Congratulation George!
Your patience has been rewarded.

Beautiful and rare piece, indeed.

All the best
Giuliano

: This is an interesting story, more than a year ago, I was browsing
: eBay, and saw a listing for an 1163GMT on the GF bracelet and
: perfectly dated accordingly, it was priced well below its value
: and pictures weren't great. Another interesting fact about it is
: that the original owner flew with it in Vietnam so maybe this
: "Maverick" experienced some air-to-air action in the
: blue skies of the Vietnam war. The listing had a buy it now and
: I just knew I had to take the risk, it is the model that came
: with the red sub-dial hands and usually have the dials that go
: tropical to give the effect of a chocolate color. When I
: received it I was amazed that the watch was in descent condition
: minus the crystal (luckily, I had a NOS spare lying around), the
: GMT hand and sweeping hand were completely faded, the color
: practically gone, and pushers were stuck and one was kind of
: damaged, the bezel had oxidation but it was ok (although I
: prefer it to look nicer). I contacted our UK friend Stewart
: Morley and asked the dimensions for an 1163 bezel as I didn't
: have the tools to do it myself at that time. Stewart, was kind
: enough to provide those measurements to me and I think James
: Hyman may have played a role in this also, I forget lol. I took
: the measurements and asked the ebay seller which sold Autavia
: aftermarket bezels if they could manufacture a GMT bezel to my
: specification, it took months of constant email reminders to
: them until one day, they listed a new product on their page,
: well what do you know it's an 1163 GMT bezel built in the
: specification that I requested. I buy one and to my surprise it
: looked really good. I sent this to Abel at a later point in
: time.

: I sent Maverick to our friend Abel Court as I was also sending him
: another watch (11063V, see picture below) for some minor work so
: I figure just send it over.

: Well time passed and I was in no rush at all to see these come back
: as Abel asked me to be patient and I was, I knew Abel was very
: busy, and it took him a long time to get to my work order, but
: trust me when I say the wait was extremely well worth it I mean
: it. Along the way, Abel joked about things like my son likes
: playing with your watches, and an old blue box that became
: stranded, perhaps trying to induce a seizure or heart attack at
: me... lol.

: Abel, took this thing completely apart and worked that Belgian
: magic we're so used to knowing. When I asked him questions like
: can you make the bezel click again? He responded, "I will
: make it click and tick ;-)"

: All credit goes to Abel for the before and transformation photos,
: as for the rest, they're just from me taken with my Samsung
: Galaxy S5.

: Before the work:

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: And the transformation, the aftermarket bezel was good, so good
: Abel said the blue is too bright but it's good enough, I bet if
: it was shade lighter we would have a really nice looking
: aftermarket bezel:

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: Oh and I can't help but wonder but this GMT gives off a dark
: chocolate effect it's never completely went tropical but in the
: sunlight I think it's more than sufficient to see what I mean.
: When I first got the watch I thought my eyes could have been
: deceiving me, I also consulted with Richard Crosthwaite about it
: and we could not conclude if it is the tropical dial or not but
: let's hear it, in all its glory it's still a beautiful piece:

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