My seamaster jumbo 2521 with Chronometre Officially Certified.

Ehhhh... no.

😉
Best,
T.

Hello fellow experts 😎

I am a bit late to the party as usual (time difference and lazy during shut down...)

Hope you all are well and safe - which is much more important than minutia on a watch dial...

I have read through all the answers of this remarkably long thread considering its not about Speedmasters 😝

Well, firstly I must say that it always amazes me how fast several members are with their assessment and shout re-dial. And afterwards often to be proven wrong.
I have the feeling that there is a lot of nitpicking when it comes to assess vintage dials.

What we have to consider:

1) those dials discussed are 60 - 70 years old and QC did either not exist or at least was not as serious as we are used to in recent times!

2) there is a wide variety in the execution of dials and nobody has seen them all yet - especially when it comes to uncommon (rare) references - I will show you examples later down the thread. And unfortunately often there are only few examples available for comparison.

3) There is not only one dial manufacturer who supplied Omega in that given era which results in the variation we often observe.
What I have found out when researching dials of the 30 T2 chronometers:
Pointed A was mainly used by the Stern company while flat A was typical for dials from Zelim Jacob and there
is at least one other who has to be considered: Merusa company.
So worrying about pointed A or flat A and straight leg or slanted leg A is fruitless and does not confirm a dial to be original.
Its the same with sans serif and avec serif, different manufacturer or slightly different era/production series can cause the difference.

I think therefore we must be a bit more openminded when an uncommon dial variant shows up. This does not mean that we have to accept every crappy dial as original. And what we should also keep in mind: a perfect re-dial is literally as scarce as hen´s teeth. I have seen plenty of re-dials but never found them perfect with one exception: the Vietnam made dials for few Constellation models are very hard to distinguish I must confess.
My personal decision: when a dial is so perfectly executed that I am not able to decide wheter it is original or re-printed I do not bother about it, I give it the benefit of the doubt.
But before I make this decision I want to see that dial through a 10 x loupe before me and not just on a photo.

I browsed through my hard drive searching photos to compare with and have found more flat A Omega dials than pointed ones, chronometer rated and non-chronometers. I post them here so you can compare the variants yourself. IMO all of them are original but don´t take my words as godspell as I am only a human too and I didn´t have them scrutinised under an electron microscope nor did I research the inking with colour spectrography.

Pointed A:



Flat A:



And finally 2 photos of 30 Rg chronometer dials only those might have seen before who have my chronometer book



IMO not many collectors would have considered a 3-line inscription dial or one with inverse order of the words original but they do exist on several "younger" chronometer references.

What I have learned during researching for my book: with Omega never say never!
Hence I created this bookmark below which I gave for those who ordered my book. I am sure most of the OF members would have screamed out "fake" or "franken" immediately if they had seen these 2 movements here on the forum or somewhere in the wild; one with black chromium-coating (left) and a rhodium-plated specimen with Rg-regulator device (right) - both confirmed examples in the custody of the Omega Museum.



So finally my assessment on the dial of the OP:

Inscriptions and minute track look perfect and I do not doubt they can be original.
What makes me a bit uneasy is the colour of the silver-plating - I think, what somebody has already mentioned before, this could well be the result of a previous cleaning where the top clear lacquer has been removed and with it the mellow toning we often see on dials of that age.

I hope you all keep safe and I wish you relaxing Easter holidays

Erich

@mac_omega Amazingly good info -- thank you very much.
One final (maybe?) point:
Omega's fine after sales service in Bienne has always kept a remarkably large stock of NOS dials, or at least the capacity to manufacture them upon demand, for many of the models they made in case of client needs and/or when they determined a dial needed to be replaced. So out of sequence fonts (if that's what the experts think they are) or anomalous surface finish could be attributable to the watch getting a service at some later date and Omega popping a new dial in the watch (for example, a 1950s watch potentially getting serviced in the '70s or '80s).
Again, examining the rear of the dial in question would be valuable in this regard, as well, as someone (certainly not me! 😉) might actually know the chronology of Omega dial suppliers and be able to make a determination about chronology from the signature/hallmarks on the back of the dial plate.
Cheers & stay safe,
T.

Yes, I think Omega might have had dials in stock for some time and some models, but I don´t know how long stock might have lasted for common models/references. There need not be a chronology of dial manufacturers used, dials have been sourced from various distributors at the same time, depending on models to be put on. In the archive of the Omega Museum they keep a binder with vintage B&W photos of various dial samples which were provided from various dial manufacturers at the same time.

I want to add more photo to show that it was the jumbo size (36mm)


Best regards,
Teerapat

Thank you very much for your help.