What’s a Big Blue Worth?

The meteoric rise in vintage watch prices over the past few years has mostly left the Omega 1040 family unaffected. These watches were probably over exposed 10-15 years ago compared to other vintage watches, and their prices were probably too high. The pendulum has swung so far in the other direction though that these watches may be under appreciated today. A couple of recent eBay listings related to the Big Blue have me wondering if the 1040s might be regaining interest from the broader market.

As long as I’ve been paying attention, the Big Blue has been the most expensive and sought after of the 1040s. It is less common than the 176.007 by quite a wide margin, has the size and bulk of a modern watch in a (slightly) less bonkers case design than the Speedmaster Mark III. It is a true diver, with a rotating bezel and screw down crown. And it has a gorgeous blue dial. In short, it has a lot going for it from a collectibility standpoint.

Pinning a market value down for the Big Blue is tough. Sellers tend to price it north of $5,000 and sometimes over $7,000, but those are asking prices and we may never know what they actually sell for. What should it sell for in a private transaction with no auction fees? Well, after the Omegamania auction in 2007, these were actually selling in the $5,000 to $7,000 range at auction, and prices have actually come down in recent years. The last public sales I recall on eBay were in the spring of 2016. A very good example sold for $4,100 and a poor example sold for $3,100. This is a watch I’ve been following for years and auctions going back to about 2011 have mostly ended in the $3,500 range. So why should I suspect there could be a spike in prices on the horizon?

A NOS Bezel

Speedmaster bezels with a “dot over ninety” or “DON” – a defining period-correct feature for cal. 321 Speedmasters of the 1960s –  have been selling lately for more than I bought and sold a 145.012 a few years ago. As crazy as it sounds, this sort of makes sense due to scarcity. But cal. 321 Speedmasters have been soaring in price as a whole and the parts that usually represent the bulk of the value of a watch – the case, dial, and movement – have gone up accordingly. Big Blue bezels are not quite in this range yet, but they are scarce in their own right. Omega used to make service bezels, then they stopped. So any correct bezel is tough to find, let alone originals (non-service parts).

This new old stock (NOS) bezel came up for sale recently with the asking price of 3,500 gbp (as of this writing, that’s around $4,300). If the bezel alone is worth ~$4,000, what is the whole watch worth? Granted, that bezel is perfect, so the watch it went with would be in the higher end of the price spectrum, but still.

A Trashed “Parts Watch”

While the price for that bezel is shocking, it is merely an asking price. Maybe it won’t find a buyer near that level. But a watch did recently sell on eBay, at auction, that really gets me wondering. A badly damaged, non-running, incomplete Big Blue sold for 821 gbp (roughly $1,007) on March 1. Just look at these photos (images found on ebay, seller brevetclub):

I’m struggling to find $1,000 worth of value there. The case? Well, it looks like the caseback was pried off with a crowbar. The damaged grooves for the caseback would require extensive and costly laser welding, performed by an expert. And a new caseback. The dial is worthless. The hands could be relumed, at a cost. The movement? It’s impossible to tell how bad it is, but it happens to be missing a rotor. Oh, and the bezel is missing half an insert, and we know from the previous paragraph that the bezel is not cheap, nor easy to find. Honestly, I’d be surprised if there were $200 worth of usable parts in this watch.

So what does this tell us? Maybe the buyer of the project watch just got carried away and made a bad purchase. Maybe the NOS bezel won’t sell. Or maybe I’ve just been underestimating the market for these watches and their parts, whether the parts are in perfect condition or completely trashed.