A. Lange & Söhne

CR
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Very curious - Lange movement serial numbers....

Someone who attended SIHH 2015 just brought this to my attention. It's surprising.

Many folks estimate Lange's production at somewhere around 5500 (give or take) watches per year. Lange numbers its casebacks and movements roughly sequentially (vs. randomly), starting from 110000 and 1 (respectively) back in 1994.

The most recent caseback and movement numbers seem to be around 220000 for casebacks and 110000 for movements. You can see numbers in this range on many of the 2015 SIHH watches that we've seen in the press and other photos. Indeed, if you look at the movement numbers on most of the Lange 1 cal. L121.1 movements from SIHH 2015, they're in the 109XXX range. That's right around what we'd expect -- unremarkable.

BUT at least one of the new Lange 1 cal. L121.1 movements at SIHH 2015 had a serial number that's fully TEN THOUSAND higher. This particular movement was photographed and posted on a popular watch blog/news site. It is movement #119513 (in caseback #219060). It's REALLY weird to see a movement # so high right now. It has led me to wonder anew about Lange's precise numbering scheme (unless Lange has 10,000 movements sitting in inventory that they haven't yet put into watches, but that'd be a major surprise!).

[Yes, I know -- more evidence that I have Vintage Rolex Geek DNA.]
This message has been edited by CR on 2015-01-28 20:28:47