The Mistake Dials
When it comes to coins, those created with mistakes tend to be worth more than their ‘perfect’ counterparts. When it comes to CW watches with dial mistakes, it’s more novelty value than financial value that gets added.
In this post I thought I’d compile a few of the CW ‘mistake’ watches.
First up, top left, we have a number of C70 GBs and DBR1s which were produced missing their 87 pips from the Tachymeter scale around the inside of the bezel, so this one is very much a manufacturing fault.
Next up, top right, we have the C60 SH21 Abyss. When these first launched, the faces stated a diving depth rating of 600m on the right side of the dial. I can see how this human error might have happened, because all other C60s at the time were rated to 600m, but this particular model, with its huge exhibition case back, was actually rated to ‘only’ 300m. CW fitted new dials to their shelf stock and offered to replace the dials on all customer watches. I’m guessing around half of the early customers opted for a new ‘correct’ face, whereas the other half opted to keep theirs with the 600m ‘error’ face.
Finally, bottom two, we have the recent C65 Super Compressor. This one is just a plain old stinker! As soon as CW launched this watch, eagle-eyed folk spotted the SUPER COMPRESSOR printed toward the bottom of the dial was off-centre to the left. CW took two courses of action for these. Ocean Blue customers were offered replacement dials, whereas the Black Sand watches were sold at discounted prices in lieu of the offset detail. While you can see the off-set fairly well in photographs, it’s barely noticeable in the flesh.
Hopefully this is a post which doesn’t need updating in the future!