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Debunking the Faux-Patina Myth : radium/tritium vintage watches had colored lume since new
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timecube
·"Here are some color pics from the 60s when these watches were new ...using the white hand and dial text as a reference for white, its clear to see the tritium/radium indices are off white...very much like the modern watches mentioned above."
The above is very easy to explain. Your analysis may be flawed.
The old photographs have developed patina as well! 😀
In the ensuing decades our eyeballs have all picked up retinopathtina.
Need to get a new pair.
Or good servicing. (Does Omega do eyes?)
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harrymai86
·Damn wish the people in 60s knew the term wristshot 😡😡
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base615
·Definitely looks yellowish to me
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janice&fred
·There must be hundreds of screen grabs of this watch but sure looks ‘off white’ to me.
more like green to me. we have also handled many 1680s as well as vintage speedmasters where the lume was white as can be. I don't think they left the factory any other way and if anyone thinks so from photographs I would suspect lighting to blame.
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JwRosenthal
·Those astronauts always appear to have good hair days.
How do they do that?
I want to do that...
Oh, and the answer to your question about astronauts and their perfect hair- I’m wondering if NASA did combustability testing on Byrlcream, Right Guard and Old Spice.
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JwRosenthal
·I’m sure watchmakers who worked with lume back in the tritium days can speak to what a vial of fresh tritium lume looked like when new. My watchmaker has a small jar of Tritium, of course it has been exposed to oxygen over the years but never to UV, and it has a slightly pale cream color in the jar.
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padders
··Oooo subtitles!Anyone older than about 40 who had an interest in mechanical watches as a teen or younger adult could have seen new tritium lume first hand. I know I did. Obviously those 50+ are even more likely. I can confirm that such lume was never to my recollection milky white, it was generally off white, slightly yellow or occasionally very pale green. Pure white lume like BGW9 is a relatively recent thing. The darker yellow/orange shades came later with deterioration but there was always a hint of colour IMO. It’s not like we are debating the colour of Tutankhamen’s eyes, plenty will have seen new tritium first hand.
Edited:
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timestamp
·To me, the bright white found on modern tool watches is cold and lifeless, and if I’m going to spend on a watch I don’t want it to remind me of a fridge or the walls of a hospital room. As a matter of fact I prefer stainless steel finish on fridges for the same reason.
This.
It's not so much that I like Fauxtina, but more that I dislike that clinical, non-organic, sterile white. A modern watch that nails the color perfectly without being Fauxtina is the Seiko SBDX001 (not the successors). Just a little vanilla off-white. Yum.
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bazamu
·I make this point whenever people rail against "faux tina" (in fact, I did just that in the discussion thread about the new Ed White). I will concede that some heritage releases take it a bit too far and make it quite dark, but the coloring of the new Ed White lume is perfect, in my opinion.
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JwRosenthal
·My late 2018 Timefactors Smiths- SuperLuminova- I think he got the color bang on. Not faux, nor stark white- about what I would expect from new tritium. So glad he didn’t try to orange it up to look “vintage”.
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Larry S
··Color Commentator for the Hyperbole.While back I tried here and on the web to get up to speed on lume, black light etc. All I wound up with was a headache. 
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JwRosenthal
·There must be hundreds of screen grabs of this watch but sure looks ‘off white’ to me.
Redial!- that lume is too green, Rolex never did lume like that, hands are service replacements and those lume plots look sloppy- not to mentioned that case is polished to death and the crown is wrong -worthless garbage.😉
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many
·The fauxtina is not a creamy off white it's typically a yellowish amber meant to mimic the aging of a tritium dial. Brand new tritium dials are don't have his hue.
Is the OPs contention that brand new tritium dials have the yellowish amber hue straight from the factory? That doesn't appear to be accurate.
Is the OPs contention that brand new tritium dials have the yellowish amber hue straight from the factory? That doesn't appear to be accurate.
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Nathan1967
·Anyone older than about 40 who had an interest in mechanical watches as a teen or younger adult could have seen new tritium lume first hand. I know I did. Obviously those 50+ are even more likely. I can confirm that such lume was never to my recollection milky white, it was generally off white, slightly yellow or occasionally very pale green. Pure white lume like BGW9 is a relatively recent thing. The darker yellow/orange shades came later with deterioration but there was always a hint of colour IMO. It’s not like we are debating the colour of Tutankhamen’s eyes, plenty will have seen new tritium first hand.
But being over 50 now, my memory is a fickle friend of mine. The 90s (my Tritium into Superluminova years) is particularly shonky for me. Personally, I blame Oasis, Blur, Jeffrey Bernard and most of the Publicans in Soho.
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JwRosenthal
·From an old advert.
But as said earlier- lighting can have much to do with it- here again but in shade- and the camera phone is adjust color balance.
Edited:
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djmusicman
·I think the amount of tritium in the original lume mix makes the difference. I've got a 30 year old unworn Speedy that's lived in the box its whole life and it has yellow lume typical of 90's speedys. I also had one from 1989 that had seen a lot of sun in Australia, it had a faded insert but the lume plots looked very similar to the unworn one.
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vicsdca
·Faux news alert! Tritium lume was originally white. Let's tweet the President right away!
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JwRosenthal
·I think the amount of tritium in the original lume mix makes the difference. I've got a 30 year old unworn Speedy that's lived in the box its whole life and it has yellow lume typical of 90's speedys. I also had one from 1989 that had seen a lot of sun in Australia, it had a faded insert but the lume plots looked very similar to the unworn one.
We have to remember that all of these dials were done with different formulas, different contractors, different raw material suppliers- they can vary from year to year.
Back to the OP’s point- I think any brand doing a “faux” aged finish on a watch is akin to Levi’s selling jeans that look pre-worn and have holes in them from the factory- it’s trying to give “cred” that is not earned naturally and thus comes off as forced and a bit trite (growing up in Southern Cal we refered to people dressed like that as “posers”).
It’s one of the reasons I like the looks of the Speedy Broad Arrow as opposed to the Trilogy- the lume isn’t trying to look like something it’s not, it just is.
