The Breitling Watch Source Forums

Hi Everyone: I’m new to this forum and to vintage Breitling. I threw a fairly low offer out on a buy it now for a Cosmonaute on ebay from a seller that I had some good history with purchasing vintage Omegas and what do you know, he took it. There are some issues with this watch:

Wrong case back – watch is obviously a Cosmonaute ref 809. but has an 806 case back with serial number 1014xxx.

Also someone tried scraping the lume off of some of the numbers and marker and then gave up (you can see the scrape marks under strong magnification).

Movement is the proper 24 hour one.


I saw some earlier threads in the forum about switched case backs not necessarily being a franken, but something that might have been done at the factory for watches of this age (1965). I wouldn’t mind hearing any other opinions you might have good or bad.

there's little to add to the previous discussions - it clearly isn't "perfectly correct", no way to prove if these were later "assembled pieces" from the spare parts stock that Willy Breitling sold off when closing down the original Breitling, or "parts bin errors" during regular production.

both assumptions could be correct- or not

The mystery continues...


Thanks for your help! The level of knowledge of the experts here is incredible...