The Breitling Watch Source Forums

How to spot a Val 72

I guess that I owe it to you to reveal how you can do it.

But first a little story about being able to see a good piece through a bad picture.

About 8 month ago I was being contacted by a guy from USA, who had inherited a watch from his late father, he wanted to sell it and asked if I was interested in buying it, after having seen the picture it was obvious that I was interested.
However, this guy had done his homework, knew what it was and that it was quite valuable.

All he could send me was the lousy picture shown below, I have a few checkpoints I always use when looking at a picture, and they looked ok regardless that the picture was so bad, so I pulled the trigger and bought it, the price was very high, and at least 30 % above what I have ever paid for a Navitimer before.

So I was very pleased when my good friend in Atlanta received it and told me as follows “No issues. Corroded hands with some missing tritium and the broken crystal, but otherwise very, very nice. Unpolished, unblemished case, nice glossy dial, applied AOPA, full clean tritium numbers, clean outer dial--no complaints at all”.

I obviously knew about the hands & crystal, as you might know the hands on the Val 72’s was silver matt polished, and they all corrode, I have only seen one where the wands wasn’t corroded, that was because they had been painted with nail lacquer, and when I removed the lacquer the hands was like new below.

Hard to believe that picture nr 1 & 2 is of the same watch.

It is until today the best 1954 Valjoux 72 AOPA Navitimer I have ever seen.

On the last picture below you can see how one can spot a Valjoux 72 movement from a non Valjoux 72, on the Val’s the top pusher is closer to the crown then the bottom pusher.


/ Kurt B

Yes the Val72's had non symetrical pushers, most famously seen on the classic 626X Daytona's.

I forgot about the non symmetrical pushers.

I almost said about the matt hands, because all the 72s had those, but there are also Venus with matt hands.

Thanks for the education Kurt and that's a very nice watch (with a horrible photo!).

Thanks Kurt. A beautiful piece.
Do you have a solid gold 806 in your collection?

1955 Venus 178 AOPA Navitimer with matt silver plated hands..

/ Kurt B

Yaffle,

I only collect stainless steel Navitimers, so nope - no 18 K Nav's.


/ Kurt B

Wow, another class writeup!