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Saturday, 20 May 2017

The Omega Speedmaster

I was looking to add an Omega watch to my collection and my first choice was the Diver 300, I was also looking at the Planet Ocean then the Speedmaster came to my attention - so many choices.


Omega offers a number of variants of the classical 1957 version of the Speedmaster range with the Speedmaster Professional known as the Moonwatch, the Grey Side of the Moon. the Dark Side of the Moon, the Skywalker X-33 and the Speedmaster '57.

So I have to think about this, the SpeedMaster Professional was a mechanical watch that needed to be hand wound every day originally fitted with a 321 movement up until 1968 with later versions fitted with an 861 movement.

Currently the Moonwatch series is fitted with the Omega 1861 movement which I believe is very similar to the 861 movements in the 1957 release watch.

The contemporary marketing versions are now fitted with a Omega Co-Axial 9300 self-winding movement with a sixty hour power reserve. The tachymetre apparently isn't ceramic and scratches easily.

I have found some older vintage watches online that looked pretty ratty from wear and abrasion around the tachymetre. The updated versions are now fitted with scratch resistant sapphire crystal but the Moonwatch Professional still has the Hesalite crystal that unfortunately isn't scratch resistant.

The Speedmaster wasn't originally an aviator's timepiece but after being the only timepiece to meet NASA's arduous specifications, this watch is super collectible for not only it's flight qualified space heritage.

This watch has brilliant aesthetic abilities, I look back at vintage watches and I'm really not that interested despite owning an Omega Chronostop myself.

This timepiece however looks the goods and I certainly wouldn't mind winding a Speedmaster every morning. Omega knew what they were doing back in 1957; this iconic sixty year old design hold's all the attributes of an aviator's timepiece and may indeed be timeless.

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