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Nov. 15 2019 Dr Crott Auction 100; a386

  1. DHKNOLA Oct 29, 2019

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  2. billving Oct 29, 2019

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    Nice. 4500 made?

    great research on their end!
     
  3. JanV Oct 30, 2019

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    Service minute, hour and sub hands. (One subdial hand way off). Service crown and service rotor, can’t say about polishing from those pictures. Interesting to see how much this one pulls, as in general it looks good and it has a very nice dial though.
     
    chronoboy64 likes this.
  4. CaptainWinsor Oct 30, 2019

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    what’s the ‘tell’ on the service hands?
     
  5. JanV Oct 30, 2019

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    On a MK1 the lume and the pained black area are the same width. MK2 has a bit narrower lume. Service hands have a very white colour to them, usually pops out of the dial. Service subdial hands are pointy, original MK1 are straight top and thin in size. Picture borrowed from the OF.
     
    A7805B9C-541F-4170-AE34-AC8C039E74F6.png
    KingCrouchy likes this.
  6. DHKNOLA Oct 30, 2019

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    Thanks for the pics JanV; I noticed that the second sub register hand is way off and the hour/min/paddle seconds hands look BRIGHT white. I did not have the expertise to out right call them service hands, but they did not seem age appropriate.

    Will be curious where it lands price wise...it is a fine dial.
     
  7. JanV Oct 30, 2019

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    The service hands are also more “square” in their lume appearance. Especially the corners are straight where originals have a bit of soft round corners.
     
  8. JanV Oct 30, 2019

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    wouter van wijk and subregister like this.
  9. MarkTr Oct 30, 2019

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    Has anyone noticed on the alphahands price trend spreadsheet that many of the MK3s have pointy subdial hands?

    I keep thinking -that like the small circle crown- that the factory "may" have installed pointy "service" hands onto new MK3 builds.

    I find it hard to believe that so many of the MK3's on the alphahands list required replacement service hands during their lifetime.

    I have owned my MK3 for over 35 years and it came with the pointy hands. We have all seen some pretty magnificent examples of MK3s on this forum with pointy subdial hands.

    Are all the experts positive that these "service" pointy hands never came on MK3s new?
     
  10. subregister Nov 3, 2019

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    Indeed the later Mk3 do start to show more pointed hands. If your Mk3 came with the pointed hands originally, I believe the only possibility would be that it is in the 231+ serial range. Is that correct?
    A guess given the data on my site is that Zenith ran out of the thick hands and swapped over to the service hands at the very end of their production of the A386. Or, perhaps they decided to cut over to pointed hands intentionally at the very end of the A386 production run, though to me seems less likely.
    http://alphahands.com/faq/zenith-a386-sub-register-hands/
     
    wouter van wijk likes this.
  11. MarkTr Nov 3, 2019

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    Thank you for your thoughts- I was hoping that you would comment.

    My A386 is indeed 231Exxx.

    When I was first looking at your spreadsheet --what caught my eye was the number of late MK3's with the pointy hands. Not sure how we will ever know- but it does leave the door open that late series 386's may be correct (well-not wrong) when shown with pointy sub-register hands.

    Even though I found two thick hands for my A386 I am going to have the watchmaker reinstall the pointy sub-register hands it came with.

    Thank you again for posting.
     
    wouter van wijk likes this.
  12. subregister Nov 4, 2019

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    You're welcome @MarkTr.
    Hopefully one day we will see some marketing/advertising material from that late period to show the intention of the design (though of course, if they ran out of thick hands at the end of the run...who knows!).
    And I would say...hang on to those hands :thumbsup:
     
    MarkTr likes this.
  13. ELV web Nov 4, 2019

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    One for the road with a 231,xxx as well. Mk3
     
    E7569762-E3FA-43CC-87AF-24C3BB3EDF87.jpeg
  14. monti Nov 7, 2019

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    subregister likes this.