Seamaster Cosmic 2000 MOP - Still Alive!

Several years ago I bought a really beautiful MOP dial Cosmic 2000 from an old collector here in Tokyo. It’s a relatively rare white MOP dial version sold in the US Navy Exchange in Yokosuka (like a PX) back in the early 70s. He’d advised me because it had a stuck stem it needed an overhaul although it ran at the time. Because I love the dial so much I bought the watch anyway, and stuck it away as a future project. A couple years later I inquired locally about an overhaul from several repair shops, but since the dial was marked as tritium lume, and maybe I’d thought because they also didn’t want to muck around with a cosmic 2000, they refused. So back into the drawer it went. This weekend I sent off another repair request via email to a specialty repair shop here, and although he didn’t outright refuse it, he said he would have to send it out of the country because of the tritium, (which actually has been a problem with other watches I’ve had OH’d) , even so I was a little disappointed he wouldn’t let me slide. However, he did give me some advice, which was basically to heat the watch to no more than 45°C for an hour and then operate the stem several times. Alas the stem seems to work now and I could hack the watch, and set the time date, although when it’s fully depressed winding it seems a bit crunchy. He also advised me to wear the watch or put it on an auto winder and see how it does for a few days, saying after these many years it probably needs to run at least a week to get everything to smooth out internally. I’ve never been given that advice, but this guy does a lot of expensive repairs on Pateks and Vacherons etc. , so I’m going to heed it. I’ll give it a few days and see how she does, but as of now it’s running. If it keeps time fairly well for a day, I’m just going to put it on an auto winder in the closet and leave it be like that so I don’t have to mess around with the stem so much. I think I’m at the point now where I don’t care if the date is correct, if I can just hack it, and then restart it to synchronize it once in a while, that will be fine for me. I’m starting to get a bit like that physically too ha ha.

MOP is hard to shoot with the iPhone indoors, but I have a collection of about 16 MOPs, the most beautiful of which is a Breitling special ordered from the Ginza boutique with a rare dial. The only other MOP which even came close is this old Omega. So I think I’m just going to help her along like an old friend. Gone are my days of perfectionism! I haven’t measured it, but it seems to be about a 38mm case.

Thanks! I’ll have to check out Nesbit’s. That’d be a great excuse to go to Seattle. I’m sure it needs an overhaul, but I think I’ll wear it for a year or so just because it gives me so much joy from the dial. It’s losing about 1 sec/hr thus far vs. my GPS sync’d ham radio’s time standard.

Yeah they’re a bit over reactive about Tritium. Ball Watches even refused to service a modern watch I have. Oddly they don’t seem to care about old radium dials so much as far as selling or transport. I have a mid sized collection of aviation chronometers I’ve been selling and the auction and resale sites say nothing about them, nor do the shipping companies. During the 2011 quake/tsunami/Fujushima nuclear meltdown I bought a Geiger counter and measured the dials, it turned out they were less hot than the tomatoes from Fukushima that the government said were safe to eat. Keeping in mind most of them are pre-wwII or wwII era.