When I received the watch, it was dirty and the glass had a lot of scratches.











The dial is very nice, never relumed.





After restoration :

 

It doesn't look like anything has been "restored".

Thankfully it has been tidied up beautifully, I'm envious!

 

Very nice example

I am however wondering how the color difference between the hands and dial can be explained?

 

Different paint lot. Color is not going to be consistent from one batch to the next, necessarily. If those hands were subcontracted, it could be a different paint altogether.

Tom

 

Looks great, congrats!

 

Love the classic design, nice catch.

 

Lovely.

 

Looks great, not uncommon on these from 69 or 70 to have mismatched hands and dial colouring, you may find the luminosity (and insert luminosity), matches exactly when exposed to light.
I have peppermint green dial lume with mustard yellow hand lume and have seen several the same from around the same era.
I don't think the crystal is original, date disk is modern, should be silver with black script

 

Hands often age differently from the dial markers. They are made on a different line and often have different sourced tritium or different ratio/amount

 

Indeed the luminosity matches.
Are you sure that the black date disk did not exist ?
The glass has the old logo

 

Hi, I mean I don't think the crystal is original to this model. (166.024)
Black date disk is modern, a service replacement maybe.

 

How do you know that the black disk is modern? I've seen many of them in 166.024s and I find it hard to believe that they are all service replacements. Just wondering.

 

Because I can remember when they were all silver, I've collected these for 20+ years, I had about 6 at one point, now down to 2, but no 166.024's
I can't remember exactly when the black disks appeared, maybe 6 or 7 years ago?
If you check all the old adverts, they'll all surely have silver disks.

 

Hi Colin

I visited STS today and looked at the the original 166.024 advertisement / poster displayed on the wall....I need to check again....however thought it featured a black date wheel ???

I'll have a trawl around for it now....

Best - Neil

 

There was a debate about a similar watch with date window (but white date disk) on the Vintage Watches FB group some time back. I can cite what my collector friend (@reficul_x , aka he who sold me my SM300 big triangle) believes - that these crystals with cyclops were sold as stock on some SM300s, but that they have since become an extinct part; and generally his belief that the black date disks were replacements, as he had seen no proof that they were period correct.

 

That bezel is particularly nice looking, rare to see on these!

 

Fantastic watch , despite the different colors looks excellent , congratulations

 

Amazing watch! I'm glad you kept it all original. I would wear that proudly!
Maybe WatchCo started the black date trend as that is what they supplied with the kit I built.

 

Funny, I have the same ad in my archieves...but with the black date disc! And my 166.024 also have it.
I have collected these for years also, and have not seen hard proof confirming that they didn't or did came with the black disc.

 

A few more adverts. Also notice the bracelet.
Curious, anyone have an advert showing
the 166.024 on anything but the 1116/1098 with 575 ends?