Collectors will tell you the dial is the most valuable part of a vintage watch, and it's also the part most likely to have been changed. A sixty-year-old Omega or Longines has usually been opened many times, and every visit to a watchmaker was a chance for a new dial, fresh lume or a borrowed part. None of that makes a watch bad. It changes what it is, and what you should pay for it. Here's how to read the dial in a listing's photos and place the watch correctly.
Four kinds of not original
- Redial. The original dial has been refinished by someone other than the maker. That can mean anything from new lume to a complete repaint.
- Relume. The dial's printing is original but the luminous paint on the markers, the hands or both has been redone.
- Service dial. A replacement dial the brand itself fitted during a service. Hodinkee notes this was common practice at houses like Omega.
- Franken. A watch built from parts that never left the factory together. It can be all genuine parts and still be a franken, because the case, dial, hands and movement came from different watches.
Each of these sits below an untouched original. A redial or franken sold as all original is the one to avoid.
Start with the printing
Factory dials were printed by machine. Most redials are done by hand, so they pick up small human errors. Get the sharpest photo the seller has and compare it with a known original of the same reference.
- Check that the numerals match each other. If the 6s and 9s are open in one sub-dial, they should be open everywhere on the dial.
- Look at the minute track. The gap between the track and the edge of the dial should stay even all the way round, and the indices should be crisp and evenly spaced.
- Look where printing overlaps or meets an applied marker. Smudged ink, or paint creeping up the sides of the markers, means the dial was repainted with the markers still in place.
- Read the small print. Errors like a wrong tachymeter number or a Roman numeral out of order are rare on originals and give a redial away.
A dial that looks brand new on a watch whose hands or case show corrosion and wear deserves a hard second look. Dials are usually one of the first parts to show age.
The logo and the text at six
Refinishers often get the brand signature slightly wrong. Hodinkee's example is a Longines script where the top stroke of the L is too short and the S too fat. Compare the logo's shape, size and position with a period example, letter by letter.
Find out which kind of logo your reference had, applied metal or printed, because brands switched. Speedmaster101 notes that the early Speedmaster 145.022 marked -68 had an applied metal logo for a short time, while later dials have a printed one. The right answer depends on the exact reference and year.
The text at six o'clock is another place redials slip. Set Back In Time lists a missing SWISS or SWISS MADE line among the simple omissions that betray a redial. On some older watches the word Swiss appears alone at six, and the rules for the Swiss Made label date from a 1971 Swiss ordinance, so the wording should fit the watch's period. Tritium dials often add a T on each side. According to the Fédération de la Haute Horlogerie, T Swiss Made T marks tritium under 7.5 millicuries and Swiss T<25 marks under 25. A 1960s or 1970s lumed dial with no T at all isn't automatically wrong, but it's a question to ask.
Make the lume match
Lume is one of the best tells, because it's hard to fake age. On an original watch, the lume on the hands and the markers is the same material and has aged the same way. Hodinkee's Speedmaster example shows a chronograph hand that glows whiter than the faded yellow plots around it, which points to a relumed hand.
Tritium has a half-life of about 12 years, so a dial from the 1960s or 1970s shouldn't glow brightly or for long. If the seller shows a photo in the dark and the plots light up strongly, they're probably modern non-radioactive lume, which means a relume or a replacement dial. Hodinkee warns that some relumes use inactive material made to match aged tritium, so color alone won't settle it.
Lume should also appear in matching places. Lumed hands with an unlumed dial, or the other way round, usually means one of them was changed. Hodinkee shows this on two Longines Conquests, and notes the exceptions, such as some IWC Ingenieur 666A watches that may have left the factory with lume on the hands and none on the dial. When a pattern looks odd, check it against that reference before you write the watch off.
Service dials
A service dial is a genuine factory part, so it isn't a fake. It's still a replacement, and the market prices it below the dial the watch was born with. On Speedmasters with the caliber 861, Speedmaster101 explains how to spot one. Omega's replacement dials from after about 1994 have no T marks beside SWISS MADE, they lack the step between the minute track and the center that early originals have, and their Super-LumiNova glows brightly when you switch off the lights. A Speedmaster with a service dial makes a fine watch to wear. Just buy it as a service-dial watch.
Frankens, dial feet and movement fit
A dial is held to the movement by dial feet, small posts on its back that drop into holes in the movement plate. Their positions are specific to each caliber. To fit a dial made for a different movement, the feet have to be cut off and the dial stuck on with adhesive pads called dial dots. Speedmaster101 points out that even the 145.012 and 145.022 dials, which look almost the same, aren't interchangeable because their feet differ.
You won't see dial feet in most listings, but you can check the things that go with them.
- The caliber number on the movement should be the one the brand used for that reference. A mismatch is a warning sign, though factories did sometimes fit what they had.
- The case back should sit flush, and the movement shouldn't look forced into its case.
- The serial numbers should date to the reference's production years. Our guide to reference and caliber numbers shows how to read them.
- Hands that are too long, too short or from another model are a common franken giveaway.
If you buy, ask your watchmaker to look at the back of the dial. Hodinkee shows a Longines dial with its maker's name, Singer, stamped faintly on the reverse. A stamp doesn't prove the dial is original, but a missing one where the reference should have it raises questions.
What to ask the seller
- Ask for sharp photos of the dial straight on and in angled light, plus the case back and the movement.
- Ask directly whether the dial, hands or lume have been replaced or redone, and whether the watch has had a factory service.
- Ask for a photo in the dark if the watch has lume.
Look at who's selling, too. A long-time watch seller with blurry dial photos may be hiding something, while someone selling an inherited watch alongside coins and candles may simply take poor photos. Hodinkee's advice in both cases is caution.
Where that leaves you
A clean redial or service dial at the right price is a perfectly good way to own a vintage Swiss watch you'll wear every day. Originality matters most when you're paying for it, and your tastes may change, so decide which watch you're buying before you pay. For the rest of a listing, read what to check in a used Swiss watch listing, and for the history of lume, see radium vs tritium.
