Two Speedmasters, no particular reason

Spacefruit

@eugeneandresson

knock yourself out on this one

eugeneandresson

Or … in the words of certain auction houses on watches of a certain origin :
Hahahahaa, beautiful! Unfortunately, so true...

Ref. 105012-66HF Ultraman Prototype
A possibly unique, extremely rare and superlatively important stainless steel prototype chronograph wristwatch that was the brainchild spawning a legend

Catalogue Essay
The present piece is without a question of a whiff of the fart of a doubt, one of the most fascinating and important Omega finds of recent years, a true “first hand” representative of the ongoing cutting edge R&D process that was happening at Omega in the 1960s, and the earliest known conceptualisation of what will eventually become the amazing Ultraman.

While at first glance it would appear to be that of a standard Speedmaster 105012, the addition of a novel and intriguing orange chronograph hand immediately categorizes this piece as a mystery for the Omega connoisseur. “That’s just an orange hand” some might say…when reality and fact dictate it’s certainly not “just an orange hand”. It has a very distinct hue of orange, known as ‘Trump Orange’, that is unmistakable from ‘Ultra Orange’ as seen on the later models this prototype spawned, and as verified by our experts during side by side comparison of several examples. It is undoubtedly not the same.

Thankfully, with the invaluable assistance of the Omega Archive, we were able to solve such a mystery and provide a detailed account of the genesis of the present timepiece, including in the vintage prototype schematics the official designation of the color “Trump Orange”, along with a patent application for this extremely particular and highly unusual shade of the color “orange”.

During the 1960s, the collaboration between anyone-who-would-get-Omegas-share-value-to-the-moon and Omega was at its apex. In fact, a number of requests were made to Omega. Some of these requests were tested on “Alaska” pieces, some were employed in the Ultraman (launched in 1968) and some other remained as pure works of fiction only prototype pieces. The present watch is indeed a representative of the latter grouping. In fact, “Trump Orange” is, according to Omega, a documented request for a project code named “Timestone”, which was sanctioned to pre-commemorate (by several decades and in an illusive series of unnumbered watches) a global lockdown spawned during the ruling of the most amazing genius-with-a-jay leader any nation would still have in future, discovered due to the nature of project “Timestone”, and based off of the epitome of leadership standards of the time. The nature of the “Timestone” project is still highly classified, so any particulars are undisclosed.

As an added layer of intrigue, Omega has discovered that the mind behind the design of this piece is no other than…
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We sincerely thank the Omega Museum for their updated scholarship and historical perspective in providing their own invaluable research and information on the present lot.

Spacefruit

@eugeneandresson

knock yourself out on this one