omega watch mystery????????????

spacekiwi

Hi, I have had an omega watch for years now, and it's sat in a drawer forgotten until we moved house.
it had a cracked glass face, so i went and got it fixed and cleaned at a jewellers.
I have started to wear it now, and its my 3rd favorite watch. However does anyone know anything about it. there seems to be no markings on the back, and its a manual wind everyday.
has lovely blue face and very bright illuminous markers at night.
have in cluded some pics if anyone knows about this type. did all omegas have info on case or is it just old and worn off?
thanks.

Zagato

Geneve is a name Omega use for some of their dress watches.

I wouldn't have expected that there would be much more on the back of the watch. The movement calibre will be on the movement, so to find out more you would need to remove the back.

How old is it? Were you the first owner?
It's impressive that the lume is still bright, is it charged by light (brighter in the early part of the night) if so maybe that being in the drawer has given it some longevity.

I would be no good at dating it, but I'm sure someone else can (and the calibre of the movement would help) but the dial with the date and the 3 digits seems to be pretty unusual on the Geneve.

spacekiwi

thanks zagato

Marcusm

The markings are reminiscent of a pilot's watch or a railmaster.

spacekiwi

thanks bedlam.
found the swiss made marking allright with a loupe. its way at bottom and tiny. cheers

Zagato

bedlam wrote: »

It is tritium based lume, if you look at the bottom of the dial you'll see T Swiss Made T. It will glow for many years (half life is ~12 years) with out the need for charging it.

Thanks, I thought though that the Tritium caused a phospor paint on the markers to illuminate (i.e. that the tritium itself doesn't glow), and that this paint needs to be reapplied after a long time as it burns out. I thought Tritium lume needs to be recharged every ~25yrs or so which fits with the 2 half lives.

Essentially though, this watch has been has been glowing away constantly in the drawer all these years.

Never realised that was what the T stood for beside Swiss made, thanks Bedlam

Wibbs

Zagato wrote: »

Thanks, I thought though that the Tritium caused a phospor paint on the markers to illuminate (i.e. that the tritium itself doesn't glow), and that this paint needs to be reapplied after a long time as it burns out. I thought Tritium lume needs to be recharged every ~25yrs or so which fits with the 2 half lives.

Yea spot on the Tritium itself doesn't glow, just activates the phospors. It doesn't burn out as fast as with the old radium(half life in the 1000's of years IIRC). My older T dial stuff will still glow brighter if you expose them to light. The Trit is dead though. Still all things being equal a tritium dial is gonna be half the light output at 12 years and pretty much dead as a dodo at 24(I've a stocker and yale US mil issued watch from 1990 and its almost gone). Depending on how thick the T application was in the first place as that makes a diff. Keeping it in the dark wouldn't make much difference, though if you left it on a windowsill in full sunlight I'd say it'd burn them out faster. So it has to be around that age if it is still glowing in the dead of night. It looks older though. Gun to my head I'd say at least 70's.

That said you can get the odd ones. My late 60's Heuer Bund with T dial has a tiny bit of glow in deep darkness. It is tiny though. I had a 30's Tudor with a radium dial many moons ago that you could also see a slight glow, even after all that time.

As well as the T dial there's also a rarer PM dial for promethium. It's got a very short half life IIRC, something like 3-5 years. I've only ever seen the PM on UK MOD issued stuff like Seikos.

HDMI

I don't believe that's the original lume, possibly the whole dial has been redone. It just doesn't look sharp enough to have left the factory that way.

Here a quickie google find not the same watch but still the hour markers are way sharper.