OMEGA, EARLY AND RARE LIMITED EDITION YELLOW GOLD CHRONOGRAPH ‘SPEEDMASTER APOLLO XI 1969’, NO. 067, REF. 145.022BA



Details

CIRCA: 1970s
CASE MATERIAL: Yellow gold
CASE DIAMETER: 42 mm.
CASE NO: 145’022’169
BRACELET MATERIAL: Yellow gold Omega bracelet
BRACELET SIZE: Approx. 170 mm. overall length
DIAL: Champagne
MOVEMENT: Manual
MOVEMENT NO: 28'080'666
FUNCTIONS: Chronograph
BOX: No
PAPERS: No
REMARK: Limited to 1014 pieces


Lot Essay

This highly appealing yellow gold Speedmaster Professional reference BA 145.022 is part of the original 1969 limited edition of 1,014 examples made to commemorate the day Man first walked on the moon. The present watch, no. 067 of the edition, retains an exceptional original condition that will impress even the purist Omega collector.
The Omega Speedmaster Apollo XI model in solid gold was created in the fall of 1969 to commemorate Apollo 11’s successful Moon landing. A total of 1,014 examples were produced. The first two watches in the series were presented to President Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew, both of which now reside in the OMEGA museum. The next 28 examples were presented during a gala dinner in Houston in honour of the astronauts who participated in this historic space mission as well as earlier conquests. The casebacks were engraved with the relevant astronaut's name and the inscription ‘To Mark Man's Conquest of Space with Time, Through Time, on Time’. Some examples were presented to Swiss politicians and watch-industry professionals while the majority remaining were made available for the general public to buy.
These examples were engraved with the dedication “OMEGA SPEEDMASTER – APOLLO XI 1969 – THE FIRST WATCH WORN ON THE MOON” and given an individual number. There are three different types of engraving: thin and unpainted for approximately the first 100 examples, then thick and unpainted and finally thick and painted with a burgundy colour, which complements its burgundy colored bezel. The present watch is from the first version, with thin and unpainted lettering.
Two dial variants were also available, the first with an oval ‘O’ in the OMEGA signature as opposed to the later version, such as the present watch, which is a more fuller round-shaped.
Literature
An example of all three casebacks made in this series are illustrated described and described in: OMEGA, A Journey Through Time by Marco Richon, 2007, p. 605.
Watch number 713 from this series is illustrated in: Omega Watches by John Goldberger, p. 230.