Hello,
As a long time lurker, I think it is time that I properly introduced myself and do an “all in one post” to give you some insight into some of my 2016 purchases.
My name is George and I live in the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area. I work for a local bio-pharmaceutical company. I am truly blessed to enjoy my work, the opportunities that it provides me to travel, and most importantly of all, the knowledge that the company I work for has such an impact on so many people’s lives,
It is hard to believe that I have been collecting watches for close to 20 years now. I wouldn’t say that I am recent convert to the Omega brand as I have been a fan of the Speedmaster Professional. In my early days of collecting I knew I wanted the “moon watch” and it had to be like the ones the astronauts wore. It was then I found about the caliber 321.
It should not be a surprise that the growth of my collection was related to the expansion of the internet and the emergence of eBay. The first purchase I made on eBay was for a vintage Speedmaster almost 20 years ago for less than $1000! The one thing I remember about eBay early on was that you could search for “watch” and peruse all the listings easily. During these searches, there were two watches that really caught my eye that were somewhat related. They were the Heuer Monaco 1133B and the Speedmaster 125. Both were “firsts” as the first automatic chronograph and as the first automatic chronograph chronometer. I thought they looked “cool”—big clunky watches of the 1970s that I remember seeing when I was a lot younger.
I am sure that I share the same story as many of you, I never “pulled the trigger” on either of these two watches. I seem to remember a $100 difference between me and a local seller of a pristine Monaco with full kit for around $4,500. I also lost out on a number of perfect Speedmaster 125s that in hindsight I should of purchased. I was so intent on making a good deal “great” that I missed out.
Anyway, so that background will help explain how I ended up on this forum. Earlier this year I started looking at these “lost” opportunities. I found my “complete” Heuer and managed to pick it up in person at the Brussels main train station. I also started my search for the Speedmaster 125 which is how I ended up on this forum. There was so much information here about that particular watch—serial numbered watches, correct bracelets, and even conspiracy theories/statistical analysis about how many were really made. To make a long story short, with this information in hand, I found a suitable Speedy 125---from eBay of course!
You might think that might be the end of the story—and my wife certainly wishes it ended there. I became the “victim” of information shrapnel—looking at details about the Speedmaster 125 and saw details about other iconic Omega watches from the 1970s. So in May, I bought a vintage Ploprof from a local seller. I also found a white gold plated Time Computer 1. I also did something that I never have done before—bought a watch that I never have seen in person—a complete Omega Marine Chronometer 1516. It was not an easy purchase for me as I could never imagine spending this much on a quartz watch. That aside, from a style perspective, it hit all the marks for me and the technology behind it makes it one of the most special watches ever manufactured. The best analogy about these watches is that they were very much like the Concorde—there was nothing like it before, nothing like since, incredible expensive to maintain, and it is not foreseeable anyone will make anything like in the future.
I wore this watch pretty much religiously until it took a fall and then it started to run erratically. I took it to my local watch maker and he was able to service it no problem since he had a surplus of parts. Ok—just kidding about the local watch maker. It was thanks to this forum that I knew that my watch had to make the journey to visit the fine people at Swiss Time Services in the UK.
While I was waiting for my watch to get serviced, I found a reasonably priced 1511. When the 1511 arrived, I liked the case style over the 1516, I started looking for more watches and that was when I really got in trouble and found the stardust 1510s. I won’t bore you with the details but now have what I would consider to be some stellar examples and extra parts to include dials in case of an emergency. I also found one of the gold 2.4 MHz dials which I might fit into a gold case.
Apologies for the long winded introduction but at least you have some insight into me and my collection. Thank you again for this forum and to the willingness of its members to share their information. I am a big fan and if there is anything I can do to help anyone out here in California, please let me know. If needed, I can help courier watches to STS as I visit the UK frequently.
If I had the opportunity to make one change to this forum, I would ask that you open up the “want to buy” area for noobs like me instead of waiting for the obligatory 200 posts.
Kindest Regards, George
