This is a belated response to
@Mlafra and his interesting claim. I am skeptical of it for two reasons. The first is that I cannot imagine why FL would have placed a bezel insert over a base that had the indexes both etched
and colored. I would, instead, have expected the same type of smooth base that one presumably finds under all dive/tool watch bezel inserts.
Secondly, there should be a vertical space where the missing bezel once sat, and I do not remember such a space – which would have been a clear sign of a missing part – when I owned the watch pictured in my original post.
So, I believe that the claim that there was a short, initial production run of etched brass bezels remains quite plausible.
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