The Breitling Watch Source Forums

LOL. No. She was a DJ in the midwest around that time. But I have heard rumors of an entire island of women like her...

. . . that there is no such thing as a "pre-series". The cases may have been numbered in 1968, but the Chrono-matics all came out thereafter. For all cases, I am now just referring to the serial as the date the case was numbered, not the date the watch was manufactured for retail. That allows us to account for successions of dial and hand configurations in watches with serials dated to a common year, for which we have observed large volumes, example. And, that seems particularly true of the Chrono-matics.

May in inquire to the source of your information?
I had this piece examined at two shops yesterday and it was described as a "pre-series" by both examiners and that was after they examined the movements. Were there differences between those made in 1968 and those released in 1969?

No.

There are a number of pieces available that have 1968 serial numbers vs. the publicly acknowledged release of these pieces in Spring 1969. There is no clear documentation of when the 1968 pieces were physically produced / released so we are left to speculate.

Understood. I am wondering if there is something in the movement that both the examiners noticed that led them to believe what they did or if the defacto standard has become to refer to a watch with the preceeding year's number as a pre-series. Otherwise, how does one tell the difference between that piece and one made the during the first year of the series? Perhaps this would be akin to an artist's or printer's proof?
So what you are saying is that there is not an agreed-to standard for the year of the watches based on their number because of the difference between a manufacture date and a sale/release date of a series?

As I have already said (twice) there is no difference.

It's dated to 1968 because it has a 1968 serial number. You can categorically tell whether a piece is before or after late 1969 because that's when the caliber 11 evolved into caliber 12, but earlier than that there is no way of knowing. It can be argued that pieces were released from September 1968 onwards in what has unofficially been referred to as a pre-series because the movement wasn't officially released until Basel 1969, or it cna be argued that these are 1969 pieces in 1968 cases - no definitive way of knowing for sure.

The people you took it to called it a 1968 pre-series because it carries a 1968 serial number.

Seems that my questions are trying your patience a bit. I only see one time where you mention that the "pre-series" wasn't marked anywhere and to that, I was referring to something akin to a proof showing a release date or something that separated it from the standard release pieces in 1969. My second question was an effort to get any information about possible movement/mechanical differences that may have been changed from the 68 to the 69 including the parts you mentioned being fragile in the 68 and not up to the task of handling a watch winder.

And no, the examiners I took the piece to only certified it as a 1968 after they examined the movement and the internals, not simply by checking the number as I did. I should also note the owner of the store was also wearing a 1968 Navitimer Chrono-matic and he was the second person to examine the watch and commented on its year without seeing the number since the watch was already open. I didn't think of these questions until after I had left the store and figured this was a good place to put them up.

As I mentioned in my opening post I am a newbie at owning vintage Breitling watches and I am only seeking out anynand all information I can about this piece. The more information and reliable sources I can contact, the better and more trustworthy the information. Thanks for your time.

My observation pertained to all serial numbered Breitlings. If serial number only referred to the year of manufacture, as opposed to the year the case was numbered, then Breitling would have sold millions of watches in 1946 and few in succeeding years and millions of watches in 1969 and few in the succeeding years.

There is no evidence and I do not believe that the handful of test movements (was it 30? I can't remember) that Breitling and Heuer received in fall 1968 were used for anything but testing and examination at the factories. To my thinking, all retail Chrono-matics that we collect were made after spring 1969. I think we have too much testimony about the Basel fair, press releases, etc. to believe otherwise.

It is impossible to date a Chrono-matic to 1968 or 1969 based on the movement. The calibre 11 (first variant of the automatic chronograph) went through some minor 'tweaks' before evolving into calibre 12 around November of 1969 but none of them distinguish a 1968 (marked) example from a 1969 (marked) example.

Bill, the Basel publicity along with the Zenith claim that El Primero was first with a movement only announcement in January 1969 obviously point to a March 1969 launch. As you know Jean-Michel makes the claim of a September 1968 pre-series, but he provides nothing to back up the claim, I would love to know the source(s) of that data.

There seems to be a misconception among Breitling collectors/experts, that the CAL 11 is "pre-series", the CAL 12 "mass production", leading to quick "judgments at a glance", that the silver colored movement MUST be 1968 "pre-series", although all other information points to the production start in the second quarter of 1969 ?

Likewise, many "collectors/experts" still call the Chrono-Matics "left handed" Chronographs, another myth that refuses to disappear (just bought a 2004 Chrono-Matic SE, the "expert" seller was trying to convince me this was a Special Edition for lefties).

Re Jean Michel: has anybody communicated with him recently, the site has not been updated for a long time, tried to contact him by email, but no replies ?

Same misconception says that calibre 12 was the shift to 21,600 (that was actually 11-2, the final iteration of calibre 11).

Jean-Michel's site is pretty much 'archived' now - the what's new page is still showing 2004 updates, not sure how active he still is with it.

I think there is little (actually no) doubt that Bill is right here. Assuming that the serial numbers for each year correlate to the actual produced Breitling watches is totally illogical, I would even think that the numbers define a range and have no quantity relevance, I can not imagine that Breitling really produced more than 120,000 non-chrono case in 1956 (and kept producing 10 to 50,0000 per year afterwards) ?

just some examples:

1945 Chronographs 67,536 watches ???
1946 Chronographs 55,758 watches ???
1951 non-Chrono 94,029 watches ???
1956 non-Chrono 121,501 watches ???
1967 Chronographs 81,771 watches ???
1968 Chronographs 58,523 watches ???
1969 Chronographs 74,920 watches ???
1970 to 1973 average about 20,00 per year (an literally zero non-chrono), 1974 to the bitter end around 5,000.

As navitimer.net does not allow deep linking, I have entered the numbers into an Excel sheet, screenshot below,
if you want to use the spreadsheet: http://www.vidision.com/watchfred/
Roff, I hope it is ok to post this external link ?

Not disputing the 'batch stamping' of cases, but I don't think that your logic quite holds true WatchFred.

To the best of my knowledge there is only one serial number range so there would have been blocks of serial numbers set aside for chrono / non chrono so we can't simply take start of year from end of year to be left with the total production numbers.

This was actually the point I was trying to make, Roff, adding to Bills "millions of watches one year, none the next".

I think there is no way to estimate production numbers per year from the serial numbers; another misconception that I have often heard, when people write about " xx,xxx cases produced in 1968", for example.

The only year where this might be true is 1978, apparently a maximum of 8 chrono cases were produced in the last production year.

Well, "millions" is a bit of an exaggeration. I think only Rolex has produced a million Swiss, mechanical watches in one year.

So, my mind wanders to the question of whether Breitling ordered the cases numbered by the case manufacturer. I'm leaning to thinking that the order went to the case supplier with the specifics on adding reference numbers and serials. I think that might have been standard practice.

And, Fred, thank you very much for the effort in producing that table. A fair amount of labor went into that. I printed a copy, and it now resides inside my copy of Richter.