So last week a 2nd execution 2446 came up for bid on eBay here in the US.

I had a go at trying to communicate with the seller - someone with zero feedback, I got radio silence for 3days - finally I got some communication from the seller - he found the watch in a house he had been hired to demo - he had never used eBay before and knew very little about the watch.

My gut told me to stay away from the situation - but I had one reason to want to take on the project, I happened to have an NOS Bezel and the dial looked ok. I also figured if you are gonna be a scammer - you would probably show a mint watch to get top dollar - not a busted up watch that some one had left behind in a house that was going to be destroyed. And of course if it turned out to be too much for me to handle in terms of work - I could just send to off to Abel.

Eventually I figured to go for it and bid for the watch and won.

Well I received it on Friday and found two big issues, one I was able to overcome - the other not so much.
1) when taking out the movement - one of the screw that holds the movement in was busted in a way that it could not be unscrewed- eventually I figured out a way to deal with that.
2) the bottom lugs had been sawed - yes that's right sawed on the inside - I presume to make them wider, but frankly I have no idea why someone would do that.

Anyway, here is what it looked like when I got it:

The dial was in great shape - it was missing a lume dot at 7.
The case was a disaster as mentioned before
The crystal was mangled - badly
The hands were lumeless - and had some cosmetic damage.
But she was purring like a kitten and keeping time perfectly.

So here are pictures I took during the process - (I'm no Paul Gavin with a camera so bear with me)

After the case refinishing:

After the re luming:

All put together:

I know there are some who poo poo restorations but I think this one will be one of my favorite wearing watches - just think - had some guy not figured - hey I could probably sell this on eBay, it would have ended up I a pile of debris and rubble.

I still have yet to figure out what the CER on the dial stands for - the seller claims that someone from Tag told him it was a tire company. I have yet to confirm this.

Case # 53xxx

anyway - I thought I would share.

Cheers,
Lanny