T-minus to liftoff: the next Saturday market report Every Saturday morning — realized sales and notable listings across nine vintage references.
00hrs: 00min: 00sec
The Collector
The Moonwatch, studied properly — my working journal of the Omega Speedmaster: history, references, market data, and the occasional piece finding a new wrist. Not affiliated with Omega SA or the Swatch Group.
A tool, not a trophy — the watch that went to the Moon and brought its men home.
Five long-form guides, quick Moonwatch tidbits, a mission-by-mission photo archive, price trends across nine references, and two market dispatches every Saturday — every claim built to be checked, every price labeled asking or realized.
This week
Fresh from the deskFree every Saturday
The Saturday dispatch
The Vintage Moonwatch Market Report in your inbox every Saturday evening — plus the occasional notable find. No noise, no spam.
Reference explorer
The Star Chart
Drill down by movement, era, or mission — or answer five questions about the watch in your hand — and land in the right reference box.
Market Analysis
Two dispatches, every Saturday
The Glass Case — what’s asking nowWhat sellers are asking across nine vintage references — checked by hand every Saturday morning. Asking isn’t selling.
See the Glass Case →
The Speedmaster Gonzales™ Vintage Moonwatch Market ReportZero verifiable realized sales across all nine references, October 18–24: Antiquorum's New York return on October 18 was an independents-led sale with no verifiable vintage Speedmaster lot, the timed platforms printed nothing in-window, and the week's one claimed eBay print failed verification on re-check and was withdrawn. Asking prices barely moved — and a Bulang Ed White left the board at a €19,000 ask, which is a removal, not a result.
Browse the archive →
Price Trends — the line, not the noiseMedian asking prices across the nine vintage references, one new point every Saturday — the line that shows where the market is actually moving.
See the trends →
Price Drops — who’s blinkingAsking-price cuts across the nine vintage references, tracked nightly. When a seller blinks, you’ll see it here.
See the drops →
The Time Machine — the neo-vintage deskTrue vintage ends with the Moon generation. The Time Machine covers what came next — the Moonwatch from 1981 forward, every example at least 25 years old.
Enter the Time Machine →
Market data is published for information and education — never as investment advice. Asking prices are what sellers hope for; realized prices are what buyers actually paid. Neither predicts the future.
The Saturday Report. The week’s verified sales in your inbox every Saturday — free.
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The Circle. Fifty-seven places for the 1957 debut. Request your place →
Rarities
The deep end · ten studiesBeyond the nine baseline references sits the deep end: prototypes, tributes, department-store oddities and anniversary pieces. Vintage is the baseline here — this is the alpha and the omega of it. Open the Rarities →
The Saturday dispatch
Newsletter · CommunityCollector's Toolkit
Free instrumentsEight free instruments for the vintage Speedmaster collector — date a movement, identify a dial, run NASA’s 1964 gauntlet, know the calibres, and get provenance right. No account, no cost.
The Journal
Six collector’s guides
Article I · HistoryA line drawn to the MoonFrom the CK 2915 of 1957 to NASA qualification and the watches worn on the lunar surface.
The Speedmaster’s history is best understood through the references that carried it forward: first as a racing chronograph, then as privately chosen astronaut equipment, and finally as qualified flight hardware.
Article II · Reference guideThe Moonwatch, reference by referenceThe cases, calibres, dials and details that distinguish each important generation.
A collector’s field guide to the visual and mechanical changes that separate the earliest broad-arrow pieces from the calibre 861 era, the long-running 3570.50 and today’s calibre 3861.
Article III · MarketReading the vintage marketHow condition, originality, provenance and venue shape value for buyers and sellers.
Asking prices are only one signal. This guide looks at realized sales, correct period components, service history and the reference-specific details that most often move value.
Article IV · OwnershipBuy well. Preserve better.Finding value, inspecting a candidate and maintaining a Speedmaster without erasing its history.
Practical notes on photographs, serials, service records, replacement parts, movement care and the line between thoughtful preservation and unnecessary restoration.
Article V · CuriosityThe Watch That Never Came HomeBuzz Aldrin's Speedmaster was the first watch worn on the Moon. Then, on its way to the Smithsonian, it vanished.
The verified story of the missing Moonwatch: what Aldrin's memoir says, the investigation that found nothing, the lawsuit that failed, and where the surviving flown Speedmasters can be seen today.
Article VII · CuriosityLot 53: The $3.4 Million FrankenwatchThe record-breaking 1957 Broad Arrow that Omega bought for its museum — then denounced as a Frankenstein.
