I had never seen Universal Genève timers before and came across these today. Is anyone familiar with these or collect them?

Thanks for the input.

 

I've never seen those before. Nor have I seen that caliber.

 

I know someone on Instagram who has one of these. Also a caliber 295. Neat pieces.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BGXYsW6IbSt/?taken-by=mak2727

 

Cool! Obviously UG was not into sports timing like Omega, Longines, Seiko, and other manufacturers. Nice look, and interesting movement, though.

 

Omega "never" made a timer.
They were all rebadged Lemanias.

 

So because they didn't manufacture the movements in-house, they didn't make the stopwatches?

So...they didn't make (Lemania-based) Speedmasters, either?

 

Yes, well I am debating still since I don't have much to compare. They look legit but as mentioned and to the better of my knowledge there is no link between UG and sports timing. What would have been the use of these?

 

Well. Most Speedmasters back in the days was also made entirely at the Lemania plant in L'Orient. Omega designed. Lemania made. Omega has confirmed this.

Both Omega and Lemania was part of SSHI. Within the group the role was clear. Lemania made the tool watches.
Timers alike.
Omega themselves did not get tooling and other for chronograph production in Bienne until the tooling for the cal 86x/186x was moved there in the early 90s.

 

Sorry to interrupt you guys but this thread is about UG timers/stopwatches not Omega or Lemania.

 

You are correct.

 

In-house UG caliber listed in the Swiss "Catalogue Officiel" from 1949.

 

I have this one:


With a small write up here:

https://omegaforums.net/threads/universal-geneva.45580/#post-540180

I also have this:

 

Hi all- Yes UG did make timers and the caliber 295 is quite lovely. There were not too too many of them and you certainly don't see them often. As was noted the their is the guy in Italy on IG that has 2 variations and I was actually lucky enough to recently acquire a different variation a 1/10 timer so between the two of us we have 3 different versions accounted for. I am happy to share any other details if you like.
Cheers

 

Hi @MattF you can start with pictures. I actually didn't pick those three up since they went over my auction limit and honestly I didn't see much use for them. However, they are very nice.

 

Hi @Jonatan I will get a picture up in a minute. Just curious was it an eBay auction, what was the final price?

 

No, it wasn't on eBay. It was on a local auction website and I gave up on it at just over 400chf and I think it finished between 400-500chf.

 

Here is mine @Jonatan ...one that I and mak hadn't seen before.

 

Two gorgeous ones, nice to have more examples confirmed