Greatest Finds: Lawrence Of Arabia's Omega Pilot Watch | Antiques Roadshow 

? 86,000……. Pounds ? Or ? $86,000. Dollars ?

CHF means Swiss francs about $100000 us dollers £ 70000 uk pounds

Great to hear it is safe now, and won't disappear into oblivion.

Thank you, saved me googling!@@davidfennessey2727

⁠​⁠@@roberthein2156There’s more than two currencies in the world, you know? One Swiss franc (CHF) is currently worth $1.17, €1.07 and £0.92.

but maybe some people are and some people do so jog on

@@artful1967 don’t annoy the 99.999% normal to protect feelings of the 0.001%

£80,000

@@thegroovetube3247 👏🏽🤦🏽

Incredible. I would very much like to own a watch that an amazing and courageous man like T.E. Lawrence. Thank you for sharing your update!

Reproductions sold for almost double! What a grift.

Today yes, but this was filmed in the late 89's early 90's it looks like. Watches were nowhere near as collectable as they have become in the last decade.

​@@bobbobertbobberton1073 the video description states it was filmed in 2000

@@theBrezidentthis looks like late 80’s early 90’s.

After doing some quick TV listings research it looks like this ep from Barnstaple was from series 23, in 2000. The image is zoomed in to account for the modern aspect ratio which gives it a slightly 80s look.🤓

He sold the watch at auction in November 2012. It was bought by the omega museum for 86,000 Swiss francs.

😆

Z’s dead, baby. Z’s dead!

Where's my Honda? Sorry, baby, but I had to crash that Honda.

*kangaroo 🤦‍♂️

@@fezzik7619 corrected

Read, “A prince of our Disorder.”

@@IrishAnnie I'll check that out, thanks

Let me guess: You are not an ameerican officer!

This is definitely one of our favourite finds in the show!

Then the Winged Hussars arrived!

It looks suspiciously brand new to me. No marks on the case, the face is fresh looking and not discoloured & the glass (it's too early to be perspex - surely) is not scratched. Maybe the winder is original & the rest of it is a refurb...

@@MySteamingi thought the same, the dial and glass look flawless...i hope the repair that was done didnt replace it.

@@MySteaming Apparently some of the parts were replaced or changed. Serial number on the caseback was matched to a different watch ordered by France. A few symbols were suspect as well. Omega just ran w it because why not? lol. It's not really about the watch but who apparently wore it.

@@MySteaming Not necessarily so. Almost all actual campaign watches were worn in modified adapted wristlets (a leather case which held a pocket watch, and turned it in to a wrist watch)... you will see pictures of bare watches, but far more often, the watch was held in leather, and the addition of a front flap made to the wristlet, held by a latch or stud. Such watch casing continued to be popular for any hard worn watches right up until the availability of very tough plastic cased watches like Casio types... among say, Farmers. I live in outback Australia, grew up in flyspec town about half way between Sydney and Brisbane, and about 500 kms inland.....and in the late 70s, early 80s, and almost every farmer I knew in the even small satellite village which served as hub for all the farms... nothing but farms.. surrounding it.... wore their watch in such a leather wristlet. One old lean cockie, must have been about 75 or 80 then.... had the same leather case for about 40 years, only the second he'd needed... and his watch was an American Waltham from the late 1920s!!!! It was basically still fine. He'd cracked the crystal once, and the... pallet fork? I think .... not that I knew what that was they, had gotten misaligned once... but aside from that, it was the same watch he'd had since NEW, and was in unbelievable condition. I know this because he had a conversation with my father... who was born in 1918, and so was a few years younger.....about the watch... because my Father owned a late 1940s Waltham (which I lost as a teen, when I first moved house, after his death)... and was wearing it that day (my father worked shearing sheds as a Rousabout)... and it was such good condition the old farmer came up and showed my old man HIS, declaring them the best watches in world (my father did not have the heart to tell him he usually wore a mid 60s Seiko, and was only wearing the older watch that day as his Seiko was in the shop for a service lol). So I have seen first hand, how you CANNOT trust dial, or case, or bezel, or crown, on antique wrist watches. Thee VERY best, have been kept, and cared for, in a manner which sees them NOT fade, sees them NOT take a beating, NOT lose luster. The only real way to KNOW what is the case, especially with older watches, say Pre-Quartz era.... is to have them taken apart, numbers and stampings checked, etc etc. In fact, oft when one does, they see they are RIGHT... there's been a LOT of work done..... BUT... it is all internal, the case, face, hands, and crown, are actually all original the watch has just been pampered, or kept protected, and it is the internals which have been replaced, maybe just a base plate, and main spring, and like, one well worn lever, or such, being original, and most other things replaced. Lord knows, you see that an awful lot. I mean, that is how the very best fakes of today, fool the experts at a glance.... because that Rolex, say... IS an authentic Rolex... case.... dial.... bracelet.... at first glance inside, that is a genuine Rolex rotor..... and then.... only once you get inside, you see it is best case, a Frankenrolex... made up of multiple pieces of different movements decades apart....or worse... using a cheap Chinese parts bin movements.. not even something kind pretty good, like a Seagull, but something made in some Soviet era factory gifted to Mao because the machining it produced was too shoddy even for Stalinist Russia. So yeah, cannot tell at a glance, and whilst it seems counter intuitive, military watches, field watches, fleigers, campaigners which actually went on and did so.... can actually be in incredible condition IF they survived the war.... and most which DID survive did so, because they WERE kept protected. Even with the modifications made to the watch too, it easily COULD be worth what Omega went in on for it, if enough of the watch IS original... some stamps not matching, some pieces being replacements, do not matter in and of themselves.... if they dial is legit, or at least, cannot be established is not.. if the movement is generally more original than not, and if the case is original, then this is would be one of Omega's very earliest wrist watches, with an incredible story, and amazing bona fides.. even WITH the discrepancies hither and dither.

