Speedmaster 145.022-74: A Puzzle

WurstEver · Jul 2, 2019

Hey @ndgal, there was another 31x -74 that went through your hands some months back that could help to inform this discussion: https://omegaforums.net/threads/cir...npolished-1171-633-bracelet-box-papers.78134/

Do you have a record of the date on the extract of that one?

padders · Jul 2, 2019

If we ignore the otherwise persuasive caseback swap hypothesis for a moment, this new example posted by ndgal suggests that Omega found a box of 1970-71 production 861s and started using them in around 1975. Was production of 861s still outsourced to Lemania which would explain screwy record keeping or did that stop with the early 321s? I think they were built in house by this time.

It is a mystery why some of these get a date matching the presumed serial age with later features but this watch makes more sense, made in ‘75 with an old off the shelf movement. The out of line watches could be another example of the unreliability and variability of the extract system itself. Perhaps the skewy extracts are using the movement date, and this newly found one a more meaningful actual date of watch assembly (which is what you pay for when you order an extract). This ndgal extract is very recent, but so is Norfolk’s. Perhaps the archive team finally got their act together on this issue, or perhaps 2 team members are using different methodologies and/or data. A 31m -74 model assembled in 1975 makes sense, an unmodified 31m -74 dome dial assembled in 1971 certainly does not and extracts suggesting this would IMO be tainted with suspicion that they are using the wrong info. Or that the watch had been extensively modified but as noted there are an awful lot out there if so.

I realise some of my suggestions were made by posters on p1 but this new extract does suggest something has changed. Is there a better explanation I am missing?

padders · Jul 2, 2019

Another question. If we for a second assume the skewy extracts are somehow right, has anyone seen a 31m watch with -74 caseback with warranty card dated earlier than 1975? Obviously cards filled in last week by enterprising dishonest sellers would need to be discounted!

eugeneandresson · Jul 2, 2019

ndgal
Wanna see something wacky? BOOM!! 😉😁

One owner full set 145.022-74 (1975) Speedmaster full set:

https://www.instagram.com/p/ByYdTfmnvku/?igshid=19zezaj1y6qf4

Maybe the archivists used the 'sold date' instead of the 'produced date' ::stirthepot::

DotOverNine · Jul 2, 2019

All this makes questions like "what ref should i be looking for when i'd like a birthyear watch?" a little bit more comprehensive
I'm born 1974 btw. Personally i will settle for the "145.022-74" on the caseback.

mancio · Jul 2, 2019

Seems like i have to go and have an extract for my 74 and see what it says. I'm curious now.

WurstEver · Jul 2, 2019

padders
Perhaps the skewy extracts are using the movement date, and this newly found one a more meaningful actual date of watch assembly (which is what you pay for when you order an extract).

This is what I originally suspected about the 1971 extracts. I suppose I still do. However, what's clear is that, as it was stated, the hypothesis that first motivated this thread is wrong. The situation is not so simple. A different kind of progress from what I thought we had 24hrs ago, but progress nonetheless 👍

larryganz · Jul 2, 2019

I have the more common kind of 145.022-74 with a 39m SN

eugeneandresson · Jul 2, 2019

padders
Was production of 861s still outsourced to Lemania which would explain screwy record keeping or did that stop with the early 321s? I think they were built in house by this time.

What was interesting to hear from my last visit to Omega in January is that, the movements for these are still not per-se produced 'inhouse' as the romantic notion suggests. Completed dials come from a subsidiary, as do completed hands, fully assembled movements come from ETA (maybe just 'moonwatch', can't remember the context at the time), etc. Naturally all subsidiary's are Swatch group : they are all part of the same body, but as separated from each other as the hand is from the foot (that is the feeling I got). All that happens at the first class Omega facility is assembly of complete individual parts, and testing (and maybe 1 or 2 other things). Not sure if that ever changed. Just another 2c...

padders · Jul 2, 2019

eugeneandresson
What was interesting to hear from my last visit to Omega in January is that, the movements for these are still not per-se produced 'inhouse' as the romantic notion suggests. Completed dials come from a subsidiary, as do completed hands, fully assembled movements come from ETA (maybe just 'moonwatch', can't remember the context at the time), etc. Naturally all subsidiary's are Swatch group : they are all part of the same body, but as separated from each other as the hand is from the foot (that is the feeling I got). All that happens at the first class Omega facility is assembly of complete individual parts, and testing (and maybe 1 or 2 other things). Not sure if that ever changed. Just another 2c...

