One recent morning, after a late night on Enormous Bloody Auction Yard, I discovered that I had purchased my first Speedmaster Professional – a 145.022-78 [Edit: it's a -76!]. It was just what I was looking for: dirty but in decent shape, sold by seller specialized in other stuff, and about 30% below market rate. The hands looked a bit funny in the pictures, but the price was good enough that it was a very acceptable risk.

So here she is: 145.022-76ST, serial number in the 39.1 millions, correct bezel, nice tritium patina on the hands and hour markers, ‘T SWISS MADE T’ on the dial, lightly polished but sharp case, signed crown, Omega crystal with mark. (1171/633 bracelet in good condition not pictured.) Pushers work great, keeps good time.
But the hands… there’s something funny about the hands. The chrono second hand tracks nicely to the edge of the minute ticks, but the hour and minute hands are too short! The faded tritium lume on the hands matches the dial, so I figured they were some kind of old service hand. But I couldn’t find another Speedy Pro with hands like this: they’re stubby, and the lume groove stops partway down the hand.

After some research, I have a theory: they ARE Speedy Pro hands, they just started life on a Mark IV! http://www.chronomaddox.com/ shows these hands on the Mark IIIb, Mark IV, and the c.1045 pulsometer. So the hands are period-appropriate, just not for this watch!

Has anyone seen this before? It seems like a strange item to put on a frankenwatch, when service hands for Speedy Pros should be much easier to find (right?). Certainly wasn’t done by an authorized dealer (which makes me even more eager to take this thing for service – SF Bay Area watchmaker recommendations welcome). I wonder if the hand replacement dates back to the 1980s? Is it a testimony to the watch’s history, or something to fix?

What do you think of my theory? And what would you do with this watch? Anyone need some Mark IV hands?

For now, I’m just enjoying wearing it and (given the price I paid) can afford to be bemused more than disappointed by its peculiarities...

 

Hi.

Are you sure its a -78? Do you have a picture of the caseback and movement? I see in your pictures a dial for a -74 or -76, as it has the medium S letter, and not a tall S like it should have from a -78 forward to the eighties.

Hour and minute hands are definitively wrong and I personally would exchange these if I had the watch as for me these do not look like they belong on the watch.

 

As a matter of fact it is a -76. I had to bust out my loupe to be sure (the '6' looked an awful lot like an '8' on first glance), but yes, it is a -76. Thank you! Serial number 39185XXX. Pictures:

 

Yes I have seen it but as you say what it means is that the watch had a cut price service sometime in the 70s or 80s and the watchmaker used what he had.

Here’s my -68 with hands fom another as yet unidentified model. Poss one if the Mark Models. MkII maybe. I got a nice spear second as a bonus though.



This has now been remedied:

 

Cool, even better. The serial looks like the last -76’s but fits into the reference. Just send it for service to a renowned Omega service guy and he could probably have in his “box of secrets” the correct hands for it, or put new service hands on it.

 

Well, six months later she's been given a bath, full service, and proper hands at World Time in San José (thanks guys!).The patinae on the old and new hands don't match - and the new hands still glow a bit - but that's part of the story of the watch! l'm glad I got to have this little adventure with my first Speedy, and feel lucky to have paid only a modest n00b tax