So I recently purchased a white-dialed Omega Admiralty 166.038 on eBay, which arrived today. It was a bit of an impulse buy, but the seller guaranteed that I could send it back if not fully satisfied so I decided to push through.

First concern: The watch is not running, but I figure a trip to my watchmaker would address that
Second concern: The lugs are weird. As in, they're a lot shorter than my own 166.038. I'm concerned that the case was taken from another model or that the lugs were shortened. Was it possible that Omega released different case variations under the same case number?

Pics:

From seller's eBay posting...




Side-by-side with my 166.038





Any thoughts on this?

PS. Back on Omega Forums after a year-long hiatus. Feels good to be back!

 

There is a short-lugged version of the 166.038 and this is it. I've seen similar white dialled versions with short lugs over time so I think it's safe to say that the case is genuine and hasn't been modified.

So if you bought well, maybe it's worth a trip to your watchmaker to have him assess the movement.

Cheers

Desmond

 

As Desmond said, both are genuine.

I have both a long- and a short-lugged Admiralty (with different dials, of course, it is Omega we are talking about).

And I went nuts trying to force a (separately bought) original flex bracelet (1021) with the endlinks for the long-lugged Admiralty into the short-lugged one, which was the first I got.

Now, silly though it may seem, I didn't know there were two versions, and I scanned through every frigging photograph I could find to see whether I had the right endlinks. It turned out that I had, but not for the Admiralty I had. I spent literally weeks trying to fit the bracelet from hell. Out of frustration, I bought a second admiralty, this time complete with the flex bracelet (who said watch collectors approach problems in a logical way?), and even so, it took me almost a week to realise lugs were different.

In my case, the short-lugged one was powered by a 601 movement, so I thought that short-lugged ones were manual and long-lugged automatic. But now I see Omega is at its best making a fool out of anybody triying to force logic into their 60's and 70's lineups...

 

Thank you both for your insight. This one's going to the watchmaker to get the movement checked out. And Dragoman, thanks for sharing that story, that gave me a good laugh! As an Omega collector I find that these nuances are what makes the hobby so engaging and maddening at the same time.