Absolutely, but what was the situation in the early 1970s? At that time Omega had no association with ESA/ETA other than using their hummer movement. Were the 861s still built by Lemania or in an Omega facility, if outsourced this may be a reason for record irregularities, as happened in the late 1950s where there are extract black holes. There is no dispute that post the mid 1980s, all movement production was performed in ETA facilities, including AFAIK the supposedly fully in house 8500, 9300 type stuff. What makes them in-house isn't the name on the factory it is that they are not available to any other Swatch company and are built by a dedicated Omega movement team. Or so is my understanding.

Northernman · Jul 3, 2019

padders
Absolutely, but what was the situation in the early 1970s? At that time Omega had no association with ESA/ETA other than using their hummer movement. Were the 861s still built by Lemania or in an Omega facility, if outsourced this may be a reason for record irregularities, as happened in the late 1950s where there are extract black holes. There is no dispute that post the mid 1980s, all movement production was performed in ETA facilities, including AFAIK the supposedly fully in house 8500, 9300 type stuff. What makes them in-house isn't the name on the factory it is that they are not available to any other Swatch company and are built by a dedicated Omega movement team. Or so is my understanding.

The 861, and all other chronograph calibers used by Omega at that time, came from Lemania.
The 861 was never made by ETA.
When Omega had to sell Lemania in order to survive in the mid 80s, a deal was made (at some point) that included shifting of production equipment for the 861 to Bienne (from Lemania in L'Orient). I have not been able to confirm when this happened. perhaps as late as in the mid 1990s?

WurstEver · Jul 4, 2019

WurstEver
Hey @ndgal, there was another 31x -74 that went through your hands some months back that could help to inform this discussion: https://omegaforums.net/threads/cir...npolished-1171-633-bracelet-box-papers.78134/

Do you have a record of the date on the extract of that one?

Calling @ndgal. If you'd care to share, I'd be very keen to hear whether this other 31x/-74 of yours yielded a 1971 or 1975 extract.

WurstEver · Feb 29, 2020

The recent post by @Spacefruit (https://omegaforums.net/threads/one-i-am-keeping-a-145-022-74.108243/) and the FS listing by @Norfolk (https://omegaforums.net/threads/ohp...issue-w-bracelet-extract.107892/#post-1420596) got me thinking about the 31x serial -74s again and I decided it was finally time to get an extract for my own watch. So I popped the serial number from my -74 into the form on the Omega website and waited. Eventually, the pdf became available. Wanna see something wacky? BOOM!!

A 31x serial number and a 1976 production date. So now we have two extracts of the kind I had never seen when I started this thread. The first being the one posted by @ndgal above. This combination of date and serial number is, of course, way out of whack in relation to the rough temporal order of most other speedies. But it is entirely consistent with the known production run of the -74s, acknowledged serial ranges, and the well-worn story about movements sitting around on the shelf before being put into watches and shipped.

The really interesting thing here is that so far only two such extracts have surfaced and they are both relatively recent, having been generated around or after the time of changes to the extract process described variously in threads like these:
https://omegaforums.net/threads/no-extracts-from-the-archives-until-summer-2019.94651/
https://omegaforums.net/threads/new-improved-process-for-omega-extract-of-the-archives.99874/

So, it could be that the anomaly that originally motivated this thread has been "fixed" as part of the recent changes. Given the dates on the extracts shown in this thread, in order for this idea to be plausible, the "fix" must have occurred around May of 2019, which just so happens to be when the extract service closed for upgrades. An observation that could speak to this would be to obtain a new extract for a 31x -74 that already has an older extract showing a 1971 production date. However, I'm not sure there's much chance of an owner investing in a second extract for one of these, which after all, are not the highest priced vintage speedies. A recently generated extract showing a 31x /1971 result would perhaps also put an end to this idea.

