Omega closing down archives extract service??

If that’s true it’s sad news. The EotA might not have been what it used to be but it was still a welcome little extra information. At the very minimum, a help for those of us who were looking for a birth year watch.

I really hope this turns out to be untrue.

I'm a bit spoiled because on the Longines side of things, an Extract from the Archives is free ... and sure, it doesn't offer that much information, but it does tell me whether movement and case originally belonged together, and when the watch was originally sold and where. This gives me a lot of context that I otherwise wouldn't have, and that is worth quite a lot to me. Knowing that, for example, my Longines was sold in 1974 in Romania, by a company that still exists and is still a Longines partner, gets my mental gears churning and lets me think about that country at that point in time, and who might have bought this watch in the first place. The story that develops in my head is half the fun in collecting vintage for me.

Does a service like this make it more likely that I will buy a "new" Longines in the future? I would say yes, because I have really been impressed by the helpful and friendly correspondence with Longines that I had.

Maybe Omega want to shut down this service because quite a few watches have been sold with Extracts from the Archives that turned out to be ... well, somewhat unrelated to the watch, thereby leading people to pay a lot more for a watch that isn't 100%. And maybe they want to move more "upmarket" by only having the option remain to authenticate the watch with them, and then issuing a Certificate of Authenticity. Still, not every Omega around is worth going through the entire game and cost of having it authenticated...

In a way, they would be cutting themselves off from the "lower end" of the market. Sort of what Jaguar is planning with only selling cars north of $100k+ starting in 2025 ... I'm a bit torn about this. Omega has a long history, and in my eyes, that history should be accessible, not hidden behind an even higher paywall.

Good thing is, serial numbers will still allow us to date the watches fairly precisely. So it's not a spectacular catastrophe, only a slightly highbrow move ...

They may have a good reason for doing it, but in my opinion, it’s terrible PR for the brand.

The way you get, and keep customers is partially by creating enthusiasm for what you’re selling. The extract service made collectors excited about leaning more about the history of their watches. This move makes owners potentially less involved with the company, not more so. Yet another example of dwindling customer service. Hope they see the light, and reinstate it.

Just bought one last week...

Maybe the concept to sell the other service that cost 1K and let you without watch for a couple of months and avoid the issues created by the 0.01% requesting EOA for watches put together like some of them sold in Auctions Sales .

Literally, this is true of course. But this nice thing about creating things of beauty, expressing kindness and caring, and promulgating ideas that move society in a more positive direction is that sometimes they get cherished and become eternal.