Can anyone explain this accelerated dial "ageing"?

[CLA05]

In my uneducated, personal opinion there was never any “oil” of any kind on the dial and however it was stored caused this.

 

[MTROIS]

C CLA05

I’m sorry but there is just no way this seller did anything underhanded. No way

C CLA05

It’s not a redial

C CLA05

In my uneducated, personal opinion there was never any “oil” of any kind on the dial and however it was stored caused this.

What tangible elements bring you to your current opinion?
In the absence of more background data or information to this story, I find your position a bit too definite... unless you have first hand knowledge with this watch.

So far, I tend to lean towards the position that other have described above: very strange that this dial was ok for 40-50 years, and suddenly, tremendous change.

OF COURSE, we can not rule out that this is scientifically (ie, chemically) possible based on the new environmental conditions in which the watch has been stored vs. where is was previously living/being stored, so we will need to gather facts.

To OP: I understand that you feel that there is no difference on your side when storing this watch vs. the rest of your collection, but can you speak to potential differences of climate between the location where you reside vs. where the watch came from?

 

[CLA05]

MTROIS

What tangible elements bring you to your current opinion?
In the absence of more background data or information to this story, I find your position a bit too definite... unless you have first hand knowledge with this watch.

So far, I tend to lean towards the position that other have described above: very strange that this dial was ok for 40-50 years, and suddenly, tremendous change.

OF COURSE, we can not rule out that this is scientifically (ie, chemically) possible based on the new environmental conditions in which the watch has been stored vs. where is was previously living/being stored, so we will need to gather facts.

To OP: I understand that you feel that there is no difference on your side when storing this watch vs. the rest of your collection, but can you speak to potential differences of climate between the location where you reside vs. where the watch came from?

I simply have dealt and spoken with the seller several times and he’s not a shady person that tricks ppl in to buying redials that he’s passing off as authentic. I’ve never seen the watch in question before, no.

 

[CLA05]

My “tangible elements” for my opinion is that it looks authentic... haha
The onus ain’t on me

 

[Transitus]

Quite surprised to see this thread rumbling on.
FWIW my own curiosity was satisfied when I read on another site a few days ago.

"This optical effect is produced by thin layers of differing refraction index, e.g. oil on water or the surface of soap bubbles, i.e. thin layer of water on air. If the thickness of such layer comes near the wavelength of visible light, varying thickness prefers different colors (i.e. wavelenths) when absorbing or reflecting light, and accordingly creates lots of rainbows.

The same happens when the coating of a dial looses contact to the metal: The thin air layer between metal and transparent lacquer creates rainbows. So the best you can do is nothing or better less than nothing. Adhesion will hold the lacquer on the dial, more reliably than one may believe. But already dabbing it with Rodico may peel of the coating, and once the layer is damaged the rest will peel off without your help."

In this case the paint has come away but crucially on the point of 'sudden degradation' it is possible to see that the paint is continually degrading over time but reaches a catastrophic point where it starts to lose contact with the dial and this appears 'sudden'.

Again just a best guess on an observed phenomenon in the absense of actual facts, so would be interesting to hear if more experienced members subscribe to this view.

 

[MTROIS]

C CLA05

I simply have dealt and spoken with the seller several times and he’s not a shady person that tricks ppl in to buying redials that he’s passing off as authentic. I’ve never seen the watch in question before, no.

I, for one, am certainly not accusing the seller of the watch as having done something shady to this watch. At the same time, we do not know if said seller was himself tricked by the previous owner and just got lucky with the timing in that he off-loaded the watch prior to the inflection point of the dial’s aging process.

 

[MTROIS]

Transitus

Quite surprised to see this thread rumbling on.
FWIW my own curiosity was satisfied when I read on another site a few days ago.

"This optical effect is produced by thin layers of differing refraction index, e.g. oil on water or the surface of soap bubbles, i.e. thin layer of water on air. If the thickness of such layer comes near the wavelength of visible light, varying thickness prefers different colors (i.e. wavelenths) when absorbing or reflecting light, and accordingly creates lots of rainbows.

The same happens when the coating of a dial looses contact to the metal: The thin air layer between metal and transparent lacquer creates rainbows. So the best you can do is nothing or better less than nothing. Adhesion will hold the lacquer on the dial, more reliably than one may believe. But already dabbing it with Rodico may peel of the coating, and once the layer is damaged the rest will peel off without your help."

In this case the paint has come away but crucially on the point of 'sudden degradation' it is possible to see that the paint is continually degrading over time but reaches a catastrophic point where it starts to lose contact with the dial and this appears 'sudden'.

Again just a best guess on an observed phenomenon in the absense of actual facts, so would be interesting to hear if more experienced members subscribe to this view.

“Rumbling on”!? Quite to the contrary... this is an inherently interesting case in both material science (ie, kinetics of aging of a dial, chemical reactions involved, ...) that will necessarily catch an engineer’s curiosity like mine, but also one that possibly opens a new window in the POTENTIAL shady work that goes on the business of selling vintage watches.

