Omega Speedmaster Professional 145.022«Moonwatch»

The storyWhy this reference matters

In 1968 Omega did something that would horrify half the forums today: it retired the calibre 321, a column-wheel chronograph that had been in production since the 1940s, and replaced it with the 861. The reasoning was industrial, not sentimental. The 861 drives the chronograph with a cam instead of a column wheel, has fewer delicate parts, goes together faster and comes back from the service bench with fewer complaints. The 145.022 is what came out of that changeover.

It ran until 1988 — twenty unbroken years in the catalogue, an eternity for a single reference. In 1981 the code was rewritten as 145.0022, with an extra zero, when Omega reorganised its internal numbering; the watch itself did not change. Throughout, NASA kept the Speedmaster certified and it kept flying, from the last Apollo missions to Skylab and the Apollo-Soyuz link-up.

This needs saying plainly, because it is the mix-up dealers hear most often: the watch on Buzz Aldrin's wrist on the Sea of Tranquility was a 105.012, with the calibre 321. The 145.022 appeared the year before the landing but only became popular afterwards. It is the Moonwatch of the mature space age, not of 20 July 1969.

SpecificationsThe numbers, in one table

IdentificationHow to tell it apart

The earliest 145.022s — the ones collectors call transitional — are the most wanted and the most muddled up. They already have the new calibre 861, but they keep details from the previous generation: an applied metal Omega logo on the dial instead of a printed one, and the celebrated dot-over-ninety bezel, where the tachymetre dot sits above the 90 rather than beside it.

The suffix after the reference number is the year the case was designed, not the year the watch was built. A 145.022-69 may perfectly well have been assembled in 1974 with nothing at all suspicious about it. It trips up plenty of first-time buyers, and the odd seller uses it to round the date in a flattering direction.

The crystal is Hesalite, an acrylic that scratches if you look at it and polishes out with a dab of paste in ten minutes. If you see a flawless sapphire on a supposed 1970s 145.022, either the crystal was swapped at a service or the watch is not what the listing says it is.

CollectingWhat collectors check

The first thing an experienced buyer looks at is not the case, it is the dial. An original dial with evenly aged tritium is worth far more than a restored one, however well the restoration was done. The hands should have aged to the same tone as the markers. If the markers are cream and the hands are spotless white, somebody has changed one or the other.

Then the lugs. These Speedmasters have been through dozens of official services and the case was polished at plenty of them, and every polish takes metal away. One with sharp lugs and the bevel still visible between the top face and the flank can be worth considerably more than an identical watch whose lugs have been rounded off like river pebbles.

And the case back, which changes over the years and separates prices: the earliest ones say nothing about the Moon landing, the later ones add the commemorative text. Neither is better than the other, but the market prices them differently, so work out which one you are looking at before you start negotiating.

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