brandon1
842
Very exciting. Some thoughts:
Jan 08, 2019,11:01 AM
This is very welcome news from Omega. I've always hoped that this would happen but to be honest I didn't believe it actually would.
I read Omega's release a couple times and I appreciate that they seem to be taking care to do justice to this movement with a dedicated team, new production site within their new Bienne HQ, and, intriguingly, having each watch built from start to finish by one watchmaker. This last fact actually gave me pause because I think they are trying to prepare us for the (probably high) price by preemptively demonstrating value. A more artisinal approach also seems like a strong hint that this will be a LE-only. This is hardly surprising, given Omega's track record of Speedy LEs, but I'm just so tired of these I dread to see it. Will it be an 11 piece LE for Apollo 11? a 50 piece LE for the 50th anniversary? 1,969 pieces for the year? It just feels like a bad pun.
The second thing that caught my eye was the process of reverse engineering they described (scanning Cernan's watch, working with their historians, etc.). But hasn't Lemania (now Breguet, obviously) produced this movement pretty consistently this entire time? I know the bridge layout was changed along the way and a few years ago they moved to a free-sprung balance, but in general it seems like it wouldn't be THAT hard for Omega to reintroduce the 321 given the know-how at this sister firm.
I'm interested to hear any feedback on this if I'm missing critical context.
I hope my skepticism at the way Omega presented this news (and my total speculation at the execution) doesn't overshadow how excited I am to see the finished product.
Best,
Brandon