I will admit that your description of the physical and chemical phenomenons likely at play here appear pretty sound.

The one thing I can not (yet) wrap my head around is the “timing” of this degradation. It seems really quite strange to me that the OP just had the “bad luck” of purchasing what seems to be a mostly pristine vintage watch that is 40-50 years old, to only then see this rapid degradation in the next 2-3 years after the purchase.

Again, I do not have data or elements to eliminate this hypothesis, but it looks pretty suspect to me.

 

[ConElPueblo]

PoljotNormalnij

Can we maker some assumptions? For example, this is a vintage watch and it was serviced several times in the past? Sounds reasonable? If so, then anyone who serviced similar watches would see some signs of sloppiness / carelessness around the dial hole area and on Hour & Minute hands. Black dial is unforgiving - any marks would be visible. I did not notice and evidence of previous hands removal. It could be that previous watch repair people were so good at what they did, or it could be a sign of redial aka paint job. it would be helpful to see the other side of the dial and the movement itself. If such photos were already posted and i missed them, please point me in the right direction. I do realize that there are some exceptions - i bought some watches that were 100+ years old with pristine dials & hands, but those watches were serviced either once or never since they were originally purchased. Any other watch, that was serviced 2-3 times previously (even by Rolex. Am i allowed to use R-word on Omega forum?), showed some marks (sad).

1) No-one has mentioned anything about service history or otherwise on this particular watch.

2) Marks on the dial from hands removal? Really? If your watchmaker struggles to avoid this, I will sincerely suggest that you look for a new one. Of the hundreds of vintage watches - unopened from new or serviced multiple times - I can count how many that have that sort of damage on one hand. And all of them have been very worn.

PoljotNormalnij

Can we maker some assumptions? For example, this is a vintage watch and it was serviced several times in the past? Sounds reasonable? If so, then anyone who serviced similar watches would see some signs of sloppiness / carelessness around the dial hole area and on Hour & Minute hands. Black dial is unforgiving - any marks would be visible.

Listen, I am all for a discussion on the merits of a watch, but weird straw man arguments I will not respond to anymore. The above is straight up bullshit.

MTROIS

The one thing I can not (yet) wrap my head around is the “timing” of this degradation. It seems really quite strange to me that the OP just had the “bad luck” of purchasing what seems to be a mostly pristine vintage watch that is 40-50 years old, to only then see this rapid degradation in the next 2-3 years after the purchase.

Again, I do not have data or elements to eliminate this hypothesis, but it looks pretty suspect to me.

Not "in the next 2-3 years after the purchase", but after a prolonged stay in a sealed environment without any air circulation... To me it seems very plausible that some contained moisture could have worked at lifting the lacquer.

I will say again - there is yet to materialise anything tangible to support the notion of foul play. The only argument I see is "I don't understand what had happened therefore I suspect that the seller has tried to cheat the OP".

Come on, we're better than this.

Edited: Feb 16, 2021

 

[MTROIS]

Xeer

So I bought this gloss black vintage Omega watch from @omega_enthusiast on IG in 2018. These were the pictures taken by the dealer at the point of sale..



After 1 year of ownership in 2019:


Thereafter as we all know, COVID happened so I stored my watches away in my safe within a watch case along with all a slew of other vintage watches each in their separate plastic caskets.


Almost a year and a half (2021) later I took the watches out to inspect them and this is what happened to the watch:


Went back to the seller to ask what happened and he said he has no idea, this has never happened before so we thought to ask on OF.

OP, one question I had about these “plastic caskets” you are using to store the watches... was the container you used to store the watch in the scope of this discussion a brand new container, or one that you had in your possession for a while?

Just asking to see if there is a remote risk that a brand new container, thus fresh polymer material, was still releasing some solvents and/or chemicals in its direct environment, which in turn could have initiated or accelerated the degradation of the dial.

 

[ConElPueblo]

PoljotNormalnij

There is no need to be rude, right? Or this is mandatory condition to use "BS", "listen", etc. You asked - i provided MY opinion. If you do not like it - do not answer. Very simple.

I call it as I see it.

An "anomaly" as I asked to be shown is NOT that there are no marks after extremely poor servicing. If there WERE marks after extremely poor servicing THAT would be an anomaly... See the difference?

And yes - I have to answer. Otherwise your reply stands uncontested and as I wrote earlier it will be repeated and at some point it will become gospel.

 

[MTROIS]

ConElPueblo

1) No-one has mentioned anything about service history or otherwise on this particular watch.

2) Marks on the dial from hands removal? Really? If your watchmaker struggles to avoid this, I will sincerely suggest that you look for a new one. Of the hundreds of vintage watches - unopened from new or serviced multiple times - I can count how many that have that sort of damage on one hand. And all of them have been very worn.



Listen, I am all for a discussion on the merits of a watch, but weird straw man arguments I will not respond to anymore. The above is straight up bullshit.



