Hello & Happy New Year, I have wanted to find a steel dress watch to pair with a suit with a clean sunburst dial a bit like this one: Please excuse the picture, I borrowed it from the What are you wearing section, I hope the owner doesn't mind.. I wanted to know what I should be expected to pay for such a watch? and also, do these models have a good reputation? Are the movements reliable? I also wondered if the writing looked correct? I have never seen one with writing like this or the one I have my eye on. The particular watch I have seen is almost identical, apart from the "constellation" writing has the typical flick on the last N of ConstellatioN..I hope that makes some sense..? I have been looking studying Desmonds Constellation blog page for a few months now, and I still can't figure out this one, There are also not many examples on the net like this, which makes me even more paranoid I will get it wrong. Thanks for your advice, Nic
The watch in question is a caliber 712 ultra thin. The fonts on these tend to be distinctly different than found on other Constellations. Here is a recent thread on these watches. http://omegaforums.net/threads/newbie-needing-advice.9206/
I paid 1000 CDN for my '68 Connie, professionally restored with a clean unmolested original dial & case. Caliber 564. That was only a few months ago and it looks the similar to the one pictured except the lugs are a bit thinner on mine and the face is a soft silver instead of the sunburst dial..... at a glance they look the same. Anything I've read on the mid 500 calibers seems to be very positive.
Those 71x powered Constellations and DeVilles make nice dress watches. Easy to tuck under a cuff. The movement was a joint venture between Omega and Rayville / Blancpain and is very good. Lots of dial variations, and as Norm mentioned the fonts are a bit of a curveball for anyone not experienced with them. A stainless one should sell for $650 - $1200 depending on condition, whether or not it has the original box & papers, and which dial it has. The watch you show, with a regular silver dial, would probably fetch on the low end of that range even if it were in very nice shape. If it were a black or blue guilloché dial and had all it's accompanying box & papers it would be near the upper end.