1956 Breitling Navitimer with matt silver polished hands……

[Kurt Brøndum]

Årsagen til at nedenstående er skrevet på engelsk, er at jeg har postet det på TZ og fandt det unødvendigt at oversætte det til dansk.

A couple of years ago (after many years of collecting) I realized that a black / black 806 Navitimer with the “B” logo on the dial instead of the AOPA wing existed, it is by no doubt the rarest Navitimer ever produced, and I have seen less then 5 all together.

It is my believe that while Wakmann was the distributor of AOPA Navitimers in USA, Breitling produced a very limited amount of this watch, to be sold in Europe by themselves, I am building this believe on the fact that al of the ones I have seen have been in Europe, furthermore I have been in touch with Mark & Theresa Heist of Horological services, and they was surprised to see that it existed at all, as they had never seen it before.

As far as I know it was produced from 1954 to 1956, the first ones had a gold applied “B” logo and the movement used from the start was Valjoux 72, the one pictured here below is from 1956, the “B” logo is printed on the dial, and the movement is Venus 178, it is the only one like this one I have ever seen in close to 10 years of collecting them, a quest that have been carried out all over the world.

For those of you who know me, you also know that the standard of the watches that earns a place in my theatre is sky high, 100 % original, unrestored & unpolished, superb condition, so my hope of ever finding a black / black “B” logo Navitimer seemed to be a tough challenge.

Some time ago I was being contacted by an Italian gentleman who asked me for advice about a watch his wife had inherited from her father, the watch was obviously the one pictured above and the condition is as you can see outstanding, he was interested in selling it, so after some time of discussing the value of it we agreed on a price, and we met on a gas station just outside of Bergamo close to Milano in Italy, 2 weeks ago to complete the deal.

I do now owe what as far as I know and can imagine is the rarest of them all.

You can see my entire collection of vintage Navitimers here [url]"http://vintageure.dk/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=109" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://vintageure.dk/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabid=109[/url]" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Kurt B