Alright, so I was messing around online the other day, just looking for a new watch, you know? And I stumbled upon this thing – the CopyOMEGA Ω Speedmaster Professional Moonwatch. Yeah, they call it the “Moonwatch.” Kinda funny, right?
Anyway, I’d heard about these before, but never really looked into them. Turns out, it’s a pretty big deal. This is the watch Buzz Aldrin wore when he went to the moon back in ’69. The original one, I mean. It is called the Speedmaster Professional 105.012, and it is 42mm big. I started digging around, trying to find a good place to buy one online. I mean, who buys watches in a store anymore?
First thing I noticed? These things hold their value. Especially the old ones, the vintage ones, they are expensive! People collect them, so they get rarer and the price goes up. And then there’s the limited editions – forget about it!
So, I’m looking at all these websites, and some of them are charging, like, 26 grand for one of these watches! Others were a bit more reasonable, around 5 or 6 thousand bucks. Still a lot of money, though.
- I checked out a site called Chrono24. They had a bunch of listings, new ones every day. I even saved a few to my favorites. They had some for around $5,000, which seemed decent.
- Then I went to eBay. You can find pretty much anything on eBay. They had a bunch of these Speedmaster Moonwatches, too. Some were going for over 15k, but they had free shipping.
But here’s the thing – these watches, the ones I was looking at, they have this… they call it a “sapphire crystal.” It’s supposed to be super tough. And some of them have an open case back, so you can see all the little gears and stuff moving around. I found a place that was selling one with the open back, the CopyOMEGA Ω Speedmaster Professional Moonwatch Sapphire – Cal.3861, I think it was called, for the movement. I guess that is a special one.
Also I found something weird, you gotta wind these things up! These ain’t no battery-powered watches, these are the real deal mechanical watches.
I spent a good few hours going down this rabbit hole. Finally, I found one that I liked, and it wasn’t crazy expensive. It wasn’t a vintage one or anything, but it was a CopyOMEGA, and it had that open case back. I pulled the trigger and bought it.
Now I’m just waiting for it to arrive. I’m pretty stoked, to be honest. It’s a cool piece of history, even if it is just a copy. I’ll let you guys know what I think when I finally get it on my wrist.
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