The Breitling Watch Source Forums

Can somebody help me with the condition of this Breitling 806 from 1960?






The last picture is a picture of the Mesh-Bracelet which he would include for an extra 300 euros.

I know that Vintage Navitimers are one of the more complicated watches to identify the condition of, so I came here to ask for some help from the experts.

For me the condition of the dials, slide rule and hands looks a bit too good to be true. The patina of the hands does not really match the patina of the tritium numbers on the dial but the seller says they do not glow in the dark so Superluminova can be ruled out. The Question is if they were redone with tritum at some earlier point. The number of beads on the bezel is 93 which matches the construction date, also the dial and slide rule are correct i think, but I cant help but feel that something is fishy with it.

The price is 6200 euros with the mesh bracelet which is about 7000 US dollars.

Can somebody help me out here?

Kind regards
Luca

Luca

Your pictures maybe don't come through as clear and as large as would be good. I THINK that the dial is a service replacement, but in some instances the dial lume looks a bit old, so better high resolution photos would help indeed.

If that mesh bracelet has curved ends, I'll buy it for €300 If you don’t.

@buddman how would i recognize a serive dial? I‘ll ask the seller for some better pictures.

Service dials have the same layout - Breitling name, wings but not AOPA marked, and relatively new lume with a clean dial. I just can’t tell on the resolution if the photos if the lume is new or not. The rest of the watch has I think been renewed though.

@buddman, but this is not a service dial and it also has no AOPA writing on the wings?

What do you mean by rest of the watch? You mean the whole watch?

P.S. Thanks for the help, really appreciate it!

That’s a very nice watch. You can see the lume is not new.

There are AOPA and non-AOPA dials that are perfectly correct. My comment was just that the service dial is not AOPA marked.

@buddman, oh right. But do you really think the rest of the watch has been renewed? Because that would be kind of a deal breaker.

I’m reserving judgement for better pictures.

Okay i‘ll see if I can get some. Thanks so much for the help

I’m suite sure that the lume is original, I don’t see anything that would cause me to think otherwise.

To the very best of my knowledge Breitling didn’t make Mesh bracelets with curved end pieces, but we have been through that discussion before.

Kurt B
http://www.kurt-b.com

Oh wow, I‘ve never heard of something like that before. So is the mesh bracelet just fake or is it just not original on the 806? Because in my case it comes from a ref. 809.

Also, how would you check for redone lume? The only way I know of is to check for matching aging from the hands and the indecies or to check if it glows in the dark. In my case the lume on the hands and the indecies don‘t match, so how can I know if it was redone or not?

As far as I know, Breitling never made them, you can call it / them whatever.

Common sense - more or less all of the ones I have seen have looked brand new, only seen one that looked “vintage”, and it was not signed by Breitling inside the clasp.

Mesh bracelets are not solid and long lasting, so common sense tells me that they should show a lot of wear if they was some 50 years old.
How difficult is it to make a mesh with 22mm curved end pieces and stamp a B on it ???

I have held 500+ of these watches in my hands, and my lume judgement is based on my experience, as I wrote - I see nothing that would cause me to think it has been redone.

Check my website http://www.kurt-b.com, you can learn a lot there.

Kurt B

@Kurt B, yeah you have a point about those bracelets. Very intriguing stuff.



I just received this picture from the seller and the dial actually looks quite similar to some of the watches on your website. You have an amazing collection btw.

The condition looks much better than I thought, what do you guys think?

Looks super. Go for it.