The Breitling Watch Source Forums

Hi all,

It's almost 7 years since my last post apologies! Good to see the forum is still going strong and such a great source of information. Recently I've been looking into the 769s, reading part 1 of the famous online Chronomat guide, looking through lots of old posts in this vintage section and the frankenstine section and of course trawling through eBay and other online auctions and websites. As normal with vintage Breitling (I own a 806) there seems to be lots of small variations in the watches, patchy records and possibly questionable internet facts!

With reference to the 769s, I am aware of the various case materials used, that the watch was available with a black dial or silvered dial and also it appears with a silver dial with black surround. I'm aware of the marked and unmarked movements and the striping as highlighted in part 1 of the guide and that the watches were available with illuminous or thin finger models.

I have two questions though, on some of the dials the inner dials at 3 and 9 o'clock cut into the 2,4,8,10 numbers but some dials seem to have smaller numbers which aren't cut into, like the example below. The smaller number dials appear to be more common in black but have seen them on silvered examples too, were these earlier or later dials or any other information?

The second question concerns the arrow seen on most 769 dials between the 5 and 6 o'clock positions. These appears on most of the dials it seems, but in different arrow styles and colours, but I've seen a few pictures of black and silver dials without this arrow at all. There is an example of this up for auction at the moment but not sure if I'm allowed to post a link here so will post an example picture instead. Again, same questions as above really, was the arrow age dependent or any other info on it?



If anyone has a link to a better source of information on these I would be very interested. I did see there was a link to a site needing translation but have lost the thread before translating it!

Thanks in advance
John

The bigger issue w this watch is that there is no reference number on the case back, I think

Yea thanks, I noticed that too, and it doesn't seem to have the breitling name on the movement or the stripes shown in part 1 of the guide on the movement without name. I'm not considering buying it, I am just wanting to learn more about the difference in dials, and this dial shows the small numbers and no arrow in one picture and was easy to hand.

That would be great, thank you

Sorry I deleted my post because I'm sure it's the same article that you refered to as the famous online guide!

Ah ok no problem. There is another one linked in a thread on here somewhere that I saw which needs translation but I need to locate it again, I seem to have forgot to mark the page

I looked at that one this morning and the back definitely would make me look elsewhere.

I've found the link I was looking for, hopefully this will have some info on my questions although it looks similar to part 1 of the guide I've already viewed

http://translate.googleusercontent.com/ ... UOqklwCeQA


The 2nd picture in the link, an old advertisement, shows the watch without the 5-6 arrow.

we see several dial variations on the very early pieces - but basically there were lume arabics dials with lume hands and non lume arabics w/ thin baton hands from the launch 1941/42 until the very late 1940s, then we see a transitional period w/ applied logo and applied baton index dials, but no "Geneve", finally "Geneve" added to these applied logo dials from 1952/53 until the end of production in 1957.

the Altro article is good, but not without errors. Yes, we should write an updated one.

I am less concerned w/ the missing ref. No. on that piece in the OP, that was a transitional period and reference numbers around then started to appear, case looks perfectly correct and is genuine without doubt.

Mobile now, will post some dial example pics later.

Thanks Fred that would be useful.

There is an interesting image in the link I posted above (which came from another thread on here) which I have copied below. It's possibly not definitive, I don't know how good the source is, more research will be required, but it seems to show no 5-6 arrow on the 1941, 1942 and 1943 examples, but arrows present for all 2 sub dial models in years 1944 onwards.

yes, the earliest pieces do not have that arrow.
when comparing and evaluating Breitling serial numbers, be aware that these indicate case production years, final watch assembly might be years later, so we see lots of overlap and "transitions".

btw. - we are not on TZ here, so invenitetfecit or wus can be openly spoken about

Great, thanks for clarifying Fred.

Suprisingly h odinkee is off limits, though and nobody seems to remember why.