The Breitling Watch Source Forums

Good day to all Breitling enthusiasts. I have just bought my second Breitling, the first was a 1969 Navitimer which I will not part with and which I thoroughly enjoy. I would like your opinions about my new acquisition, simply because I struggle to reconcile what I paid for it and its apparent condition. (I have only seen pictures of the watch and hope the seller won't mind too much that I use them. He has not yet responded to an email from me after the sale). I have now read a number of postings about the 7650 and notice chrono hand variations as well as hour and minute hand variations. This is a slight concern to me but I do buy the point that was made in an opinion expressed in this forum that hands were regarded as consumables and therefore easily replaced. There are a number of Co-Pilots on Chrono24 and most of them there have the same hands as my watch. The examples on this forum (Bretiling Source) have different hands. Ok, the hands can be replaced if they are not original. What I would like to get clarity about is the condition of the dial of my new watch. The whole watch looks incredible and the lack of interest in it when it was auctioned surprised me. I thought it would go for a price that I was not able to afford and I just made one bid, went to bed and found that my bid won the item. Sorry for the long posting, but, please gents, have a look and tell me if you see something wrong with this piece. According to the seller it was recently serviced and everything works fine. Your opinions are appreciated, Chronoman1.

Certainly don't think that all of hte hands are original - hour and minutes maybe. The dial looks original to me, but with a (not very good) relume. Biggest issue for me is the lack of a movement shot - there could be anything in there.

+1 re hands and relume, here is a thread w/ examples of correct sets of hands: http://www.breitlingsource.com/phpBB2/v ... 11&t=25184

still, nice piece, wear it in health; hope the movement turns out ok !

Your reply is much appreciated. I attach pics of the movement which seems really good. All in all, from what you can see, do you think I should keep te watch and try to find original hands? Which of the hands do you think are not original? All the chrono hands?

Not the greatest movement shot, but looks OK.

Look at the link that Fred provided for correct hands, I don't think that any of yours are correct although hour and minute are close.

Thank you very much. Do you think finding the hands will be a great challenge? Just alertness and patience?

It's going to take a while for sure, best hope is a watchmaker who can service the watch and has some available. Bigger issue for me is the lume though, I would want to try and get that done a little more professionally.

The watch looks great. Whether to keep it or not depends on how much you paid for it. As a collector a relumed dial is strictly a no go since an original unrelumed dial is the most important part of a collectible vintage watch. If you don't worry about collectibility than it's a beautiful watch you can enjoy, if you do then I would return it.

price was really quite ok, watched the auction, it is a nice and VERY wearable watch - enjoy it - finding a correct set of hands will be like a lottery win, but they are quite a nice fit.

My Breitling friends, I have been surfing all over and I can mention that I find more examples with the exact hands set of my watch than that of Fred's example. I detect 2 hand sets and have not encountered an exception to the two sets of combinations of chrono and minute and hour hands. Look for instance at this image from Coolvintage watches, a company that will not claim hands to be original if they are not. They specifically also describe the hands as original. Either Fred's is the original and when serviced the whole set was replaced with a different set, or the other way around, or there were 2 sets, i.e. different renditions of the model 7650. Your ideas please.

About the possibility that the dial was relumed: the opinion on this forum so far was that it is original.

Actually you outbid me on that watch. I thought I had no chance at $2650 so wasn't expecting to win. I was surprised that it sold for so little even with the wrong hands. Hands are still available occasionally so didn't think that was a major deal. I'm not convinced the dial isn't original since the colors are vibrant as is the bezel. Might have spent it's life in a drawer somewhere and has just been preserved well. Here the one I bought a couple of years ago.

Take a look at the lume on (particularly) the 2 and 3 markers Paul - looks pretty amateur application.

Maybe but I'm used to see so much worse and the lume on these does tend to age well. Even my watch had brighter lume than I expected. About the hands, OP's watch and mine are both 1969 models so I don't see any reason they would have two different hand sets. In addition, on the OP's watch the 15 minute hand is larger within the sub register than one would expect. The different bezels were an option but I don't think the hands were.

Hands are wrong on OPs for sure - just look at other similar models of the era and the consistency of the squared off orange and black hands.

That's a replacement dial like the ones available from Gisbert Joseph. For that period, I think the bezel should be like Paul's and the hands may well be correct, since that minute totalizer hand is distinctive and I doubt it could be sourced otherwise. Maybe both bezels are correct for that period, we just don't have catalog copy. I wish 7650s were in that 1969 catalog, etc.