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DrDan
·It started with a link…
In early August, @Aludic sent me a link to Lot 1022 in an upcoming Historia auction in Berlin.
“Look what I found…”
The listing was fairly basic: a Speedmaster Professional 145.022-74, described as circa 1979, fitted with a caliber 861 and a black “leather” strap with an original Omega buckle. It was said to be running, in very good condition and showing hardly any signs of wear. Opening price: €1,000.
And there were only two pictures.
Even from those two images, a few details stood out. The case appeared remarkably sharp, the dial and hands looked coherent, and the old perforated strap was clearly in a fairly advanced state of decay.
What caught Aludic’s eye in particular was that the strap might be more interesting than the listing’s simple “black leather” description suggested. If it really had been sitting on the watch for a very long time, its condition might at least suggest that the watch head had been left largely alone over the years.
As the finder, Aludic naturally had first dibs. I was simply curious to see what would come of it.
More pictures, eventually…
Historia was on summer break until August 14, so getting any additional information took a little patience.
We had asked for more detailed photographs, and they finally arrived on August 20.
They were useful, although the photography itself left quite a bit to be desired. The two direct side views in particular were rather soft and out of focus, but they still revealed considerably more than the original listing had.
Even through the soft focus, the case continued to look unusually strong. More importantly, we could now see the caseback, inside caseback and movement properly for the first time.
The pieces started to line up
The movement was a copper-colored caliber 861 with the early steel chronograph brake, while the inside caseback was correctly stamped 145022-74 ST.
The low 31-million movement number might initially seem surprisingly early for a -74. Moonwatch Only, however, specifically notes that some 145.022-74s were fitted with movements produced several years earlier - which also explains why these early examples can still carry the steel chronograph brake rather than the later Delrin version.
The dial fitted the picture as well: a no-step Type C2 “Medium S - Flat Dial”, exactly as expected for a 145.022-74.
Taken together, the low movement number, steel brake, correct caseback and no-step dial formed a very coherent package.
And despite the less-than-perfect photography, the overall impression was still of an unusually sharp watch.
Auction day
By auction day, Aludic had already placed an absentee bid and knew exactly where he would stop.
At 12:29, just two minutes before Lot 1022 was due to come up, he messaged me to say that if another bidder went beyond his absentee bid, I was welcome to take it from there.
Two minutes later, the lot came up.
A third bidder did exactly that.
I placed the next bid.
No further bid followed.
Hammer.
And just like that, the watch I had been following for the previous few weeks as Aludic’s find was mine.
So what had I actually bought?
Once I had her in hand, the case was every bit as strong as the photographs had suggested - if anything, more impressive.
Full lugs, crisp facets and clearly defined brushing along the case sides.
The dial was equally pleasing: warm, beautifully even tritium, coherent hands and a very clean DNN bezel.
Nothing about the ensemble immediately suggested an obvious later replacement or mismatch.
A quick UV check was reassuring as well, with dial and hands showing a remarkably homogeneous tritium response and matching decay.
The strap, on the other hand, was in even worse shape than the auction photographs had suggested.
Those strange brownish-orange “crumbs” already visible in the original listing photo were not dirt at all - they were pieces of the strap itself. The old perforated Corfam was quite literally breaking down.
Paradoxically, that made the strap one of the more interesting parts of the watch.
Of course, the strap alone cannot tell us how much the watch head has been handled over the years. Still, seeing such an old, heavily deteriorated Corfam attached to a case this sharp adds an intriguing piece to the overall picture.
And then there was the buckle.
The unusual Omega buckle developed into a small side story of its own.
Aludic recognized the type immediately and showed me a loose example of the same type from his own parts box. Interestingly, he had never previously associated this particular buckle style with a Speedmaster.
Whether this particular buckle has been on this particular strap since delivery is impossible to establish, but the type itself is entirely plausible for the period and context.
One small mark
There is also a very fine hand-engraved marking on the outside of the caseback, beginning with “Nr.” followed by a number that appears to start “1.81…”.
I still cannot make out the final digits with enough confidence to claim a complete reading.
It is clearly not an Omega reference or movement marking; most likely it is an old owner, dealer, inventory or watchmaker notation. Nothing dramatic - simply a small trace of the watch’s earlier life.
Epilogue
A big thank you to @Aludic is in order.
Without his message in early August, I would never have known this watch existed. He found the lot, got me interested in it, and the final twist only came on auction day.
What began as an interesting auction link he sent me a few weeks earlier ended with the watch sitting here next to me.
The Corfam is far too fragile to wear and will stay exactly as it is. It may have reached the end of its useful life as a strap, but it survived long enough to become one of my favorite parts of the story.
