Hi, Last week my wife brought me my first vintage Omega - a Constellation for our anniversary. It is a gold capped model from circa 1970 with I think you call it a C shaped barrel? Don't know the relevant serial numbers as I haven't taken apart (not sure the missus would be too pleased if I tried). Anyway, I'm a righty but wear my watch on the right so any watch I wear will inevitably get a lot more damage than if I wore it on my left. I've tried switching hands before but just can't get used to it. To that end, although I love the watch I think I will only wear it on special occasions. Having looked at some vintage Omegas during the week I seem to be catching the collecting bug - there are soooo many beautiful vintage models out there. I will be buying other models but again probably ones I will only wear sporadically or sit and gaze at lovingly etc. What I would like some help, opinions and advice on is an Omega in stainless steel that is, shall we say, at the cheaper and of the market so it won't break my heart if it gets battered too much. Specifically I'd be looking for a stainless steel with leather or similar strap (just like the look of leather strapped stainless as opposed to stainless bracelet models). I'd like it to have at least the date but not necessarily the day (I can usually remember what day it is at least!). Prefer an automatic movement to manual wind and would even consider a quartz if the general opinion is leaning in that direction (i.e. it is ok to destroy them slowly!). Opinions on which models are cheaper to purchase, restore etc than others are welcome as I'm sure I will be servicing it periodically to try to keep the damage in check! From what little I've read the Geneve models are at the lower end but I may be wrong as I'm a newbie at this. I like the chunkier steel case models such as a Geneve like this: http://www.omegawatches.com/planet-omega/heritage/vintage-watches-database?ref=14610 or this for a constellation: http://www.omegawatches.com/planet-omega/heritage/vintage-watches-database?ref=15751 Yes I have found the Omega database - just to give an example of the type of cases I like. Date wise I'd like 60's or 70's I think but am open to suggestions. Thanks in advance for your opinions
Those models are not hard to find. They come up regularly in this forum sale section, ebay and other forum (I recommend to use watchrecon for aggregate view of several sites at once). However you should be careful since those are what we called 'transition period' where Omega begin their 'cost cutting' initiative against quartz tsunami competition in the early 70's. Movement wise, most of them are inferior compare to period before that, when Omega is synonim to top notch movement. So beware if a vintage Omega watch has Caliber 10XX movement, especially 1000,1001 and 1002 which many watchmaker refuse to touch. Caliber 1011 or 1012 is better but if you compare it with Caliber 7XX, 5XX or even 3XX the quality difference is apparent. The exception is Lemania based movement (Cal 861 and its derivative) which did not plague by cost cutting effort. Caliber 1002 Caliber 1012 Compare to this Caliber 552 and Caliber 751