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seekingseaquest
·New arrival came in this week - a reference 6626 Conquest that I didn’t even know existed until now. Case was a nice bonus..
According to Longines, it’s the very first Conquest reference and mine is the only one they’ve seen. Longines was able to dig up a photo of the reference in their internal archive, which they sent to me but asked me not to distribute. It included a photo that looked just like my watch - same case style, dial variant/text, and crown. It was hard to tell if the hands were dauphine or more alpha style like mine.
It houses a 12.68zs manual wind movement. The case back obviously features the same “fish in kelp” medallion as the 9000 references, but the case back is a different (flatter) style given no need to house the automatic movement. Same 35mm size as the automatic references.
Longines won’t share info on production numbers, but they did tell me that they believe 9218551 to be the first serial number for a Conquest. Mine is 9218694, so assuming all of those movements went into a Conquest, presumably they made at least 150 of these. They also said that they believe all were sold between September and November 1954 to Singapore, Australia, South Africa, Yemen, and UK (mine was November 1, 1954 to Singapore). Also, oddly enough, the number on the back of the lug on mine is exactly 1 digit different from the one inside the caseback.. so maybe the caseback got swapped in it’s early days?
Has anyone seen others? If so, please share!
According to Longines, it’s the very first Conquest reference and mine is the only one they’ve seen. Longines was able to dig up a photo of the reference in their internal archive, which they sent to me but asked me not to distribute. It included a photo that looked just like my watch - same case style, dial variant/text, and crown. It was hard to tell if the hands were dauphine or more alpha style like mine.
It houses a 12.68zs manual wind movement. The case back obviously features the same “fish in kelp” medallion as the 9000 references, but the case back is a different (flatter) style given no need to house the automatic movement. Same 35mm size as the automatic references.
Longines won’t share info on production numbers, but they did tell me that they believe 9218551 to be the first serial number for a Conquest. Mine is 9218694, so assuming all of those movements went into a Conquest, presumably they made at least 150 of these. They also said that they believe all were sold between September and November 1954 to Singapore, Australia, South Africa, Yemen, and UK (mine was November 1, 1954 to Singapore). Also, oddly enough, the number on the back of the lug on mine is exactly 1 digit different from the one inside the caseback.. so maybe the caseback got swapped in it’s early days?
Has anyone seen others? If so, please share!
