Hi,

Need your opinion on the following Longines from 1958 with 27.0 movement.
The crown looks to be a replacement, but other than that it is difficult for me to spot if it is re-dialed or re-cased. I see that the hour/minute hands are quite damaged around the base.

The watch has been on the auction for quite some time already and I guess there is something wrong with it bigger than just the crown. Also, I noticed the pictures have chrono24 watermarks but I saw this watch on a local auction in Europe so not sure if someone got it from chrono24 and is selling it or what the deal is here...

Would you recommend picking this up, is it something worthy, the price tag is $420 but may be negociable.

Many thanks in advance,

 

The crown is incorrect, and inappropriate. The dial and case appear to be correct.

It is overpriced, and the case style and dial damage would be unattractive to most collectors. It appears to be a decent sized watch, which is frankly about the only thing that it has going for it.

There are many vintage Longines on the market, and if you are flexible in terms of style, you should be able to find much better examples for around that asking price.

 

Normally, caliber 27.0 is reserved for gold cases. Additionally, one would not expect a movement with a serial number that is circa 10 million to be in a case with an order number of 23'576. For these reasons, I would guess that the movement is not original to the case. I would not recommend buying this example.

 

@Tony C. @DirtyDozen12 Thanks much for your input, you have fair points.

@DirtyDozen12 Actually the point you raised about the order number not matching the movement serial, is very interesting, Are you aware of any resource online for the order numbers/references identification of the production year, maybe with a description of what type of case it is, maybe even the sizes? Similar to what is available for the serial numbers. Possessing this information would be so valuable as a first step evaluation, but I'm struggling to find such information online.

 

Great guidance you've received here.

Is the watch still on Chrono24? Just for interests sake for the next watch you’re interested in, you might want to read this thread that discusses some shady auction practices https://omegaforums.net/threads/trying-to-understand-auctions.149184/

 

This probably only excist in @DirtyDozen12 personal archive

 

Thanks for the link, will have a look

Yeah, looks like it's still there, so apparently the owner is trying to sell it via several channels.
https://www.chrono24.com/longines/stainless-steel-of-1958-manual-winding-caliber-270--id32082052.htm

 

by the way, I just noticed that the spacer of the movement is Yellow Gold color so that proves what @DirtyDozen12 said about re-casing.

 

It's brass and is quite typical regardless of the case material.

 

I am not aware of such a resource online. Roughly speaking, order numbers spanned from the early 1930s to the early 1950s. The two numbering systems seem to range from 18'000 to 23'800 (plus some around 38'000), and from 1'000 to 3'600. If one is considering a particular watch, I would suggest finding a few similar examples in the same serial number range and comparing the order numbers. This is usually not so difficult to do. For an introduction to Longines' case numbers, here is a post I wrote last year: https://omegaforums.net/threads/longines-case-numbers-an-introduction.156798/