Not "in the next 2-3 years after the purchase", but after a prolonged stay in a sealed environment without any air circulation... To me it seems very plausible that some contained moisture could have worked at lifting the lacquer.

I will say again - there is yet to materialise anything tangible to support the notion of foul play. The only argument I see is "I don't understand what had happened therefore I suspect that the seller has tried to cheat the OP".

Come on, we're better than this.

@ConElPueblo : not only do I agree with you but also I feel that I have gone out of my way to indicate the fact that there are no grounds to suspect that there is any foul play at this stage. Please go back to my statements in this regard.

On the other hand, may be I could have used terms such as “strange”, “puzzling” or “curious” to describe the scientific enigma we are confronted with, instead of “suspect”.

 

[ConElPueblo]

MTROIS

@ConElPueblo : not only do I agree with you but also I feel that I have gone out of my way to indicate the fact that there are no grounds to suspect that there is any foul play at this stage. Please go back to my statements in this regard.

On the other hand, may be I could have used terms such as “strange”, “puzzling” or “curious” to describe the scientific enigma we are confronted with, instead of “suspect”.

Sorry, I misread your intention.

 

[MTROIS]

ConElPueblo

Sorry, I misread your intention.

No worries, in hindsight I can also see that I could have been even clearer.

I do find this case study super interesting from a scientific point of view though!!

 

[Borosilikat]

kyle L

Unfortunately sometimes this happens...had this amazing bubbleback and the dial turned to an ugly color after dial sat in a plastic container in a regular envelope. First time this ever happened to me and my warchmaker.



You can see some of the aging already around the subdial when it was with the seller. My guess is that something caused it to quickly happen to the rest of the dial.

Honestly doesn't even look bad

 

[Archer]

PoljotNormalnij

Black dial is unforgiving - any marks would be visible. I did not notice and evidence of previous hands removal. It could be that previous watch repair people were so good at what they did, or it could be a sign of redial aka paint job.

To try to equate "lack of dial damage from hand removal" as "possible evidence of a redial" is an enormous stretch of the imagination. Yes, there are certainly dials out there with that sort of damage, but any really professional watchmaker is not going to cause this damage. Black dials are no more "unforgiving" in this way than any other dial colour.

 

[JwRosenthal]

Since my first post in the thread was the 4th one in, and most people don’t read past the second page, I edited my post to reflect that the rainbow effect is not oil on the dial.

 

[nicks]

Very interesting and useful thread, and a tough break for the OP.

I am going to try two notions. The first is that lacquer (really, any finish) doesn’t last forever, and obviously some lacquer recipes are more durable than others. Some are likely more reactive to specific environmental factors than others. So, I think that keeping this particular watch in the dark, with restricted air circulation, may have a lot to do with what’s happened.

Secondly, I would worry about “new plastic coffins”. Who could know what off gassing was going on? And whether that particular lacquer reacted badly to it? At the very least, I’d propose that IF gas was a factor, a concentrated sealed environment would seem to me to accelerate any chemical reaction that have taken place.

I am not a chemist, so take this post as a guess. Let’s hope someone has some science on this. It’s certainly worth understanding.

 

[Dan S]

Xeer

The early signs of degradation were all there. I just didn't pay enough attention to it. Costly mistake of an amateur.

I think you are being too hard on yourself. IMO, you just got unlucky, and this is an unusual scenario. Many of us reading this thread have owned very large numbers of watches for long periods of time, and minor signs of damage to dark dials around sub-dials or at the edges are quite common. I have some watches that I have owned long enough to recognize minor changes over a 10-year period, but one does not expect a dial to fall apart in a few years. That is why this thread is on page 6, it's unexpected.

 

[JwRosenthal]

Dan S

I think you are being too hard on yourself. IMO, you just got unlucky, and this is an unusual scenario. Many of us reading this thread have owned very large numbers of watches for long periods of time, and minor signs of damage to dark dials around sub-dials or at the edges are quite common. I have some watches that I have owned long enough to recognize minor changes over a 10-year period, but one does not expect a dial to fall apart in a few years. That is why this thread is on page 6, it's unexpected.

This is every watch collector’s cold-sweat nightmare, that’s why we are on page 6. How on earth did this happen, and how do we make sure it doesn’t happen to us. We all want to know what actually was the cause so we can avoid that.

And watching the lume on my 16750 go from bold off white to yellow while the bezel fades red to magenta, and the black dial on my Speedy go grey are the hallmarks of long ownership. If I opened my watch box and saw what the OP saw, I think it would have shit myself.

 

[Thaumaturgist]

If the watch is refinished they may have treated the dial w a layer of oil which must have degraded the paint work. I have seen such “rainbow” effect on refinished dials before on one too many “gilt” lettering w black gloss dials but i am not an expert.

But if the dial is completely untouched as told to you by the seller then it could be just some anomaly or moisture that could have affected the dial? Nice piece regardless and it can be just passed off as patina, which is charming in its own way.

Edited: Feb 17, 2021