They bought it in 2000, the same year of this video- so he didn't hang around! I can't blame him

I'm taking all the risks and it might hang around for ages!!!!!

@@johnhodges8264 Exactly!!

He would of called an expert who would have claimed the signature was a fake. It must be genuine but i thought the guy acted a bit sus, started scratching his wig, when the document was examined .

Best I can do is $500

Let Chumlee and Corey look at it if they're sober.

With inflation since 2000, that's $107,674.44.

That would be 86,000 Swiss francs, to be precise.

😮

And that's just a museum, quite sure it could fetch even more on a private auction

Or 20 teddy bears on the planet Zuke

It's amazing who you can meet on your travels. Not as impressive as your story, but as a student on a study summer abroad in Taiwan in 1993, I was introduced to a Japanese friend of my landlord. Nice old fellow. The gentleman didn't speak English and I didn't speak Japanese, although my landlord spoke good Japanese and my Mandarin was enough to communicate at a basic level, so we all muddled through. Turns out the old guy had been a kamikaze pilot in WW2. Yes, I know what you're thinking - but he had joined his unit just before the war ended and hadn't had the "honour" of being sent on a mission yet. So unlike most of his fellow airmen, he'd simply walked away as his services were no longer required - and he'd gone on to live a whole life. He realized I was interested in his story (of course I was!), so he brought a photo album to show the British guest old pictures of him and his colleagues in uniform. There was a particularly poignant one of him and his best friend. He pointed at his friend and got the message across that he had, indeed, been sent on a mission. It was quite a thing to watch his eyes mist over a little in contemplation as they lingered over the old photo. It was a really extraordinary moment for me as a young student. That sense of touching living history in a totally unexpected - and very human - way.

@@russetmantle1 I suppose he 'dodn't have the honour' of working my mum's Uncle Bob to death as a slave labourer in Burma, either. My heart bleeds for him.

​@tooleyheadbang4239 If you haven't seen THE RAILWAY MAN, I thoroughly recommend it. My uncle (who I never met), was captured and imprisoned in Singapore.

Proper

Looks like something from a 2p coin pushing machine

What sour grapes are you referring too, there's about 10 comments here, half of them talking about how much it fetched at auction

Not to collecting as a whole.

Worth about £3,000,000 today. Paul Newman or Steve McQueen watches are more sought after today.

Indeed it is especially since it has a historical value apart from the value of the watch and the context that it was entangled with.

Millions it'd be worth

ROLEX ARE MASS PRODUCED CRAP

or Trump?

​​@@JeffreyLearugh. That man lives in your head rentfree

@@JeffreyLear Trump is a hero except for those suffering from TDS.

You do realise Aladdin was based on a real person right 😂

@@_Ali. A middle-eastern folk tale... Aladdin is a completely made-up character, you do realise that don't you?

Thankyou for your information yes a lovely man and a great momentom of his past fascinating life

what are the holy trinity of watches?

@@CIMAmotor 1. Patek Phillipe 2. Audemars Piguet 3. Vacheron Constantin

@@Pulsonar Thanks. I've never heard of the middle one.

@@CIMAmotor You probably recognise the AP logo. It’s most famous model is a stainless steel sports watch - the Royal Oak. It even overshadows the company logo because watch buffs just refer to its most well known reference as the ‘Royal Oak’ or the other beefed up model variant - Royal Oak Offshore

​@Pulsonar no rolex on the list? Given the importance of the brand to the industry I would put then there

Well, it did led an unbelievable life so…

It actually turns out that he was in fact a fictional character after all! Crazy how things work out in the end.

It sold for 86000 Swiss Francs (about 79,000 pounds) to Omega in 2018…..so no not worth 100’s of thousands

I've heard the same story about Ernest Hemingway and his first wife Hadley, and Garrison Keillor: Both lost a manuscript at a train station.

All we have to do is find that train station....we`ll make a fortune!@@thephilster6860

That suitcase was probably sold at a lost property auction. The buyer was probably disappointed to find it contained just some paper and used it to start his fire in the mornings for a while.

I heard dodging kids was movie fiction.

Haha. Get it insured..

Did you know that W.E. Johns (author of _Biggles)_ was a recruiting officer who initially rejected Lawrence when Lawrence wanted to get into the RAF?

