Afternoon all

Hello all and thank you for allowing me to join the forum. I have been lucky to inherit an Omega from my father who inherited it from his father who was given it as a retirement present from his employer.

I have managed to find some information such as the movement serial, which Omega Archive has confirmed as a Calibre 269 manufactured on 8 December 1964 and then shipped to the UK.

But here is where I need some of your expert knowledge. They were unable to find any other information on the watch and I am now stuck!

It does have a national case number. I don't really know what that means and am only assuming that the movement was put into a watch that was made here in the UK?

I would be very grateful if anyone could give me any more information or where I might be able to get any information that is available.

Thank you all for your help and knowledge.

Jason

 

Hi Jason,

welcome to OF

Often only the movement/dial combo was imported due to high import fees / customs duties and was cased into a locally made case. i.e. a Dennison case in the UK...

Open your watch (or have it done by a watchmaker if you are not familiar with it to do it yourself) and take photos of the innards (case back and movement) and we can tell you more.

My bet is a Dennison case - these cases are fine and mostly heavier than Swiss made cases, more gold...

 

Hi

Thanks for the reply.

I am not familiar or confident to remove the back so I will take it to a local watchmaker and ask them to remove the back of the case and I'll take some more pictures and post them.

Do I need to have the movement removed and take photos or just with the back removed?

Thanks

Jason

 

Jason,

no need to remove the movement. Just have the case back removed and take a good photo of the inner side of the case back - there is the info we need to see.
You can add a shot of the movement (altough we know how a cal. 269 looks like) but we can judge the condition of the movement.

The numbers you provided: the 6 digit number of the case might be a Dennison reference number

 

Afternoon again

I have had the back removed and here are the photos. I hope they are good quality enough for you to get the information you are looking for, the watchmakers was a little dark!

Two further questions if I may;

I'm not looking to sell, far too much personal value, but for insurance what figure am I looking at? I have no idea of what the value is.

Servicing. Omega do their own service but is there someone in the UK that would be good to use?

Thanks again for all your help and advice.

Jason

 

As supposed in a former reply it is a Dennison case produced in the UK: 9 carat .375 fineness as the hallmarks indicate.
Further it has the anchor hallmark (assay mark) for Birmingham
1215400 is the case serial#
323211 it the Dennison (factory internal) reference#

so all you have to know is obvious now

 

Hi Mac

Thank you very much for your help and information.

You may not be able to get much from the photo, but how does the movement look. I assume having it serviced would be a good thing regardless.

Jason

 

Movement looks clean - but you should always service a movement when you are not sure about the service history or when it has sat in a drawer for a long time. The oils dry up over time and the movement takes damage if you wear the watch in this state.
The case screw (upper right in the photo is corroded and should be changed during service.

Have it cleaned and lubricated by a good watchmaker in your area who is used to work on vintage watches - avoid battery changers who often call themselves watchmakers...

 

Always good to have a watch serviced if you don’t know when the last one was.

Nice clean watch, and always nice to see a timeless three handed watch without a date window

 

Hi Jason,

I'm not a watchmaker, but the movement looks relatively clean for a watch that probably hasn't been serviced in a long time! There are some watchmaker's markings on the inside of the case back, though, so it has been serviced at some point. Maybe it's the picture quality, but I see some smudges around the main spring and the screw around 2 o'clock seems rusty. You can try and find a watchmaker who has experience with Omega movements, preferably someone certified. I reckon some UK folks out here can recommend particular watchmakers. The cost of servicing will be a couple hundred, just so you know.

As for present-day value: hard to tell. The Dennison case seems to suggest premium prices, which would also depend on the karat count.

It's a beautiful, nearly untouched watch, and the personal value it has to you must be tremendous. If you take good care of it, you can one day pass it on!

 

Thank you.

Am going to have her serviced and yes the plan will be to pass to my son to make it a four-generation watch.

Jason

 

Very nice watch and welcome to the forum. You've done a great job of researching the watch's history, and it seems that the Dennison case is the last piece of the puzzle for you.

Regarding value, there are several types. Fair market value (FMV) is readily determined by using the eBay advanced search feature to look at SOLD items (not asking prices of current listings, which can be out of line with reality). These prices will vary quite a bit based on factors that may not be immediately obvious to you, including the size of the case, stylistic details, and (most importantly) condition. That said, I took a quick look and very broadly speaking, the FMV range appears to be 400-800 GBP for recent sales of 9k gold vintage Omega watches. These are prices for people trading between themselves. However, it is probably more logical to insure the watch for a full retail replacement price, which will always be substantially higher. To get a sense of that, you can look at listings on Chrono24.com. Again, I took a very quick look, and the range of asking prices looked to be roughly twice the FMV. This means that if you wanted to go out tomorrow, and quickly find an equivalent watch to replace yours from an established watch dealer, you could be looking at an asking price of 1,000-1,600 GBP. I hope this helps.

 

Good guys for servicing vintage watches at good prices in the UK are www.Mitka.co.uk, www.WatchGuy.co.uk and www.simonfreesewatchmakers.com