The Breitling Watch Source Forums

hey yall, this is my first post. many thanks ahead of time

pretty positive this is a real breitling. serial dates it to 1947.
of course, the seller's drunk friend dropped it and cracked the crystal literally minutes before i bought it.
i've looked at a lot of pics and couldn't find an exact match. a lot of close ones. but none that have the vertical dials and the squares for the odd numbers.
so is it real? are #'s matching or a franken? how much for a new crystal?
thanks!

strange piece, very strange.
can we have a pic of the outside caseback, please.

BOW as well

all seems to fit , just a strange combination of markings

_________________
"I spent most of my money on Booze, Breitling and Boats. The rest I wasted" - mostly Elmore Leonard

yep, so it has to carry ref. no, and serial.
might be the earliest. B corp. piece we see, as it was established in '47

OP, many such Breitling w/ subdials at 12 and 6, Venus 170; this seems a ref. 171, the smallest of them, but that should be marked on the caseback

whoops, i thought i posted the back case pic. it says 181

yep, correct, 181 isn't in Richter and similar to the 171, very, very small at 32mm iirc ?

and I did see a similar marking before and just forgot: viewtopic.php?f=11&t=55448

nice looking watch on that other thread

and yep, about 32-33mm

so looks like all that should be there is and its correct?

basically yes, though I have some doubts the hands started life in this watch, you'll note the hands on that other 181 are quite different and the hands are shaped like typical 1950s hands, but we have not seen enough of these to say anything definite.

would not be a huge issue thought.

Very nice and great catch. It problaly needs service and the crystal can be replaced very reasonably at that time. Welcome to Breitling Source!

_________________
"A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never quite sure."

thanks for all the help here!!
ticking and looking good now!