Afternoon (U.K) all,

I may have missed a thread on this while hitting the search button, so I’m starting a new one...

The speedmasters get a lot of love for the patina on the dials, but I can’t see much love for a Seamaster with patina - that yellow fried egg like hour markers and the faded bezels..



If this dial was in a Rolex it would be commanding £££££’s

I’m not judging the watch as a whole, I’m just using the hour markers of this watch as a talking point.

 

Yes, it is a bit odd that these don't command a huge premium, but I think as these become more collectible they will eventually. Not to the level of Rolex likely, but I do think that the tritium dials and hands will be at a premium at some point.

I serviced a bunch of these from one collector last year, and the one in the top row far right was lovely...wonderful markers and faded bezel:



One thing about these is that the hands don't generally follow the same colour change as the dials, so I think that will likely always make these a little less desirable than watches where the dial and hands more closely match,

Cheers, Al

 

Awesome reply, Al! Loving the pictures also!

I think what confuses people with the Seamaster is the ‘Swiss Made’ and not T<25 marked.

They look utterly fantastic with that egg patina - Do you have references to which models had the tritium dial?

 

None of the sword hand SMP's had tritium that I am aware of, so it would only be the earlier skeleton hand versions, so in steel it would be the 25318000 and 25518000.

There were others like two tone versions also, and then from the same era the SMP Chronographs.

So little over 5 years ago I made this thread:

https://omegaforums.net/threads/a-question-about-modern-patina.20326/

My goal was to get input from collectors to help me guide customers who were not sure what to do with the "turning" plots on the dial for these watches. Trying to get a feel even then if these would at some point become collectible or not, and the general feeling was yes they would.

It's always the customers decision in the end, but when I get asked for advice (happens often) or people tell me to do what I think is best (happens often as well) I wanted to give them the best advice I can to preserve any potential future value.

One of the difficulties with these watches and dials are the parts with red accents, so the seconds hand on the 2531 and the seconds hand and dial of the SMP chronographs. The red fades over time as you can see in the photo I posted above. Some a red, some faded to orange, and that one on the far right is pretty much white at the tip. But these are tritium hands, so replacing that with a new one to make it red means a luminova hand, and on the SMP chronographs, that means replacing a tritium dial with a luminova dial to bring back the red accents.

Sort of like asking if my red sub would still be as valued if the red fades...probably not, so I think there are a number of factors going into value that have to be taken into consideration...



Cheers, Al

 

Again, fantastic input! Really helpful!

I’m just still surprised the lack of Omega Seamaster patina following..

I can’t get enough of it!

 

So glad I found this thread. I've been looking for a 2531.80 for some time and I also didn't understand why the tritium dials don't (at the moment) seem to sell for a premium. I'm guessing that will change in years to come and that made me choose this 1997 model over later ones I've seen with the white lume. I just picked this up from Chrono24 for £2400 which I think was a bit of a bargain. Reading above - this one is the same in that the hands have not developed the same patina as the dial (I wonder why that is?). Any way it looks like a beautiful watch and I can't wait to receive it. And who knows. Maybe in a few years the tritium dial version will be the one everyone wants

 

Hi. Can someone please help me understand why on the tritium Seamaster Diver 300m watches do we often see hour markers with nice, yellow patina and hands that look much newer? I had assumed this is because the hands are service hands, however, I can’t imagine that every one of these watches has service hands. I’ve personally yet to see one example of a tritium diver 300m from the early 1990s with yellowed hands. Any ideas?

 

The tritium hands don't yellow when they age, but they do look different than luminova hands. They tend to have a slightly greenish tint, and the grain of the lume is quite coarse when compared to luminova hands.