Speedmaster Soyuz to be auctioned in January

I found this Speedmaster Soyuz to be auctioned soon and wanted to share with you some of my thoughts. Also asks some experts here what they think.
It’s a sought-after model but it seems like those watches gained even more attention lastly.

This one have 5mm pushers intead of 5.5 and the patina mostly dropped of, which makes it less attractive than many of them.

The estimates looks high for me. But who knows…the one from Phillips Geneva action in May last year was sold for $113k and it also had wrong pushers (and I don;t think they're easy to replace...) Definitely I found one below has less attractive dial. And the one from Phillips was actually estimate really low (12k - 20k), which those big auction houses does quite often to estimate lower that one would think. Here we have opposite tactic.

Interesting thing is that Soyuz from Phillips had movement No. 39.180.975 and number 76. Here we have movement No. 39.180.979 and number 80. If I wouldn’t know others I could think it’s so straight and easy with all of them. But it's not.

What do you think? Any thoughts on that one?

https://www.artcurial.com/en/lot-om...f-st-145022-ndeg-39180979-vers-1976-m1099-269

Extract of the watch:

I would love to have it if money were not a little issue. I neither know the price it could reach, but for sure I could not afford it, so I will keep living happily with my Apollo Soyuz second generation with meteorite dial 😀

Beautiful watch as well!

Just small reminder for anybody who could be interested, the auction starts today at 2pm (CET).

Few more pics with a movement of a watch:

Passed. Anybody saw what was the starting price?

Are you sure it passed? I can't see any results, no matter what lot number I am looking at

I saw the results 30' ago and it passed. But now as I closed the website window I can not find it again as well. I had a window prepared before the auction started but then I got too much work to do and could not watch it live but the window was opened so maybe thats why I could see the results. The other speedmatser - 145.022-69 sold for 5k.

I'm not an expert, but I did look at a lot of these original Soyuz Speedy's awhile back when I was trying to buy one. I've seen about 10 in person, and many more online during sales over the last 10 years. The 5mm pushers is a big deal, as the 5.5mm originals were replaced during routine service on many of these Soyuz watches, and the 5.5's absolutely impossible to find. So for me, that's the first thing I look at, and that is a deal breaker right there. I would also never buy one without an Extract of the Archives certifying the piece as an Apollo-Soyuz, which this one does have such an extract. After that, dial condition has to be a major factor in deciding to buy, along with the light engraving on the caseback (with strong preference if you can see it with easily with the naked eye; many of these watches have the caseback worn down to be barely visible, or only visible with magnification). After that comes bracelet/endlinks (which you can find the correct ones in the aftermarket if you are patient, so not necessarily a deal breaker just be aware there are 18mm flatlinks that are not correct, it needs to be the 20mm wide 1168 IIRC). At the time I was interested, it was very difficult to find quality pieces at "fair market" for that time... $25k - $32k; sellers that had good ones weren't willing to part with them for less than around $40k. Assembled Soyuz watches with problems could be had easily for $25k, but my patience did not pay off and prices just went too high for my pocketbook 😀