I am not convinced ...

The original Black on Gold dial that was posted some time ago was on a steel case and hands. The watch was sold. Now we see the same dial on a gold capped case with gold hands. It is impossible to come to any conclusions with images that are so poor. IMHO, we need better frontal images of the dial to carry out an assessment and comparison of old and newly discovered. I do find it a little weird that it was only up for $2K if it is such a rare polerouter and strange it went so quickly, one would have thought that such a rare watch would at least have been given a chance to reach its full bidding potential !

 

I dont think anyone is convinced, either way.
Im not convinced they're legitimate.
Im also not convinced they're fake.
Im only convinced that its very interesting and worth discussion whilst we await for more to surface

 

Crazy thread; I think the best case here is it was a prototype and the factory (rightly IMO) decided the results were too horrible to produce.

Perhaps the prototyping factory was not in Switzerland, so they omitted 'Swiss' on both the examples.

 

Just back from service. My observations......

1) the dial printing appears identical to the other black SAS example posted in this thread
2) this dial does not have the same high gloss finish. It clearly has had some environmental/moisture reaction, especially along the bottom, it's hard to say if the difference in finish is because it started out as a different finish, or due to the environmental factors, or both.
3) it's in a 20214-4 case, and the earlier example in this thread is a 20217-4 case, so they are both -4 variants
4) the dial back stamping appears identical to the other black SAS example in this thread
5) the crystal and crown were already replaced on this watch when it was purchased on ebay
6) the seller (from ebay) got it as part of a mixed lot of watches, from someone in Florida, I suspect for almost nothing

So to my way of thinking, we have a second example, same exact printing, same exact stamping on the dial, and it came to market through a non collectors route, seems like an extremely elaborate process for someone to fake/redial/franken, in order to sell it as part of a bulk lot of old watches for low $ ? What's the angle?

In my opinion, the second example lends credibility to both examples. I'm not saying I know exactly what this is, perhaps it was part of a test run of printing, different production methods, different colors/finishes/etc. But seems likely to me that it's something done by UG, rather than by someone else. I would also suspect more of these exist, and I hope they continue to turn up and give us more examples and more information.

 

Unless it was your find!

 

Great photos @bgrisso - I see no reason to think the dial is any kind of reprint, it looks great to me.
Now to (eventually) figure out how the dials ended up in different reference cases!
Unfortunately I doubt that will be an easy task...

 

Agreed. Interesting that they are both in -4 cases. If these are test runs/production samples, it makes sense to me they would try a variety of combinations, so not surprising to see a SS one, and a gold one. Maybe there's a rose gold one around, maybe a solid gold one, etc. When UG and SAS were working together on this project I could see a whole bunch of samples being made before production was settled. It doesn't seem likely that left over production samples would be sold commercially, maybe they were given away as gifts, or given to employees, or who knows what. Many possibilities, all guesswork.

 

The way I look at this whole issue is simple. The watches were made at a time where a watch was just that, a tool, instrument need to tell time. It seems that we are all too caught up in serial numbers, reference numbers. At that time people did not care about the numbers like we do. All watch manufactures created their catalogues for sale purposes and did a great job at it and they were accurate but that doesn’t prove that the manufacturing was as precise. So when we rely on a catalogue or sala book they are great sources, but that does not mean that they are 100% accurate. There are manufacturing errors that bypass QC all the time(take a look at coins for example). So when something looks legit and when someone like OP claim that he has a legitimate watch who is well respected and knowledgeable with a particular brand Take off your “Debbie doubter” mask and listen. It may not be any n a catalogue, it may not be what we are used to seeing, it might have a slight mismatch of parts and of course this does not apply to Frankenstein watches.

 

Very cool with the black dials! one of two known makes these very rare indeed!

 

The more I look at it the less I see ... I am not convinced. That is not the work of UG ...

 

Possibly the least surprising thing I've read all day.

Ps No offence intended. Just having a bit of fun in otherwise worrying times.

 

none taken

Believe what you will. However, there are many views which lack any specific evidence. To me it looks like "mutton dressed as lamb !"

 

Rather than me trying to argue what the dials might be, it would be interesting to hear what you think they are and when you think they might have been produced.

 

This is a very interesting examination. I think finding another of it's kind of dial counts as evidence to me.
Still possible someone (not UG) was screwing about making them but it leads me to believe in it's legitimacy more than it's illegitimacy.

 

Of course not - they did not make their own dials.
It's the work of Stern.

 

The two black SAS dials both have the Stern star mark on the reverse.

They both have the '94' UG client code used by Stern.

They have the '076' job number indicating that they were made at the same time.

AND these markings are absolutely identical to the markings on the reverse of an undisputed white dial SAS Polarouter 20217-6.

This strikes me as being 'specific evidence'.

 

And this was confirmed by Phillips back on page 5.

 

They are also both in 2021(X)-4 cases, which I suppose could be a coincidence, but seems more likely intentional

 

The dials are stern. But that does not mean that they started life as UG SAS polarouter dials. Looking at both alleged SAS dials we see the following issues ...

Do not have swiss marking at six o' clock
Markings on dial are not in line with what we see on known SAS polarouters
One of the dials is gloss while the other is mat with corrosion
There is no catalog or documentary evidence on any black polarouters or polerouters anywhere

Additionally, when we compare the two alleged SAS models (polarouters or polerouter we dont know what they are) with identical print, we notice that one has a black dial back and the other does not.

Balck SAS 1


Black SAS 2


Dials are usually made in batches. It is unlikely that a similar batch (which these two must have been) would be treated differently at stern. If we look carefully at the gloss dial, we would expect it to be pretty much perfect as gloss shows up any tiny imperfection which would fail quality control. However, we see a ding that has been painted over. There also seem to be others ...



Additionally font is pretty poor and runny when compared to an original SAS or any polerouter ...

Known SAS


Looking closely at dial of alleged SAS, I find it remarkable that it seems to have a mix or serif and san serif fonts with irregularities in print indicating that both came from the same template or cliche. The top image is from recent alleged SAS and characters and accent above "e" in geneve are significantly smudgier.



It is likely that the recent alleged SAS with the matt dial was put together after the first one appeared. I am also suspicious that the SAS logo and print were applied on an existing corroded dial as corrosion does not seem to have affected logo or print. Rather, the print has been applied on top of corrosion. That also explains why it looks so fresh! Print seems to be smudgier. The would be down to print pad not making good contact with the surface of the dial.

If it had been applied at the same time as dial paint, I would have expected that area of the dial to have much less corrosion (or none) as an additional layer would have provided more protection against the elements (note lower right seems to have been affected much more than other areas which is close to stem and crown, hence a route for moisture and water ingress).

I believe both dials came from the same redialer
I don't believe they are original (stern or UG)

 

Isn't the back of the dial black on both of those? One photo taken under natural light, the other not. The fact the back of the dial is finshed in the same colour as the front isn't really much of an indicator that it's redialed either. Here's a pic of the back of a white SAS marked dial, from this thread



Looks like it's got the same colour finish as the dial side, worn off the feet to reveal the metal beneath - just as @bgrisso 's watch. Perhaps paint on both sides wasn't so out of character at Stern when they made these?
That "painted over" "ding" could easily be a mark on the crystal which appears to have plenty of scratches. I recall you writing something similar on this thread https://omegaforums.net/threads/an-...hield-on-dial-of-early-ug-three-hander.86515/ . The eventual consensus on that watch was that there was nothing wrong with it.