my catalogs. I saw some pictures of other 20F watches having the same Kalonium reference in the case, with an Omega case serial number. Do you have any documentation making a link between Omega and Kalonium?
The rustless metal had many names before settling to what we know today as: Stainless Steel, Edelstahl (Rostfrei Stahl), Acier Inoxydable.. Staybrite was one of these patents. Essentially, this name remained for a long time to the market. Kalonium was another name for steel, and the patent was applied by John R. Wood, in United States in 1933. At the beginning, the watches in stainless steel were more expensive then silver. The stainless steel was a harder metal, thus the equipment had to be updated in order to process steel so they were priced accordingly. Another natural consequence: steel took nickel's place but steel contains nickel, so metal being improved, the complete nickel cases were dropped. By the end of 40's silver was dropped too in production in favor of steel. I have a couple similar bracelets to the one from the 30's catalog. One of them was attached to a fixed lugs Omega with a military style dial and cathedral hands; the interesting fact is the case was in nickel while the bracelet steel.