Determining year of manufacture via FOIS edition number?

timetostart · Jul 1, 2020

Good morning everyone. I'm looking at a FOIS with an edition number of #6720. I found the information below in another thread here, and was wondering if anyone is able to confirm that this is the right way to determine its year of manufacture?

"The FOIS was released in 2012, so close to 8 years of production.
From another thread we know that there are now at least 12500 confirmed. Which would be just over 1500 pieces per year ... But that's all it is, a guess."

If that holds true, it would place a watch with an edition number of #6720 from 2016. Can anyone confirm for me? Really appreciate the help!

2012 - up to #1500
2013 - up to #3000
2014 - up to #4500
2015 - up to #6000
2016 - up to #7500

STANDY · Jul 1, 2020

Could have made 5-10,000 in the first batch

TJH · Jul 1, 2020

It was launched in 2012 and I acquired my example from an OB at the very end of 2016 which is in the middle 5,000s...so four years to get to around 6,000 and another four years to get to over 14,000 now.

BlackTalon · Jul 1, 2020

TJH
It was launched in 2012 and I acquired my example from an OB at the very end of 2016 which is in the middle 5,000s...so four years to get to around 6,000 and another four years to get to over 14,000 now.

How can you be sure it was not produced in 2012 or 2013, and sat in stock until 2016?

TJH · Jul 1, 2020

I can't...but I did ask the OB to get it in for me and had to wait a few weeks.

Alfista88 · Jul 1, 2020

2016 sounds close enough. The long-running forum thread for FOIS Roll Call might be the publicly-available resource for this... if so inclined, you can create a color-coded heatmap of the self-reported LE # by the year the incoming / new owner posts were written in that thread. Color mapped either by strata of 1,000 or 1,500.

Anecdotally: I purchased my FOIS new-in-box from a US grey dealer in November 2017, who had sourced it from an AD in Sweden. The LE number was 7854.

When I first got into the hobby around the mid-2000's, we used to be able to email Omega's general customer service team in Bienne and ask them directly. I remember emailing them the serial number of a 2254 (my first nice watch!), inquiring on its date of manufacture, and they replied the same day with the month & year it was made.

Donn Chambers · Jul 2, 2020

I purchased mine (#5104) in April, 2016 at the Vienna Boutique. They said they had just received it, but who knows if that is true or not. And if it was true, it was probably manufactured in 2015. So that chart may not be far off.

TJH · Jul 2, 2020

I think this thread could do with a gratuitous picture:

stuart70 · Jul 2, 2020

The thing that could throw all of this out is that the swatch group hold a vast amount of finished and semi-finished goods as stock about 5,500 million Swiss francs ( swatch accounts). So for all we know they could have made 15,000 FOIS and just kept them in storage.

texasmade · Jul 2, 2020

Alfista88
2016 sounds close enough. The long-running forum thread for FOIS Roll Call might be the publicly-available resource for this... if so inclined, you can create a color-coded heatmap of the self-reported LE # by the year the incoming / new owner posts were written in that thread. Color mapped either by strata of 1,000 or 1,500.

Anecdotally: I purchased my FOIS new-in-box from a US grey dealer in November 2017, who had sourced it from an AD in Sweden. The LE number was 7854.

When I first got into the hobby around the mid-2000's, we used to be able to email Omega's general customer service team in Bienne and ask them directly. I remember emailing them the serial number of a 2254 (my first nice watch!), inquiring on its date of manufacture, and they replied the same day with the month & year it was made.

Not too far off from mine. My number is 7881 and was purchased from a grey dealer in October 2017. I asked for the latest number they had.

scapa · Jul 3, 2020

Mine is 14xxx, delivered to the AD by Omega sometime in the 1st quarter of 2020 and shipped to me in April.

eugeneandresson · Jul 3, 2020

Alfista88
The long-running forum thread for FOIS Roll Call might be the publicly-available resource for this... if so inclined, you can create a color-coded heatmap of the self-reported LE # by the year the incoming / new owner posts were written in that thread. Color mapped either by strata of 1,000 or 1,500.

This 👍

padders · Jul 3, 2020

Or more simply, date the watch by serial. FOIS serials (and all other Speedy serials post 2002) are all AFAIK between 77-79m and increase linearly in line with age so a pretty accurate interpolation dating method could be created a la Ilovemyspeedmaster using 77-79m datapoints. Eugene's site uses extract data, which is not available post 2000 but something more informal could be devised. I keep my own records of serials for exactly this reason.

w@tcher · Jul 4, 2020

A kind question to the FOIS owners:
Could you please confirm if the number edition of your FOIS is also written at the pictogram card?
Since, i 'm willing to buy soon a FOIS, I was looking to the numbers per year and i discovered that the pictogram cards of the of the last years contained the number edition (below of the cal1861), but the pictograms of the first years missed the written numbered edition.

Is that true? If it is true, then after which numbered edition - or year, Omega started to print the FOIS numbered edition to the pictogram cards?

Thanks in advance

TJH · Jul 5, 2020

No mention of the edition number (56##) on mine from December 2016.

alam · Jul 5, 2020

is the assumption that not a single FOIS was manufactured the year before it was released a valid one? if this model was announced around March 2012 and available at dealers ~October, could production had began in late 2011?

stuart70 · Jul 6, 2020

Most Swiss take their summer holidays in August and if I recall some of the factories close down at that time. So that would fit in with a September / October production. The tooling etc would would have been made prior to that.

wilderbeast · Jan 11, 2021

w@tcher
A kind question to the FOIS owners:
Could you please confirm if the number edition of your FOIS is also written at the pictogram card?
Since, i 'm willing to buy soon a FOIS, I was looking to the numbers per year and i discovered that the pictogram cards of the of the last years contained the number edition (below of the cal1861), but the pictograms of the first years missed the written numbered edition.

Is that true? If it is true, then after which numbered edition - or year, Omega started to print the FOIS numbered edition to the pictogram cards?

Thanks in advance

Unlike @TJH my pictogram does have the number of the watch on it:

the manufacturing date on the outer box was 7/18 which could mean July 2018. Mine is number 120xx as you can see above on the pictogram and it was delivered this morning!

I think the highest number on the FOIS roll call thread is 156xx and that was purchased from an OB just before Christmas, I believe.

asrnj77 · Jan 12, 2021

For what it’s worth I used to have #7128 and it was purchased from boutique in December 2017.

w@tcher · Jan 12, 2021

wilderbeast
Unlike @TJH my pictogram does have the number of the watch on it:

the manufacturing date on the outer box was 7/18 which could mean July 2018. Mine is number 120xx as you can see above on the pictogram and it was delivered this morning!

I think the highest number on the FOIS roll call thread is 156xx and that was purchased from an OB just before Christmas, I believe.

After looking at the net, it seems that after the number 7000-8000, they started to print the number at the pictogram card.

I have also seen some pictograms that they refer the number but as a Limited Edition and not as Numbered Edition.

Determining year of manufacture via FOIS edition number?

timetostart

STANDY

TJH

BlackTalon

TJH

Alfista88

Donn Chambers

TJH

stuart70

texasmade

scapa

eugeneandresson

padders

w@tcher

TJH

alam

stuart70

wilderbeast

asrnj77

w@tcher

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