Hi! Like many others, I'm infatuated by this jumbo ref. from the 1940s/1950s. I am in the finalizing phase of buying a nice example, and have been doing some research on serial / batch numbers that I wanted to share here.
Three general things I noted:
- this ref was seemingly only delivered to the Mediterranean countries (Italy, Spain, Turkey, Greece) next to Southern America (Brasil, Uruguay);
- as from about the 7.6mio serial, Longines started to put the 5045 ref on the inner caseback - before, you only had the batch number;
- it appears the deliveries took place between 1944 and 1955, in this timeframe, all known dials were delivered (I further need to investigate if certain dials were delivered more towards the beginning or the end of the spectrum / it appears the well-known raised silver round indices examples are more prevalent in the later years).
This is the database I was able to make (not 100%, there were a couple of outliers):
Serial - batch number/reference - year of delivery on extract - country delivered on extract
6.693.927 - 22668
6.836.946 - 22918 - 1945 - Portugal
7.080.613 - 23169 - 1946 - Brazil
7.084.917 - 23220
7.130.662 - 23314
7.434.275 - 23643 - 1949 - Italy
7.658.948 - 5045/1 - 1949 - Spain
8.375.596 - 5045/10 - 1952 - Italy
8.472.604 - 5045/11
8.607.952 - 5045/13
8.613.820 - 5045/13 - 1953 - Spain
9.195.404 - 5045/14 - 1955 - Uruguay
If someone has other examples to add, please let me know! I found a clear outlier that was sold by a famous vintage seller, which I did not take into account as I highly doubt it was a correct example (6.182.954 serial with 5045/8 stamp).
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