Thoughts on Seamaster 2846/2848 Radium Lume

Hi all,

This is a dumb question about this Seamaster 2846/2848 dial. Based on the dial text and marker alignment, it pretty clearly repainted. The text looks bad, the markers don’t line up with the tick marks, no "swiss made", etc. I’m a lowly a Speedmaster guy who doesn't deal with this stuff much, so I was curious about one thing:

The lume doesn’t look natural to me, but the dial measures 5.19 µSv/h (0.52 mSv/h) on the Geiger counter—so, it's radium, right? I was expecting a lower reading that would confirm the dial had been redone. The dial paint or lacquer looks pretty aged, so, should I assume it was repainted a long time ago, and the original radium lume was left on the indices (I think the lume looks to be on the indices, not the dial itself, right?) and then the markers reapplied poorly? I didn’t think original radium lume would look this blobby, green, and uneven—but I also didn’t think redone lume would be radium. That part’s a bit confusing to me.

It’s not that exciting—the whole thing mostly like sh*t, but the 501 caliber doesn’t look too bad. It's a sentimental piece from my wife’s grandfather, whom I miss quite a bit these days. The stem had snapped and the crown was missing, but I’ve sourced a replacement and will work it back into the sentimental rotation.

Hope all is well around here—Thanks.

Doesn’t look like radium but it would have originally had radium and so I’m sure there’s still some left on the dial.

Ah, the hands, of course. The hands do look different than the dial.

here is my Bulova - redialed hands from the 80ies (was a mistake, I was young) - same "green"

Right - the reading was movement out, no crystal, hands on. Seems a bit high for just hands to me too, but I’ve only taken a few readings from known sources, so I don't have too much experience to draw on. From the look of it, I’m guessing it’s just hands.

It’s a bit tough, because the dial is the soul of a watch to me, and the sentimentality might persuade me to keep it. But it’s ugly as sin, so I guess I’ll have to see how it feels to wear once it’s running.