Vintage Omegas sub £1000 - What to look for?

[joropug]

An image in one of the threads in this forum got me curious about a vintage Omegas. In parallel I am re watching mad men and remembered how much I liked Don Draper’s JLC Memovox.

My primary watches are both silver with bracelets (Tag Heuer F1 43mm with Ceramic bezel / sunburst grey dial & Breitling Chronomat 38mm SleekT with polished finish, 38mm) so I figure any purchase I’d like something very different. Gold colour maybe, black, white or blue dial perhaps, leather strap.

I had a quick look on eBay and a watch stood out to me right away - for what it’s worth I don’t know what value this really has other than it’s value to me so may go for way more than I’d be interested in but here it is:



https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/334807137420?mkcid=16&a...

It may be a bit early to jump right in but I really like the look of that - I want any purchase to be in good condition and reliable , I am personally less bothered about originality so long as I don’t overpay for trigger’s broom or buy a fake.

Any advice on what to look for / avoid when looking for this style at this price point? Open to other brands but I really like the look of the one pictured above style wise.

Like wise what would be your guess as to what the right price is for the linked watch?

[joropug]

BrokenSkunk said:

Could I point you to a response I wrote on Friday 12th August, here:
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

Hopefully it will have some pointers for you.

Thanks that's really helpful working through it now

[joropug]

sjg said:

I bought a very similar one back in 2009 for my dad (birth year watch), just looked up the email and it's the same seller. I paid a lot less but then it was a long time ago.

No way to really verify authenticity, etc but it looked "right" inside and the dial, hands etc looked consistent with others I'd seen online. God knows about originality but it's several decades old so I wasn't really expecting it to be. I'm not sure there's a big market for faking small old Omegas either.

It's run fine since, he wears it often enough and keeps on a winder in between.

That's reassuring.

Looking at this one, the dial has been called out as refurbished - It looks good but I can't find an exact match so it has been customised to an extent I think - I like the look though.

The movement is right for the watch - the case back looks good too, presumably the case is the original and matches.

Was just looking at some forum posts on the movement. Looks like some parts are hard to come by now.

Food for thought

[joropug]

944 Man said:

My advice would be to spend some time finding old period catalogues and looking at the dials and finishes available at the time. Very, very few still look appealing to today's market. Then look at all of the black dials that are found on the watches available for sale...

I have seen the comment above about a piece with a black dial and I am more than happy to accept it, but we both know how rare these were. At £1,000 most are a truly awful buy. And they are tiny.

The one I liked went for almost £1000 it was a bit rich for me and from the advice given and the listing it was clearly repainted and probably not worth that.

Yes I think it was a nice idea but probably not right for me - I am tempted to get another modern watch instead and might get a leather strap for my Breitling to rotate in now and again, just worried about scratching it in doing so.