Omega seamaster 2848-2849 dial repaint?

Well, let's be honest here - Longines did produce a lot of crap from the 80's up until recently. And the fancy-schmancy column wheel chrono that the "dinks" gushed over is but a modified ETA 7750. Omega uses a co-axial version as the Cal. 3330. With the advent of modern CNC machining, the additional cost to produce a column wheel is negligible in the big scheme of things, so the whole premise that a column wheel must necessarily be expensive, and therefore this watch is some sort of achievement, is quite frankly another example of HH (Hodinkee Hyperbole).

It is well known that in years gone by, Longines made watches that were of very high quality, but after the quartz crisis hit they, like many others, were forced to cut corners. They went from making watches with movements that looked like this:


To making watches that look like this:





As much as it was a nice quartz watch at the time I bought it (bought new in 1991 - yes that's mine!) and it certainly wasn't cheap, I can't say that the quality level is quite the same as the 30CH above, which rivals some of the nicest movements of the era, and is only seen in very high end watches these days. Even their simple manual winding movements of this era were very well made - no cheap wire springs, etc.

Longines has only recently been allowed to take a step up on the horological Swatch ladder, to fill the more "affordable" gap that was left behind when Omega moved on to try to compete with Rolex.

I am working on a "modern" version of the Longines Weems that was sold on the forum to a customer of mine. When I say modern, it uses a 2892 inside, so it's hardly vintage. If you ask Swatch group for parts for vintage watches, they simply don't have them - Swatch never produced parts for these watches, and have no stock. They always tell you to "send it in" for a truly vintage watch. Even this Weems I'm working on they sent me the wrong crystal for it twice before finally getting me the right one - they said the following in response to my frustrations of getting the wrong crystal the second time:

"Hi Al
So sorry about that.
The part is from ancient time, and there are 2 different sizes under the same ref# - one is in 32.5mm, the other one is in 25.5 to 26 mm
Would this smaller one be correct?"

So Swatch considers this watch "from ancient time" and it's barely what I would consider vintage. When I sent my initial query they even asked me for photos of the watch after I had given them the model and serial number.

So in my view (others may disagree) Longines has certainly been sold to (or swallowed up by) another company, and have produced lower quality watches under the Longines name.

Cheers, Al