For a long time, it was assumed that the Speedmaster became ‘Professional’ after the watch was certified by NASA. However, the earlier use of the ‘Professional’ addition has been discovered some time ago. An example is this early bird Omega Speedmaster Professional 105.012-63 from 1964. Speedmaster Professional 105.012-63 Yesterday, one of our readers and Speedmaster […]

The post Speedy Tuesday – Early Bird Speedmaster Professional 105.012-63 appeared first on Fratello Watches.

 

Thank you very mich for sharing, as always!

Cheers

 

Blimey Fratellos! Is that really a desirable 'tropical' dial? I thought they were supposed to resemble chocolate? Surely, at the very least, you shoudn't have to squint to tell what time it is.

I've just viewed the whole Speedy Tuesday article on Fratello but this one seems to be at odds with the Speedmaster101 article on brown dials.

I understand and buy into the 'hard working 50 year old watch' vibe. (God knows I'm working that one to death with my 'keep it in the family' 60's Speedy) but I have nightmares that I will wake up one morning to find that my brown dial looks like the one in that article.
I don't want to offend the owner and I probably will regret this post, but I can't help thinking aloud on this one.

I'm a novice and my only decent watch is a 105.012 brown dial, so I have a personal interest in this issue. Am I missing something or is this genuine, real life, pleasing Wabi Sabi? Can somebody put me straight on this matter? I'm on this forum to learn and I'm hoping my instinct is wrong on this one. (apologies in advance)

 

Tropical? This damaged dial looks like it's spent a significant period of time outside of a watch case. In addition, on a 105.012-63, I would expect to see a dial with no TTs or asymmetric TTs. This dial, with, symmetric TTs, is more normally seen on the 64s and 65s.

 

Personally I really, really like that dial. With a faded bezel it'd look awesome.

However, for me, genuine 'tropical' dials should demand a significant premium and be a rich, smooth brown. This is not tropical but more of a heavily patinated, faded dial, rather than tropical. Seems the phrase is getting overused at the minute. Terminology aside, I like it.

 

As I wrote in the article, some will like it, some don't. I rather stick to smooth brown ones myself, or just un-damaged ones ;-) The Ts around Swiss Made were also introduced in 1964 (this watch is probably from the end of Q1, to my best guess) in the 1st quarter. Some earlier 105.012-63s have been seen without. In the extracts I saw that this watch was shipped to Mexico May 29th 1964.

 

I believe the tropical dial is a fad and eventually people will no longer pay a premium for them as others have proved it's not too difficult to make a dial tropical, so how does one prove it's truly naturally tropical. But a nice black step dial speedy will always be in demand.