So, I acquired this 24hr aerospace jet recently on the cheap. Photos were bad, but for the price, I felt fine with the gamble. and I think it's a cool reference and I like reading time in 24hr, so I took a shot at it.

Now looking over what I got, I'm not very sure about the dial. To my eye, it doesn't strike me as being redialed although it's an often redialed model - but I see no evidence at all of the typical lume dots on the number track. Then again, the hands also do not have the usual lume, nor the slots for lume to exist. Their shape is also different than the typical hands seen (although the seconds hand looks about right, and under a loupe all three hands have the same dark-blued finish). Putting that together, I initially wondered if there was a lume-less variation of the model which I have never seen, but the T Swiss T would indicate it should have lume.

The presence of the T's seems to say that this dial should have had lume, which would seem to mean that the dial has been messed with. But redialed? The redialer put the T's back, but didn't replace the lume and swapped hands to match? Little odd, but I guess that makes the most sense.

Anyways, thoughts on the dial and hands by any other zodiac aficionados are welcome. The crystal makes it a little tough. Cheers.

 

I think it's an original dial but the lume plots have been wiped away at some point. The hands (minus the sweep) are replacements as well I believe. A fellow member sold a black dialed example a while back I found. Hope that helps a bit.

 

Now that's some good sleuthing!

 

I saw that one. The black dial is great. I got this one for about $300, which given the difference in conditions seems about right. It's not really a value buy to me anyway, I've just always thought the watch was cool. And it's been fun to wear so far.

And thanks for the assessment. I agree the dial looks original to me. If that's the case, I guess the only possibility would be that the lume was removed. It must be applied delicately because even under good magnification I really see no evidence of it being there whatsoever. But weirder things have happened.

 

I think you did great with the price and the watch it striking with the red and white combo. I did a quick search on eBay and there are plenty of white dials being sold and many also seem to be like free. You could be right in saying that there was never lume present. Zodiac is definitely underrated and you don't see these pop up often either.

 

If you take the watch in to a dark space with a torch (ideally UV) any tiny amounts of residual lume will become apparent. It's a really nice watch I hadn't seen before, in my admittedly uninformed opinion I think it's a non lume dial and wouldn't be surprised if the hands aren't original too, the lengths all look pretty good.

 

Good call on the eBay search. Wouldn't have thought there would be that many dials for sale being that it's a relatively obscure watch.

Interestingly enough, one of them also looks to have no lume on it, also bearing T's. Yet I have so far not seen a lumeless dial on a watch.

 

Being a fan of 24hr movements, I’ve paid just enough attention to these to be dangerous. That said:

What I can say for sure: I’ve seen plenty of these dials missing one or more lume plots, typically leaving a smudge behind.

Accordingly, now venturing into the conjecture: especially given the “T Swiss T” marking, it seems most likely to me that at some point a dial lost enough lume plots to become viewed as unsightly, and rather than attempt to place new, unmatching, replacement plots, the decision was made to remove and clean up all the plots off the dial, uniformly.

This is just conjecture, of course, but seems far more likely than any other explanation - particularly the only apparent explanation that would still permit the dial to be factory original: that the company would put “T Swiss T” on the dial but no lume?

 

Yes quite odd that there are so many actually. And they all happen to be this white variant.

 

Raising the possibility, I suppose, that somehow a batch of factory dials got out that had never gotten to the step of lume application, and now may be used to replace and freshen up other specimens for sale…

 

Or possibly that Zodiac just contracted one dial design with the T’s on it for lumed variants and just used the same dial for both lume and non-lumed watches- just change out the hands accordingly.
I’ve seen so many minor variants of the Seawolf’s (a model near and dear to me) which I had thought were cobbled or Frankens (dials from MKII with MKIII hands, or MKII dial with MKIII bezel). It’s becoming pretty clear that Zodiac ordered universal parts (would work across several models) and seemed to just grab what was in the parts bins at any given time.

 

There has been a bunch of Zodiac dials and parts coming out of Europe (mainly France) for the last year or so on eBay. I bought a couple Seawolf dials, and they are indeed legit (don’t have the watches for them yet but I couldn’t resist).
Not sure where they are coming from, but I can’t imagine anyone was forging dials for a relatively cheap watch.

 

I appreciate the thoughts.

Until I see another example like this, it's hard to make heads or tails of it. But seems like there could be some credibility to the idea that there may have been dials out there like this one, and if so, it doesn't seem like a stretch that they could have had lumeless hands. Still, if this is true then there should be another one out there somewhere... Gives me something to keep my eye out for. And that is probably more than half the fun of buying oddball watches like this. Always fun to learn something new.

 

A bit late to this party but - I have one of these, posted about it on this forum here, in case the pictures are helpful. I can't really add more than to say mine has the usual lume dots and the usual handset. Watch is in awesome condition, dial is evenly yellowed with age. One of my favourite watches.