I cannot believe how long this has taken... Emailed Bienne, who were very helpful, filled out a form with my credit card details, then they went radio silence... I had to wait until I was absolutely sure I would not get a copy from them, then started from scratch In the end, I rang the boutique in Stratford, who popped one in the post for me. Much easier. And for anyone wondering, yes, it is definitely worth it.
This reference is important enough to me that I am now considering a second copy in case the one I have eventually gets worn out!
It is amazing the number of forum member that procrastinate getting a copy of this. Every purchaser says, OMG, Amazing, Should have done it sooner, Best purchase, Well worth it, . And that's just the their wives.
Let me tell you a story of my first success using AJTT. Once upon a time there was a short bald guy who really wanted a Seamaster chronograph. He would have been happy with an 861, but a 321 was the goal. He also C-cases, and it's no secret that 18ct gold is where he thinks it's at. This budding vintage Omega collector had some skills, but had never gone it alone on any $1000+ purchase. Too scary out there (mind you, this is about 3 years ago - it's way worse now!) and he had already learned his lesson on a franken Constellation. It just so happened that 3 ( ) C-cases came up at the same time. This future Omega maven might have lost his shirt if he didn't have AJTT. The one he might have bought was a franken, having the case reference of the 321 model but it housed the identical dial on an 861. Another had the wrong hands. The one he ended up buying was a textbook version of the 145.006 as seen in the photo in AJTT. Would have been a mistake that cost nearly $4000 without that book.
What a lovely story. I wonder where that short bald guy is now? I'm thinking along similar lines as well - one thing that has leapt out already is that there are a lot of watches in there that I would never have believed are factory original without AJTT. And I suspect I'll be able to confidently buy some more 'out there' stuff that a lot of the market shies away from. At the end of the day, if I avoid buying one single fake/redial, it's paid for itself.
Correct! That's how I got my Genève 14.70x with the caliber 562. I never knew these were made after the 50x models and would have thought it was a franken. There was a picture of it in AJTT from a German ad.
I paid £250 including shipping from the boutique - it us expensive and there don't seem to be any discounts... The boutique staff were incredibly polite/conscientous....