Hello everybody. I'm new on the forum and just recently I fell in love for vintage Omega watches. I currently own a Genéve and I am looking for my first Seamaster. Just I keep seeing different dials and I wonder if it is existing a catalog of all dials produced for a specific model (Seamaster, 30, 120m, 200m, professional, De Ville, and so on) and if dials do have a coding/nomenclature to identify themselves. I did google a while but I found nothing like this. If such thing is really not existing, I could consider to build an online database to collect and classify dial pictures form different online watch insertions, with parameters like base color, watch model, movement, hands, etc, which may be user contributed. Would you encourage me in this direction and would you consider such thing useful for collectors? Thank you Ascanio
The book called Omega: A Journey Through Time is a great reference. Here is a thread related to it and an earlier idea about a database. https://omegaforums.net/threads/omega-a-journey-through-time.1216/
Hi and thanks for the answers. The book seems wonderful as the title promises, still hard to find at reasonable price. I share many of the comments of the time, which reports a lack of service and too much marketing around vintage watch lovers and collectors. From the first comment of ahsposo for this post I understand a user-contributed reference may not be appreciated by collectors, anyway, as it is more charming "guessworking" and sharing opinions than have a static/illustrated reference tables. Cheers Ascanio
I think that @ahsposo was joking - accurate reference material is always welcome. However, if it's not comprehensive and correct, it will not be very useful. "Seamaster" is a very large space ... I might encourage you to begin with a smaller, more constrained project, so that you can identify the practical challenges.
@ascanio a few years ago there was a Japanese language Seamaster book (more like a magazine) that I bought I think on Amazon or from Kinokuniya. It was pretty comprehensive as I remember. Its in a box in the garage somewhere. If you are just wanting to see pictures that one may help ya
I see, sorry I did't catch the original spirit. My idea was not to aim to become an ultimate reference guide, which I agree would be almost impossible to achieve nor I have the competence for it. I am specifically interested in studying many dial/hands combinations and I was more thinking to put together a collection of pictures of watch faces with some searchable index in a light database format - in an open format so everybody could contribute or comment in a social fashion - to allow to extract info like "let me see Seamaster 30 watches with black background dials and crosshairs running on 565 or 564 movements" It is also true that google image does a pretty decent job already, searching like "omega seamaster linen dial" or "omega seamaster black cross hair dial" so I may have an existing solution right there for my immediate pleasure and enjoyment. I do such tech things for my daily job - which gives me competence but not much time at all - but I may be looking for a light in cloud platform similar to airtable.com which _may_ allow to implement the project with limited efforts. By the way, I do recommend airtable.com to easily maintain a personal database of collections: it's easy and gives a lot for free. Cheers Ascanio