The word on the street, for years, is never to send a decent quality vintage Omega in to the company for repairs. I don’t know about you, but if they had a dedicated service department for dealing with valuable/cherished timepieces where one could interface with the people that do the repairs, and be sure that they would do them within the boundaries of maintaining originality, I would certainly use them, even if expensive.
My car guy sells me my car and is very much interested in having me do the service there; why not watches?
Omega is certainly interested in doing the servicing on all these watches, but only on their own terms.
It was stated over and over that when the "new" 321 came into being that this would mean parts would be available to those with parts accounts - I'm still waiting but the only parts that are available now, are the same parts that were available for years before the new 321 came along. But there have been changes - here is what Omega has done with access to 321 parts...bear with me as it takes a bit of explaining...
Omega will often use parts from a previous movement when designing a new movement, so when the 861 came along, many of the parts used in this movement are in fact the same parts used in the Cal. 321. One in particular is the third wheel, and this is the most common train wheel I replace in 321's, 861's, and 1861's.
Like most parts used in modern watches, these train wheels are not expensive - for example the third wheel in the new 3861 is $35, and the third wheel used in the 321/861/1861 was the same cheap price. But then 2019 rolled around and the "new" 321 was announced, officially known as the 321B. For a while nothing changed, but then again without warning (as is usually the case) the old third wheel was replaced this year by a "new" third wheel. Here they are side by side:
These two wheels are identical in every way, except one - the packaging:
As you can see, the "old" part number of 72203201240, was replaced with a new longer part number of 7220321B30025. Again remember that this is the exact same part - no physical difference between them that I can see, just a new package, and a new price. So instead of $35, this is now $170. That is
not a typo - this wheel is now 4.86 times what it cost just a couple of months ago, and this change happened overnight without any warning.
There are many 321's that are expensive enough that this will have no effect whatsoever on servicing decisions, but this also affects all other movements that use this specific part, and there are 29 different movements listed that use this. 2 register chronographs, 3 register chronographs, Flightmaster movements, etc.
So now the cost of a service with someone other than Omega, is going to go up to cover the cost of this wheel, which again wears out more than any other. Omega's prices for service of course did not go up because of this change, so they have immediately put people like me and your favourite local watchmaker under more pricing pressure. The same goes with the insane jump in acrylic crystal prices that happened last year, which were of the same sort of magnitude - crystals are now $150 each, when 10 years ago they were $25, and just ~2 years ago they were only $35.
Omega is slowly making it less possible for watchmakers to compete, and all but the most valuable watches will likely end up going to them, because parts are just far too expensive.
So the first thing I did when I found this out was try to find and buy every third wheel on the open market I could, because even if I had to pay $75 for one, it will still be cheaper than buying from Omega directly. When those dried up, I decided to spend $35 on a 3861 third wheel just in case it could be used:
It can't (different tooth counts) but at least one positive thing came out of it - they beefed up the pivot that typically wears out on this wheel:
The old 321/861/1861 third wheel on the left, and the 3861 on the right with a much larger diameter upper pivot.
As I've said before, people don't understand what's going on behind the scenes, and it's not going to be good for vintage watch collectors...
Cheers, Al