A 1957 Broad Arrow hammered at CHF 3,115,500 — the most expensive Omega ever sold at auction — bought by Omega for its own museum, then denounced by Omega as a Frankenstein. The record, the unravelling, and what archive papers can never prove.
🎧 Also a 7-minute podcast episode — now on Spotify.
Membership
The Circle
Fifty-seven places for the 1957 debut. The Saturday numbers in full, the Morning Brief, first quiet word on occasionally available pieces, and the Collector's Library — for collectors who believe a watch is worth understanding before it is worth owning.
Moonwatch Tidbits
Quick studiesDid you know?
Short, sourced facts from the Speedmaster’s flight history — one card at a time.
The $82.50 space watch
NASA reportedly paid about $82.50 apiece for the chronographs it bought to qualify for spaceflight in 1964 — Corvette money, it was not.
Source: widely reported NASA procurement historyThe first Speedmaster in space wasn’t NASA’s
Wally Schirra wore his personal CK 2998 aboard Sigma 7 on October 3, 1962 — three years before NASA qualified the watch officially.
Source: NASA Mercury-Atlas 8 mission recordFourteen seconds, timed by hand
When Apollo 13’s crew needed a precise 14-second course-correction burn, Jack Swigert timed it on his Speedmaster. It worked.
Source: NASA Apollo 13 mission recordWhy hesalite, not sapphire
NASA specified an acrylic (hesalite) crystal: if struck, it wouldn’t shatter into free-floating shards inside the cabin. Safety, not luxury.
Source: NASA chronograph qualification criteriaThe last watch standing
Several brands’ chronographs entered NASA’s eleven-test qualification gauntlet in 1964–65. The Speedmaster was the only one to pass them all.
Source: NASA qualification test reportsSixty years ago
Gemini 11 launched on September 12, 1966 — Pete Conrad and Dick Gordon, with Speedmasters on their wrists for the record-altitude flight.
Source: NASA Gemini 11 mission recordThis week in Moonwatch history
Week of October 24, 2026.
Earth, seen from space for the first time
A 35-millimetre camera rides a V-2 rocket from White Sands to 65 miles up and returns the first photographs of Earth taken from space — the film, protected in a steel cassette, survives the fall. Every Earthrise and Blue Marble since starts here.
Go deeper: The first photo from space — via the Smithsonian →SA-1: the first Saturn flies
The first Saturn I lifts off from Cape Canaveral on a 15-minute suborbital test, its dummy upper stage reaching 84.8 miles. It is the first step of the rocket family that will carry Speedmasters — and their crews — to the Moon.
Go deeper: SA-1 launches — via NASA →John Glenn goes back up — at 77
Thirty-six years after Friendship 7, John Glenn returns to orbit aboard Discovery on STS-95, at 77 the oldest person to reach Earth orbit. The same year, NASA flight-qualifies the Speedmaster X-33 — the lineage his generation started is still being issued.
Go deeper: STS-95 — via NASA →Myths vs facts
Lore is part of the hobby — but it’s worth knowing which stories hold up.
Myth
“Neil Armstrong wore his Speedmaster on the Moon.”
Armstrong’s 105.012 stayed aboard the Lunar Module as a backup timer. The watch worn on the lunar surface was Buzz Aldrin’s — the one that later went missing on its way to the Smithsonian.
Check it: Armstrong’s watch at the Smithsonian → · our episode “The Eagle Has Landed” →Myth
“The Ultraman was a special Speedmaster model.”
“Ultraman” is a collector nickname for certain 145.012 references with an orange chronograph seconds hand — named for the Japanese TV hero’s color scheme. Omega never made it an official model.
Check it: the 145.012 in our reference guide →Myth
“We know the missing Moonwatch’s serial number.”
Serial numbers for Aldrin’s watch circulate online, but none is verified. The identification of the missing watch as his flown piece is conventional, not certain — treat any published serial as unconfirmed.
Check it: our full investigation → · our episode “The Watch That Never Came Home” →The Reading Room
Week of October 22 picks — interesting reads from elsewhere on the web. We link; we don’t copy: the one-line summaries below are our own words, and every article belongs to its publisher.
The Speedmaster Reduced, Revisited
Fratello returns to the 1988 Reduced — the roughly 39mm automatic, modular movement and all, that opened Speedmaster ownership to a generation — and asks whether Omega’s new Speedmaster 38 finally carries its spirit forward.
via Fratello Watches · read the article →What Would Bring the Vintage Speedmaster Market Back?
