Well…after staring jealousy at other black pie pans, I think I finally have one of my own!

Last week, I was casually pursuing some listings on a popular sales site and saw the following watch. The seller was an estate reseller who now mostly does precious metal refining and had a store with random bits of jewelry. It was originally listed for $1,100 and seemed to have some growing interest. I sent an offer and struck up a conversation to find out he’d been sitting on the watch for a while and it “wouldn’t sell.” Although the pictures were bad, I had a good feeling and met him closer to asking before it got snapped up.




From the bad photos, I do notice a few good things. First, it looks like it has an original Omega leather strap and buckle, the hands seem to be correct, and the printing looks generally right. The crown is obviously a service crown and not original.

A few days later, I received the watch and strap below. It checked out to be a Ref. 14393 with Cal 561 and the slight color difference between “Automatic Chronometer” and “Officially Certified” seems to indicate that this is a dial that started with two lines and had the third line of text added by the factory. Curiously, the dial seems to be glossy at the top, but matte on the sides, and I couldn’t find an example like it online.

It seems to me like my gamble paid off, but I’d love to get some thoughts. I’m not sure if I missed something obvious as I’ve always tried to stay away from these due to the many fakes.


(straight out of the package)

 

I have a Seamaster with similar! Lovely watch, good find!

 

Lovely. Congrats and enjoy!

 

Thank you, both!

 

I like it! Congrats.

I'm also pretty skittish about black dials. If I had been considering this watch, I think I would have been scared off (it doesn't take much for me at my stage of learning) by the "T" after "SWISS MADE". I wonder if anyone knows if it's common for them to be such different shades? Perhaps it's related to the other color difference you pointed out (which I understand is not uncommon, though this is the first I've seen it on a black dial, which is novel from my perspective)

 

Looks great, welll done!

 

Nice. Congratulations

My 14393 says hi

 

Thank you! Good catch as well. That T is definitely odd and spooked me out when I first saw it. I’d be curious to know as well.

 

thank you! Beautiful watch you have there!