I assume the 9oclock subdail gold colored hand is not original.
Any ideas of where to get a more correct one? Also, does this wrong subdial hand significantly
diminish the value?

Thanks

 

Correct. It's a replacement. And... from your straight on pic (which is tough, I'd wager that the tube size is off on that replacement too. The sub seconds hand appears to be seated too high).

FWIW, the hour and minute hands are replacements too. That significantly detracts from the value... much more so than your subdial hand.

Pretty dial, though.

 

Thanks, I figured that. I assume finding correct hands would be near impossible?

 

Sourcing replacement hands by themselves is nearly impossible. Your best bet is to find a suitable parts watch/donor, which can be tricky if you don't know exactly what you're looking for as all Tri-Compax models do not have the same size hands.

Feel free to PM me if you go down that route and need a hand.

 

Not to belabor, but when I goggle correct hands on the tricompax, most are broader but a significant minority had narrow hands like on mine. The seller told me the hands were not original to watch, but are ug factory hands.
Is this possible?

 

I'll never know if he was telling the truth about whether the hands came from the UG factory--I imagine watch factories have a great many parts. But I can tell you that they're incorrect for this reference. Some Tri-Compax models came with stick hands, but they had a thinner profile. The far more typical hand style for the gold Tri-compaxes was the leaf style. As long as you're googling, search for leaf style hands and I think you'll appreciate the difference.

All of this is rather academic though. Assuming that the dial is original to this watch, this watch is most likely to have originally come with a set of luminous hour and minute hands, which are clearly absent. UG was a master of mix-and-match, so it's not impossible that they sent out a luminous dial with non-luminous hands, but if you're playing probabilities, those would be extremely unusual.

 

Thanks again, appreciate the education.

Cheers,
David