Fratello On Air takes the long quiet in the vintage market head-on — the modern lineup has never been better, yet the old fire is missing — and wonders whether limited editions, fresh history, and astronaut-led fan outreach could light it again.
via Fratello Watches · read the article →NASA Fires an RS-25 for a Full Flight’s Worth
At Stennis on October 21, NASA ran developmental RS-25 No. 10001 for 500 seconds at up to 111% power — a full SLS ascent’s worth — to prove new flight hardware and nozzle protection for future Artemis missions.
via NASA · read the article →Armstrong’s Apollo 11 Jacket Finds No Buyer
The American Space Museum’s October 17 charity auction drew barely 108 bidders, and Armstrong’s Apollo 11 training jacket — expected at $800,000 to $1.2 million — went unsold: a quiet day for even the rarest Apollo cloth.
via Florida Today · read the article →Where to see them
The surviving flown Speedmasters, where they’re on display today. Loans rotate, so confirm before traveling — and the full story, including the one that never came home, is told in the Journal.
National Air and Space Museum — Washington, DC
The Destination Moon gallery holds three flown pieces in one room: Armstrong’s Apollo 11 backup-timer watch, Collins’s 145.012, and Gordon Cooper’s Gemini V Speedmaster. Most of the museum’s 63 astronaut chronographs live in storage.
via Destination Moon gallery → · Armstrong’s record → · Collins’s record →Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex — Florida
Pete Conrad’s Apollo 12 Speedmaster — the third man on the Moon’s watch — has been shown in the Treasures Gallery in an Omega-supported exhibit, on loan from the Smithsonian. Call ahead before making the trip.
via Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex →Omega Museum — Biel/Bienne, Switzerland
Cernan’s Apollo 17 watch — the last man on the Moon’s Speedmaster — remains on display, alongside the gold Apollo XI commemoratives presented to Nixon and Agnew. The museum acquired Evans’s Apollo 17 heat-flow-experiment watch at auction in 2015 and has shown Gordon’s Apollo 12 Speedmaster on loan from the Smithsonian; galleries rotate, so confirm before traveling.
via OMEGA Museum — hours & admission →From the vaults
The ones you can’t go see — flown Speedmasters in storage, out on loan, or back from the wilderness. Same rules: we link; we don’t copy, and every article belongs to its publisher.
The one in storage
Dave Scott wore this watch on his first two lunar spacewalks during Apollo 15, then NASA passed it to the museum in 1977. The collection record’s current verdict: not on display — on loan or in storage.
via National Air and Space Museum · collection record →The ones out on loan
How 50-plus flown Speedmasters ended up at the Smithsonian — and how Michael Collins once wore a watch he thought was his until the serial number said it was Neil Armstrong’s. A 2015 snapshot; the loan rotation has shifted since.
via Smithsonian Magazine · read the article →The one that was stolen — and came home
Donn Eisele’s Apollo 7 Speedmaster was stolen from a Quito museum in 1989, surfaced at a Florida watch show and on eBay, then came home in 2017 when someone surrendered it to the FBI in Houston.
via Space.com · read the article →The flight archive · 1962–1975
The watch, in its element.
Six chapters trace the Speedmaster from Schirra’s personal CK 2998 to the watches of Apollo–Soyuz. Open an era to see the missions, photographs, and reference families within it.
Preparing the archive…
Beyond the flight years: the Rarities — prototypes, tributes and oddities from the deep end of the collection. Go deeper →
The Screening Room
Fact & fiction · two ways to watchTwenty-nine public-domain films trace the arc from the Moonshot speech to Apollo–Soyuz — launches, spacewalks, and the lunar surface the Speedmaster was built for. And Hollywood’s Moonwatch: 28 films, 7 series and 2 documentaries of verified Speedmaster screen appearances. Enter the Screening Room →
Screening Room · September 12, 1962“We choose to go to the Moon”The speech that set the clock — and gave the Speedmaster its destination.
Screening Room · June 3, 1965Ed White’s spacewalkThe first American spacewalk, with a Speedmaster 105.003 on the wrist.
Screening Room · July 16, 1969Apollo 11 launchLiftoff from Pad 39A — eight days to the first watch on the Moon.
Screening Room · FictionHollywood’s Moonwatch28 films, 7 TV series, 2 documentaries — the collector’s journey through every verified Speedmaster appearance on screen.
From the collection — occasionally available
Collector to CollectorPieces surface here from time to time, collector to collector. When it’s gone, it’s gone.
OMEGA SPEEDMASTER PROFESSIONAL145.022-69 ST “Pre-Moon”Serviced · DON bezel · In the collection — not currently offered