How I Calculate Production Estimates From Serial Numbers

Using Serial Numbers to Estimate Production

Since November of 2015 I’ve been collecting serial numbers, production data from Archive Extracts, and sales dates from receipts or warranty papers from cal. 1040 and 1041 Omegas. I was hoping to establish clear production timeframes and lower and upper serial limits for each reference in the family, but I’ve stumbled onto something pretty interesting that I wasn’t looking for: production estimates by reference.

At first I was just documenting as I stumbled across a serial number, usually in forum threads or eBay auctions. Later I searched a little more methodically at old sales ads and auction listings, searching each source by each reference. My spreadsheet looks like this:

I document the entire SN if it is given or visible and the SN is only obscured for this article. If someone obscures the last several digits I only keep it on my list until I find another watch that could be a duplicate (so a 176.007ST showing 35592XXX is removed from the list if another 176.007ST comes along with a serial of 35592001, since even though the odds are only 1 in 1,000 that it is the same watch, it still could potentially be the same).

As my list grew, I started noticing an uneven distribution of case references. There were way more 176.007s than 176.004s, for example. This makes sense, since it just seems that the 007 was more common than the Big Blue. So I made a pivot table to break down the # of observations by reference for cal . 1040:

That distribution seems to generally match what you’d expect: -001 and -010 are fairly uncommon, -007 is the most common, etc. Next I added percentage:

Then I realized that because we know the total production of cal. 1040 from A Journey Through Time to be 82,200, a simple formula applying the above percentages to 82,200 generates some rough production estimates:

So do these numbers hold up? Other than the 82,200 the only other source of production numbers by reference that I’m aware of for a cal. 1040 watch was a quote from Marco Richon in this 2006 thread in which Richon referred to the production of the Mark IV (ref. 176.009) as “near 10,000 if not less.” My estimate of 8,149 seems to be reasonable given Richon’s estimate.

I’m certainly aware that 232 is a small sample size, and is only 0.282% of overall production, but I believe the observed distribution of serial numbers makes for a decent proxy for actual production distribution – even if the margin of error is +/- 1,000. It is particularly useful as an estimate of production of a given case reference relative to the others.

The observations are an attempt at quantifying in some way the anecdotal sense that I (and I suspect other collectors) have regarding these watches. In other words you can easily observe that -007 and -002 were the most common, and that the -010 in 20 micron gold plate was the least common. My observations simply provide some data to back it up. Using serial number also automatically corrects for factors that could cloud un-tabulated observations such as the same person posting the same watch many times or of a watch being sold and resold numerous times over the years.

So what about cal. 1041? Check out the Speedmaster 125 Conspiracy Theory.

NOTE: This is an edited version of the original posts I made on Omega Forums in April 2016. Check out my Current Production Estimates page to see how the numbers have fluctuated over time.