Anyway, I guess the punchline is that in the absence of further observations, it seems possible that the extract results for these 31x -74s may differ systematically depending upon whether the extract was generated before or after recent changes to the extract process: circa 1971 production dates for the former and circa 1975/6 production dates for the latter, with the changeover taking place around May 2019. As always, if anyone has any evidence to help clarify this story, I'd love to see it.

abrod520 · Feb 29, 2020

I picked up a beautiful Speedmaster that I thought was a -71 since it had a stepped dial. It turns out that it's a step-dial, -74 caseback, 28.0M movement. Is it original? 😝 😉

(It's almost certainly a franken so it'll be parted out and modded - the vintage parts are in such great condition they deserve to find use somewhere honorable, and I'll get a fun modded Speedmaster in the end)

airansun · Feb 29, 2020

Never saw this thread before today. 🤔

My first Speedmaster ever, bought in a San Francisco pawn shop in the Spring of 1982, is 31312813. At its first service with me, my watchmaker told me it looked like it had never been serviced previously.

I do not have an extract for it. (These are old photos and not up to my current standards.)

WurstEver · Feb 29, 2020

abrod520
I picked up a beautiful Speedmaster that I thought was a -71 since it had a stepped dial. It turns out that it's a step-dial, -74 caseback, 28.0M movement. Is it original? 😝 😉

Haha! Perhaps a previously undocumented special edition, celebrating the 150th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein? 😉

JMH76 · Mar 1, 2020

Northernman
The 861, and all other chronograph calibers used by Omega at that time, came from Lemania.
The 861 was never made by ETA.
When Omega had to sell Lemania in order to survive in the mid 80s, a deal was made (at some point) that included shifting of production equipment for the 861 to Bienne (from Lemania in L'Orient). I have not been able to confirm when this happened. perhaps as late as in the mid 1990s?

The timing of production moving from Lemania to Omega might explain the timing of the change to the marking of 18 jewel movements. As I noted in my article on Fratello, “the first three years of 18 jewel 861 movements (1992-1994) apparently continued to have bridges reading ‘seventeen jewels.’ It seems it was not until 1995 that the words ‘eighteen jewels’ appeared on the gold plated 861 movement.” The shift of production to Omega might explain that. It would be nice to confirm that somehow. Anybody know the exact timing of the shift?

Northernman · Mar 1, 2020

JMH76
The timing of production moving from Lemania to Omega might explain the timing of the change to the marking of 18 jewel movements. As I noted in my article on Fratello, “the first three years of 18 jewel 861 movements (1992-1994) apparently continued to have bridges reading ‘seventeen jewels.’ It seems it was not until 1995 that the words ‘eighteen jewels’ appeared on the gold plated 861 movement.” The shift of production to Omega might explain that. It would be nice to confirm that somehow. Anybody know the exact timing of the shift?

Omega Saga caliber list states a shift to 18j in 1993. Still cal 861. Still LWO.
According to the same lists they did not change designation.

All of the 86x movements are listed as LWO - Lemania Watch Orient.

Perhaps the shift of the cal (1)86x production equipment did not occur until Breguet and Hayek/Swatch took over Lemania again in the mid/late 1990s?
At that time they focused Breguet/Lemania on high-end watchmaking.
Although a fine construction, the 86x is not fitting that term.

WurstEver · Mar 2, 2020

pseikotick
🤦
How long will it take to accept that there are very, VERY few absolutes with regard to this topic?

Indeed, it's just as well there's no need to deal in absolute certainties in order to make incremental progress, hey?

cvrle1 · Mar 2, 2020

Here is what looks to be all original -76 with 29xxx serial number

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Omega-Spee...oonwatch-original-box-and-papers/274293965008

Speedmaster 145.022-74: A Puzzle

WurstEver

padders

padders

eugeneandresson

DotOverNine

mancio

WurstEver

larryganz

eugeneandresson

padders

Northernman

WurstEver

WurstEver

abrod520

airansun

WurstEver

JMH76

Northernman

WurstEver

cvrle1

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