It arrived!
Much quicker than I expected.
I can hardly wait to start pulling the movement apart. I have gardening and pipe organ stuff to do first. Not to mention the bench is still covered with bumper automatic balances and hairsprings, what I sort of stalled out on.
One thing getting it in person is this photo (shown above from the auction listing.) was confusing.
Turns out the movement was installed the wrong way round. Probably also flipped top to bottom.
This style is not particularly rare. So there are plenty of photographs from past and current sales. Supposidly they only made these for the one year. Must have made quite a few. I think there are currently 1/2 dozen or so listed worldwide at the moment.
Photographs are really useful for seeing what the missing case parts look like. There are hands and dials listed in the EU.
The glass looks to be intact. The reflector has some of the distortion. There is some spotting on the front, but it is not on the glass surface, So the liquid crystal may be crystalized. I can see the transparent traces if I hold it at an angle.
There is a sort of black corrosion on everything. Looks a bit like soot. No obvious tells of heat damage. The watch in the EU that was scrapped out has similar black corrosion on the circuit board. Will not know too much until I remove the glass. The battery is still in place. The gunk on it looks more like insulating tape than dielectric. More likely this was water damage.
The display is not that much different than the ones given out as cereal box prizes. So a temporary fix might be all than could be done. There may be someone in Germany who rebuilds these on a swap exchange. Many complain though that such removes the family heirloom status. One suggestion was to replace the quartz (or non functioning.) side with an engraved plate.
The oLED display I have are too large and to power hungry, or that could be a fun option. Apple watch electronics are also too large to fit into the 20 or so mm space, although the missing bezels are quite thick.
There is a listing for the service manual in Austrailia.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/257484924519
I have no idea of what the tariffs on printed materials are. The most useful page is shown, which gives the electronics readings. Would be nice though if there were formal disassembly steps. By the time I would get this, I probably will have everything apart. The operators guide is online although page photos and not a pdf.
If the coil is good then the analog side could be made to work. The bezel and crystal difficult to source. Probably just as easy to make a dial and hand set from tuna can sheet metal. Might be possible to make a temporary bezel with 3D printing.
Not a lot of experience with bracelets. This one is way to large for my wrist. Looks like there are removable links, but not sure how to do that.
As noted compared to 571 and 712 calibers (which had short runs.) these are not particularly rare.
