An amazing find, with an even more amazing story!
The word 'grail' is often used these days, but this is as grail as it gets!!!
Congrats!!!

ben
Singapore

: What does the number 49229 mean to you ?
: To me it means the origin of the species !

: This is a very big reveal for me. I have long been a fan of the
: very earliest 3 register, 2446 screw back Autavia's. The
: Valjoux.72 is universally accepted as a great quality movement
: & to my eyes offers up a nicely balanced tri-compax dial
: configuration. The combination of the earliest Autavia's larger
: register dials and dauphine hands has always looked just right
: but they are so rare and illusive i thought i would never find
: one. My observation is they tend to be traded behind the scenes
: with private emails rather than in the eyes of the public in an
: auction format.

:
:

: Then without warning one of my grail watches turned up, even rarer
: than the lume insert dauphine Autavia's are the very first full
: lume dauphine hand examples.

:
:

: Here we see the OTD registry page for the earliest known examples
: of the screw back Autavia's
: http://www.onthedash.com/docs/AutaviaRegistry.html
: You can see that the 4 known examples of the full lume hand 2446's
: from the registry have a very narrow serial range, 49169 -
: 49283. My watch lands inside this narrow range at 49229
: confirming it as one of the original batch.

:
:

: As with most of these watches you can see they have been used over
: the years as the case and bezel show their fair share of bumps
: and scratches. The dial has luckily aged a little more
: gracefully, closer inspection shows the circular grooves of the
: oversized white registers are still present in both texture and
: colour.
: This watch comes with quite some history too. The watch was
: originally purchased in 1962 by an Austrian woman celebrating
: becoming the first female pilot for Austrian Airlines.
: She used the watch throughout her career there and up until a point
: in the 1980's where she retired. The watch was then put away and
: used rarerly until she died and the Autavia went to her nephew.
: The new owner never wore the watch, not knowing its signifance
: in the collectors world he then sold it back the the watch shop
: that his aunt had purchased the watch from originally &
: serviced it throughout its life. Its from here
: http://www.uhrmacher.at/werkstatt.html i purchased the watch,
: the second time the same shop had sold the watch in 60 years.

:
:

:
:

: I feel very lucky to have found such a lovely rare watch and know
: so much of its history. Special thanks go out to James who
: replaced the crystal & custom made one of his quality DB10
: straps to match it.

: Cheers - Darren