Omega watches from the 1970s

10 pieces by Omega from the 1970s — each one I owned and serviced before listing it, with its reference, calibre and condition stated in full.

Omega spent the decade doing what almost nobody else could afford to: answering quartz with its own engineering instead of somebody else's. The industry consortium's Beta 21 had been ruinous to develop, so Omega built the calibre 1310 — the Megaquartz 32 KHz, its first in-house quartz movement, made from 1973 until about 1978, running at 32,768 Hz and modular enough to be worked on in parts. It showed a tuning-fork Megasonic at 720 Hz the same year. Underneath all of that the mechanical calibres simply carried on, in the De Ville and the Seamaster, because that is what the shops were still selling.

So one name here covers two entirely different propositions. The mechanical Omegas of the decade are about as low-risk as vintage gets: made in enormous numbers, documented down to the reference, and still within reach of any competent watchmaker. The quartz is the interesting risk. The 1310 was built to be serviced and its modularity genuinely helps, but it is a fifty-year-old electronic movement and the circuit is the part that ends the conversation. Buy the mechanical to wear. Buy the Megaquartz because it is the moment Omega decided not to lose — and price the difference between those two reasons honestly.

The calibres here are Omega 1002, Omega 1010, Omega 1022, Omega 1310, Omega 1481, Omega 565, Omega 613 and Omega 620, 9 references between them, in gold-plated and stainless steel cases.

2 of the 10 are available now; the rest have sold and stay listed, because what left first says more about Omega in this decade than anything I could write about it.