Is that the famous fighter ace, Tig Ol Biggles?

I thought he gave it to Ginger 😂

Have you read" Biggles flies undone"

I don't think a video is an "extraordinary find"! Are you Welsh too?

@@williamwilliam5066 I was talking about the watch...........

🤣

Why are you posting with capital letters on word? What's wrong with you?

What's wrong with YOU??!! Are you the punctuation police? Guessing you might be a HS Englush teacher. The word pedantic comes to mind. Jeeesh. Get over yourself 'Mr. Grammar'.

He probably thought he was a character like Sinbad, or Aladdin 😂

He probably did know, but feigned ignorance.

Lawrence was probably spinning in his grave when he said that

i am not british, but i have a suspicion that their education system considers T.E lawrence to be an evil white colonizer and likes to pretend he doesn't exist.

Anybody who had read anything about Lawrence would know that, one of my mates even wrote a song about him...

Omega (or whoever bought it in Swiss Francs then loaned it to Omega) have had this watch in their museum since almost immediately after this taping. It was auctioned off for about $100,000 back in 2000... it's obviously a "priceless" piece that's going to stay in the museum (as either Omega owns it or if it's on loan then Omega will buy it off the owner if they ever want/need to sell it.)

You'd have another laugh: I wore for a decade an Omega I thought was a fake. A buddy moved onto my acreage with his trailer, having been screwed out of his grandmothers' inheritance by his own mom. He had to clean clock on the acerage and as he was staying for free, brought an old box of watches (mainly Times, etc.) and almost none had wristbands. I picked out an "Omega", put a band on it, and went to work. Years later I took it into an Austrain watchmaker for a new band and he asked me if he could buy it, as he coudln't get parts for Omega in Canada. 5,000. Dollars. I just about passed out. YOU MEAN IT'S REAL??? I ShOULD have clicked: grandma was from Austria!

@@DwightStJohn-w1l great story. thanks for sharing

True - but he had £50k or so value out of that sale for the past 23 years. Maybe worth more to him then than a few hundred k as an old man.

Even the 1906 Cartier is 'troublesome' as Cartier's own earliest example is from circa 1912 and there's no literature/old photos of Santos wearing one. Years ago Girard perregaux claimed the first mass produced wristwatch for the German navy in the late 1880s but there's even less evidence for that. IE zero. And their website used to show a watch with a radium dial which hadn't been discovered by the 1880's. Zenith have Bleriot's watch and intimate it had something to do with his famous English Channel crossing, but the design is no earlier than the (very) late 1920's. There's a fair bit of spin and flim flam in the vintage watch world. Lawrence's watch? It was their first series wrist chronograph model. Their records show it was sold in France, not the UK in 1915, which is odd given it has the British Army Aviation(A) and broadarrow issued mark on the caseback, so why was it sold in France? The serial on the caseback says it's a pocketwatch from 1912, which is where the expert understandably got his date, and was sold to an agent in Liverpool, which would make more sense for a UK issued watch. So for some reason the caseback was replaced, or the main part of the watch was made in 1912, but then ended up being sold to the UK military in 1915. very odd. The dial and hands are another issue. The dial has open outlined numerals specifically to take the new fangled radium luminescent material, but the hands are of a style that weren't lumed. So either the handset, or the dial isn't original. I suspect the hands as the original World War one cathedral style radium hands are far more likely to deteriorate over time.

Well been flying for 8 years by 1912 and once they worked out how to do it. They really learnt how to do it, so there are few thousand flyers by this point. You can actually buy planes and you need a license by 1916

@mellonmarshall I'm not on about how long man has been flying. I'm well aware of the history of aviation. I was brought up on aviation & spent my entire wrong life in the Aerospace Industry. I'm on about Pilot Watches & their manufacture.

@@MySteaming 1912 is indeed a bit early for a specific pilot's watch, at least on the wrist. Wristwatches for men were still very much a minority thing, even seen as 'feminine'. It took WW1 to change that perception and even then it took until the 30's before wristwatches overtook pocketwatches in sales to men. Pocketwatches were certainly clipped to instrument panels in aircraft, some designed for that job(same design for the other new rich man's toy the car). You do see adverts post WW1 that show pilots, drivers, golfers etc wearing wristwatches, but 'true' pilots watches specifically aimed at pilots and with useful features for them in any numbers is a late 20's and 30's thing.

Look up the history of the Cartier Santos, very early possibly the first pilot watch.

@@johnjeromson3471 a history claimed by Cartier. The actual evidence is more than a bit thin on the ground. No records of it, notphotos of him wearing one(and he was one of the more photographed people on earth for the time) and no sign of the watch itself. The example often pictured comes from circa 1911 when they were series produced.

This is from 23 years ago..

watch prices haven't changed much@@nathjones77

100 millions shibu inu?

No Turkish prisoners

Probably the best place for it so people can visit and enjoy it. Having been to the museum a number of years ago. The curator at the time was saddened that they could not afford many of the iconic watches that came up for auction and disappeared into private collections.

I bought a jar of pasta sauce hand made by Paul Newman…..$2.50 on special at Coles. True story.