For those of you who are a fan of extracts, and ordered many of them; garden-variety Omega sleuths; or those who just care to add a pithy comment, all opinions welcomed. I'm trying to sort out amongst these various parameters, what would be the expected or acceptable date swings? Take an Ed White, for instance: would you expect the serial number to be pretty close to the date stamped on the inside case back, or could there be a year or so swing in because the assembler pulled a case back from the bin, and close was good enough? And the delivered date - best looked at relative to the serial number, or the case back date? Then finally, the bracelet date: could there be an up to two year or so interval here because some were added at the factory, and some added later, at the customer's request, at the retail location? Many thanks.
Not always (especially on an EW). Most of the -63 were manufactured during 1964. Most of the -64 were manufactured during 1965. The -65 were manufactured all the way to early 1969 so the production date on those span over ~4 years. From my experience buying some all original pieces with their original bracelets, they are mostly within the same yearly quarter as the production date on the extract (For example a January 1965 105.003 with a 1/65 date code bracelet).
I think bracelets can be later than the extract date as common concensus is that they were added at point of sale. I'd generally say within 12 months.
As above. The number in the caseback isn't a date as such, it’s a model iteration. Some of these run for several years and some years have several iterations.
Given that they would not throw away good parts simply for time sync homogeneity, all parts will be kept until used up or new model changes the part structure permanently. That could be days, weeks, months, or years. The best experts in the world can only guess(though educated guess) when certain things like casebacks were used up in a production process. Is it authentic? (genuine omega parts...easiest to tell) Is it correct? (right parts for that model...fairly easy to tell but not perfect) Is it original? (parts as installed on day it was produced...almost impossible to tell) All three are different questions with different answers.
Quite often you would see the bracelet added as a extra on the sales receipt but I think the Speedmaster was one that was 9/10 came with the bracelet. As below most old advertising seems to show bracelets https://hu.pinterest.com/aindua/omega-speedmaster-advertising/
Thanks very much to all. So, what have you seen collectively, from the extracts, is the date range typically between the production date and the date delivered?
I think that would be difficult if not impossible without both extract and sales receipt. I am waiting on a flightmaster extract for which I have the original sales receipt so we'll see on that one. Also the time difference would very much depend on whether the watch was a fast moving high volume sales item, was it being marketed in a high volume city, large store, etc., or sitting around for years in a small out of the way place.
What would be interesting would be the time between production and invoicing the completed watch to a dealer or distributor. Unfortunately I don't think Omega would release that. I have Longines Angle hour that years ago about which I got information from Longines showing both the manufacture date and when it was invoiced to the US distributor, they were one year apart. Currently the Longines extracts only show the manufacture date.
I don't have an extract right in front of me for reference, I do believe they quote a production, and a delivery date. I'm assuming the latter is when they sent the watch from Switzerland to its destination. Once it got there, it could be sold immediately, or after years of sitting. I think that's what the sales receipt would imply relative to the date delivered. Edit: you are correct: delivery destination, no date. Apologies.
Modern extracts, those from the past few years quote only a production date. There has been debate on how this date is derived and there has been some creative speculation from an auction house or two who have tried to justify watches they were selling with papers dated before manufacture but in the main, the date can be assumed to be the date of final assembly of the watch. This will of course be different to the dates of manufacture of the individual parts and different again to be the date of sale (how would Omega know that exactly?) but is the one date Omega could be reasonably expected to have a record of.