Hi all, I'm new to vintage watches and was looking to purchase my first vintage piece, a Seamaster from the 50s. While the watch looks good to me based on my limited knowledge, I was wondering how it looked to you all who are undoubtedly much more experienced than I am.

 

It looks good to me. Case seems nice. I like the patina although it seems a little uneven (darker on the left side?). It also has the original crown it seems.

 

There’s a bit of dial damage around the perimeter of the 2 o’clock mark which would make me want to inspect the movement further to make sure there wasn’t water ingress. Otherwise looks like a pretty honest watch if you don’t mind the patina. I do love these beefy lug models, but would miss the hippocampus on the back.

 

The lugs are rather skinny and the watch looks rather small, probably about 33mm, so try it on your wrist first to see if you like how it wears (in addition to what was said about its condition above).

 

As above will be v small. The 410 is only 26.5mm in diameter so rather smaller than most of Omega’s mainstream contemporary movements.

 

I believe that these manual wind Seamasters are as "big" as their cal 50X brothers, aren't they? 34mm or so?

As mentioned above the crown is a replacement. I don't mind the slightly uneven patination, but along with the worn case and manual movement, it would have to be cheap for me to like it... @joybjoyb - how much is the asking price?

 

Maybe so, the 50X are 28mm though so are a physically bigger movement. My 50X and 35X fat lug cased watches actually seem a little bigger than that, more like 34.5mm.

I just put a ruler across a blow up of the pic above to do a rough and ready scale test vs the known 26.5mm movement width and I get an approx case dia of 31mm so I would say that it is smaller than the 50X fat lugs.

 

Ah, interesting. Always thought they both were 34mm

 

My local pawnbroker has one very similar with small seconds at 6. I don’t know the ref. or cal. but it’s very much more patina’d (or damaged as I’d call it) than this one. He’s asking £995 so I hope yours is a good price.

 

I haven’t done thorough measurements but in hand they seem to be the same size to me. Most of the other cal 4** watches were smaller but not this case reference.

This is the best photo I have on hand showing them side by side:

 

The asking price is 550 euros, so around 600 USD.

Thank you all for the comments and advice, I've decided that I'm going to keep on looking out for one that's more to my specifications (automatic movement with an explorer dial)

 

A pet peeve of mine: Arabic numerals at 3 - 6 - 9 - 12 has been around long before the Rolex Explorer saw the light of day so could we please stop calling dials of that configuration "explorer dials"?

Good luck on you search, it's an excellent reference to go for and should be available pretty easily. If you have any questions, post them here

 

By the way, did you see this: https://omegaforums.net/threads/red...and-jumbo-seamaster-back.101334/#post-1326432
It'll be a looooooong time before something this good comes up at that price. I am slightly surprised that this hasn't been bought by a reseller and put up for sale on a fancy website at a x2 mark-up.

 

Hear hear! Amazed this is still available and for such value!