I'm thinking of buying a Speedmaster display back and ran across this one on eBay. I know very little about Speedmasters, having mainly purchased vintage Connies and Seamasters. I'm looking for opinions on this watch. To my untrained eyes, it looks legit. The tritium seems to have aged nicely. However, since it's had some recent case refinishing, I'm concerned that perhaps the polishing might have gone too far.

On a tangential note, am I barking up the wrong tree looking at a display back? Does this wear significantly larger than a standard case back?

Scott

 

Looks pretty good to me, but I notice that the hands have not patina'd or aged as much as the dial. Still, It doesn't look severely over-polished to me at all. The dial looks great as well as the bezel.

If the hands are tritium they may still be original and not service hands. The watch serial number indicates that the watch may be from the middle-late 90's right before they switched to Superluminova and the 1863 movement. The original hands eventually can wear out and Omega had a tendency to update the watches with service dials and hands, if the old ones were loose or fading, and with new pushers and crowns if the old ones didn't hold back water.

20 year old Tritium lume may not glow very well at night by now, unless they replaced them later. It depends on how important that is to you. I think the half-life is 12.5 years, so they will glow 1/4 as bright after 25 years but they don't need exposure to light to glow. Superluminova replacement hands just need a bright light to glow for a few hours. In my case I wouldn't let that question stop me if the price is decent.

PS: I had a 1991 Rolex Explorer II with tritium dial/hands and in 2016 my son could put the watch 3" from his eyes and read the time, but it was all too dim and blurry for my old eyes although I could see a slight glow. My 1983 Rolex with tritium was totally dark at 30 years of age.

It's nice to have an older 861/863 movement watch, and I got one as my first Speedmaster Pro moon watch (1976). But in my case I also added a couple of newer Speedmasters in order to have ones that I could wear and tell time 24/7.

 

Thanks Larry; excellent summary. I figured the tritium wouldn’t glow given the passing years. I guess I was looking more for the vintage look with the patina rather than the ability to read st night.

I also noticed the difference in patina on the hands vs dial. I’ve seen this often on these watches and that certainly could be due to service parts. What worries me more is that I’ve seen multiple watches with the hands going black while the dial still has a nice patina. Seems strange that if caused by age, why would the hands be older than the dial.

 

It may be the way that they packed the Tritium into the narrow slots in the hands that would make the lume on some older hands begin to fall out, flake or crack, and make the lume look black and/or spotty in places. There is some evidence of that happening to these hand's lume, while the lume itself just hasn't turned color as much as the dial markers.

If those are service Tritium hands I'd be surprised because a 1994-1998 Speedy for example wouldn't need service hands until the early or late 2000's and I don't think they were using Tritium service hands anymore at that time. But I don't think I've seen Superluminova hands that had tiny bits of lume flaking out or cracking like these.

And I don't think that moisture getting inside at some point would only age the dial more and not the hands, and I don't this the dial looks water damaged.

When I first picked up my own 145.022-74 from 1976 the sweep second hand looked more creamy like the dial markers, but the hour minute looked slightly less aged. However, they're Tritium and don't glow so they're certainly older than 25 years.

It was pretty beat up at first, but I elected not to polish it and just replace the crystal and mainspring with a service in 2014. It's been keeping great time, and better than than my modern Omega Speedmaster Pros (+1-2 sec/day). I'll be sad when the day comes that the hands are too worn to reinstall after a service, because then I'll have to look for vintage hands.

 

Probably because the different suppliers of the dial and the hands used different mixes of tritium. It's unusual to see dial and hand lume matching on vintage Speedmasters.

 

I'm curious about the answer to "how it wears"? With the display back does it wear "bigger?"

 

Where I live, there isn't a chance to see, hold, and try on one of these. That's why I asked about how it wears. I'd rather not buy and then find out it's uncomfortable to wear. At least I have a large (8") wrist, so the taller case may not be an issue.

 

Both my 2005 Speedy 3572.50 with display-back and 3570.50 with steel case-back wear the same - no difference. One does not stick up from the wrist more than the other. My 145.022 seems to wear a bit lighter and feels feather-weight (even on vintage bracelet), but no real difference in height or size.

 

hey Larry, how about with Nato straps?

 

I feel like my SMP and Planet Ocean are too tall with a NATO, but the Moonwatch works fine for me on a NATO, which adds about 2-4mm depending on nylon vs leather. It is still less tall on NATO than my Ti Planet Ocean 9300 on bracelet...

 

Thanks Larry! Just the type of feedback I was looking for.

 

Hi, not trying to argue or anything but what is the point of the nato strap?
Looking at the pictures above I see 2 layers of strap underneath the watch and the only thing ”better” than a regular strap is that you dont need to remove the spring bars to change the strap.

Or is there more to it?

 

I'm not a fan of nato's myself, but the big advantage over regular straps is that if a springbar fails you don't lose your watch.

 

I was thinking about this, but how often do they really fail? Omega original springbars have been bullet proof for me.

 

They fail...most people don't replace them often so believe me they fail...

 

I have personally had a springbar fail on a watch that is currently worth nearly 5 figures. If it hadn't been on a NATO strap, I don't know what I would have done.

 

Speaking of - how best to go about obtaining replacement spring bars? Presumably buying Omega bars is preferable - I'm based in the UK, is cousins the answer?

 

No idea if Cousins carry them but I would suggest calling an AD or boutique.

Cheers, Al

 

This ^ but I typically don't use NATO either, but I was testing black and brown NATO at the watch shop and took photos.