Greetings all! I'm coming to you today to seek your opinion on a couple of 145.022-76 Speedy's - I'm on the hunt for a birth year watch, and still have a long way to go to develop intuition on this particular family of Speedmasters. These don't come up all that often here on the private sales forum, though I check daily Both of these on the Bay: Item: 161890003901 - From first glance, all looks ok. Crown and pushers may be replacements? Does it look over polished to you? Item: 291621782955 - Dial looks wrong (no T SWISS T), hands look wrong too. ...in both cases, the cal 861's appear to be straight forward. As far as the bracelets go, I'm still not acquainted with the correct variants for this production year, so any opinion on that matter would be extremely useful as well. This of course is a learning exercise for me, thus far I have mustered the patience to only pull the trigger when the right opportunity presents itself. Thanks OF and all of its great contributing members!
Yes indeed! Wasn't sure if you preferred to see the listings, or risk having too many photos at once with this thread. Hopefully these post ok. I'll start with the dials: Item 161890003901 has the "T SWISS T" on it. Item 291621782955 is absent of "T SWISS T", and after looking more, could be a service dial I suppose.
Looking at bracelets, it's clear to me item 291621782955 (the dodgy dial) has a more contemporary ref 1479, while item 161890003901 has what I think is a correct ref 1171, or at least an attempt at being one. The other 1171's I've seen have the raised Omega logo sitting in a square window. The example shown in the listing has no such window, just the raised logo sitting on top of the clasp. That's all I've got at the moment, hoping to learn more here.
My $0.02 For 161890003901: looks like a pretty honest watch to me, its over polished (but I am particularly anal when it comes to polishing), but it hasn't been ruined. Overall I find it relatively pleasing to the eye, except for the minute hand lume, which doesn't match the hour hand nor the chrono hand. I like when they all match but it all depends on what it looks like to the naked eye, pictures can definitely be deceiving. Bracelet and endlinks match the watch, which is good. If crown/pushers are replacements, at least they are the correct style, so no problem there for me. For honest watches not yet in "vintage" status, price is everything. No B&P, and bidders have it up to $2k so far... how much more do you think its worth? Factor in a cost of service, I don't care what the seller says about "running strong"... if there is no known recent service, just assume it needs it and weigh that into your max bid amount. For 291621782955: There isn't much about this watch that I like. It's not as good as the watch above. It's assembled from a parts bin. The serial on the movement is 1976. The bracelet and endlinks are from late 80's to mid 90's and are not original to the watch. The drop seconds chrono hand predates the movement and case. The polishing is horrible, really. The start/stop pusher has been polished down aggressively and looks terrible. It says "recently serviced, but the marks on the caseback are too hard to read. The dial is funky and to my eye doesn't really match anything in Moonwatch Only so either I'm missing it or someone has tinkered with this dial, lume is scraped off I think. I'm not a watchmaker so can't comment on the condition of the movement, but again, it just looks off, where are the teeth on some of those gears? I'll chalk it up to a poor quality picture. Overall, I'd stay away from this one.
I dont know why the OP isnt buying this: https://omegaforums.net/threads/omega-speedmaster-moon-watch-145-022-76.31951/#post-359996
Great analysis @repoman . For my and others educational benefit: Could you explain how you can tell the polishing, especially the start/stop pusher has been polished down and looks terrible? This is something I have not been paying very close attention to, but I am not sure how to look at the pushers and polishing in general on a Speedy. I can tell over polishing on a sub by the chamfers, but still not good at this on a speedy. Thanks in advance!!
I look at all the lines of the case, they should be crisp and unmolested. The central facet on a twisted lug case should be mirror finish, the upper/lower facets brushed... overly polished cases tend to loose that clean difference between polished and brushed. Find a good hi-res picture of a brand new speedy that has the same case style (straight lug, or twisted lug) and then use that as a comparison. Pay particular attention to the lugs, are the edges rounded over, or cut into a different line; on a straight lug speedy have the lugs been polished way down and become much smaller, on the backside of the lugs, look for crisp lines, there should be normal springbar scratches (that's better IMHO than a highly polished lug backside that takes a bunch of the metal off), and that the lug hasn't been polished down so far its starting to get close to the spring bar holes. On a typical Speedy caseback, I don't like to see high polish, and missing paint in the lettering (although easily corrected), its just a sign someone went crazy with the buffing wheel and you lose definition on all the engraved lettering. On the pusher, look at that one picture... the reset pusher has the usual slightly rounded top with slightly rounded over edge, the start/stop pusher has a flat top with a defined sharp edge (not how it should look) - at least that's how it looks to me. I agree with @Spacefruit, the 76 speedy for sale on this forum is much nicer than either of these ebay watches.
Thanks for weighing in @repoman, I certainly appreciate the deep dive into case condition and pushers. Looking at @efauser pristine example, I can see his clasp has the characteristic recessed window for the raised logo to sit in. I've heard comments the 1171's with the clasp shown in the eBay listing may in fact be reproduction knock-offs.
A great resource I consult with routinely. I still have plenty of questions though, things like subtle dial variants (besides moving away from step dials by 76) always makes my head swim. All part of the fun!