Guys... help! this one, is what I'm looking for...vintage, simple, time only, feuille hands, arabic numerals...and its from the forties! I contacted the seller (private seller) to ask if the dial has been redone ( does it look it? ) and the measurement of the case dial. No pic of the movement in the ad though, hmm.... says its the calibre 129. Thoughts please? greatly appreciate it guys. https://www.chrono24.com/en/universalgenve/manual-wind-cal-129--id4587723.htm
Exactly.... I have in fact. Tbh... the fact that he didnt include a movement pic got me doubting a little. So yeah am waiting for the pic.
To me that looks like a redial (lines of text are too thick and too close together; and overall the surface looks too clean). The case looks heavily polished, and the crown is wrong. The blurry photos are not helping. I would stay clear. There are plenty of nice, time-only, 1940s UGs on eBay. Be patient.
It's hard to say if it's a redial the pictures are not so good. I would suggest some better pictures with better lighting before committing.
I dunno, but I find the logo off. Although the pics aren't in focus, the font seems to be bad (letters are not sharp, they are too close to one another, etc).
The seller got back to me with a pic of the movement. Its a 34 mm watch, acrylic crystal, the crown has been replaced and its not redialed.
The case has indeed been polished and I doubt that it's an original dial. It's too clean. It has no patina on it. This is supposed to be a 1940s watch. You should take a look at the edges of the numerals on the dial. Sometimes, in the case of applied numerals/markers there's either old left over paint from the original paint or paint that got over there in the redialing process and wasn't/couldn't have been cleaned off without ruining the entire paint job. My opinion is that this is a redial. Think about it. If a watch from the 1940s was to (miraculously) look this good, do you actually think that it would have required a replacement crown ? Crowns are replaced when they are badly damaged, when they're beyond use, when they've been lost or fell off but if this watch was to have been factory original, judging by the way it looks, it would not have required a replacement crown, most likely. Even if the watch was to have been kept in a safe or a drawer completely protected from the elements, it still would not have looked like this. That movement, also, has quite a number of scratches and marks on it. Also, check out the caseback. You can see some sort of oxidation or verdigris on the edges. Such a clean watch should have been clean both inside and out.
When you have a closer look at the dial, you can see that the outer ring is not evenly distributed. There is more space at the top than at the bottom. The dial may be original, just maybe not to this watch. Sorry! Have a look at all the pictures, some of them are at an angle to compensate for that but the ones that are head on show the spacing. EDIT: Never trust the seller of the watch for truthful information regarding dial originality, unless he's on here.