The 38 Wildest, Funkiest, Most Historic Watches I Saw at the Omega Museum

Plus the logos, boxes, order forms, and advertisements I can’t stop thinking about.Cam Wolf; GQLast week, I visited Omega’s headquarters in Biel/Bienne, my favorite city with a forward slash in its name. The Swiss city is so intertwined with watchmaking that the top tourist attractions on TripAdvisor are the museums for Swatch and Omega, as well as the former’s drive-through shop where you can order a watch and have it brought out to your car in a burger box. Luckily, my agenda included all of these destinations.On Wednesday, I lingered at the Omega Museum. By the end of my visit, my Omega bingo card was full of all the obvious candidates: I’d seen Speedmasters that had been to the moon and Seamasters that had starred in 007 flicks. But the exhibits I really fell in love with displayed the full breadth of Omega’s weird-and-wacky oeuvre, dove deep on the brand’s vintage logos, and explored the glimmering, coked-up designs of the ’80s. Below, I’m sharing my 38 favorite watches—plus a few bonus non-watch items—that I spotted while walking through the museum. (Beware: If crappy iPhone photos aren’t your thing, maybe quit while you’re ahead.)Part 1: PocketwatchesAt the 1900 Universal Expo in Paris, Omega won the grand prize for the accuracy of its entire collection. During that same fair, it also unveiled this pocket watch that mimics the gaudy architecture of a Greek temple. Chronos, the god of time, sits at the center. Did the dial makers have to make him so studly?Before everyone had the FanDuel app on their iPhone, pocket watch owners in the late 19th-century could take this special piece equipped with a roulette wheel out for some casual gambling. Rather than keeping the time, the hand in the center would spin before landing on a random number, replicating all the fun and glamour of a night in Monte Carlo in bite-sized form.I love everything about this pocket watch—the blue-and-gold combo, the jagged, angular numerals, the vintage Omega logo.While the previous watch has perfect numerals, this one has perfect hands—like a slithering snake or a half-coiled spring. You can practically hear them go BOING!They’re smaller canvases, but we should really be using more wristwatch casebacks as canvases for beautiful artwork and designs.This watch is very Mister, Mister, read all about it—the Hudson haberdasher handcrafts horology with hot, hot numerals! I want it badly.Part 2: Reporting for DutyThese watches were produced and jerry-rigged for WWI trench warfare. It’s fascinating to see the different tactics makers used to protect soldiers’ watches.During WWII, Omega began making watches for the UK’s Royal Air Force. The symbol on the dial of this model, which vaguely resembles a spade from a deck of cards, is known as the Broad Arrow and denotes that it was made for the Ministry of Defence. This is important because that backstory is what would theoretically connect Omega to James Bond, were he a real guy.This vintage ad is so quaint. It doesn’t even get to the point until about two-thirds of the way down, and when it finally does, the big takeaway is that approximately half of the pieces made for the Royal Air Force came from Omega. How could you even translate this for TikTok?? This ad features more text than most Americans read in a year.Part 3: ConstellationSome of the prettiest watches Omega ever made were these early Constellation De Luxe pieces (I’ve also seen them referred to as “Grand Luxe” and “Deluxe”). The watch debuted in 1952 and was made to commemorate eight timing and precision records that Omega set during observatory trials in the early 20th century. This all-gold version of the model is comes with a bracelet that I can only describe like a food writer hyping up a great sauce: I want to put it on everything.If Omega put any of its current lineup in this sexy red box, I’d buy one today.Part 4: John F. Kennedy Jr.One of the coolest pieces in the museum is the Omega “Slimline” that Grant Stockdale gave to then-Senator John F. Kennedy Jr. Even though JFK was still in the process of running for president when he received this watch, his buddy put a prophetic engraving on the caseback: “President of the United States John F. Kennedy From His Friend Grant.” Kennedy wore this watch during his inauguration speech in January 1961. In the museum, the watch is held taut and endlessly twirled on a pedestal.Part 5: The KingBefore we even get to the peanut-butter-and-bacon-loving elephant in the room, this is one of the most elegant pieces in the entire museum. The 33-millimeter dress model is set with diamonds and even carries a Tiffany & Co. stamp on the dial. Presley’s record label RCA gave him the watch to celebrate his selling 75 million records, which explains the inscription, “To Elvis, 75 Million Records, RCA Victor, 12-25- 60.” The story goes that Presley eventually swapped the piece with a stranger who complimented it. In return, the King got the admirer’s equally blingy Hamilton.This watch came up for auction at Phillips in 2018 and eventually sold, after a heated bidding war, directly to the Omega museum for $1.8 million, setting a record for the most expensive Omega at the time.Part 6: Air, Land, and SeaOmega launched the Seamaster all the way back in 1948, and it remains as foundational to the brand as the space-exploring Speedy. The line has splintered off over the decades to include countless variations, including the 300, Diver 300M, Ploprof, Planet Ocean, and Aqua Terra. These colorful ’70s “Soccertime” Seamasters are such fun oddities. Why would a dive watch have a chronograph designed for soccer referees to time matches? When it looks this cool, I’m willing to look past the complete lack of logic.This panda-dial Seamaster (ref. 145.006-66) with a glowing orange hand, not totally unlike the one on the beloved “Ultraman” Speedy, is one of the sleekest watches on display in B/B. My tour guide that morning said that if he could rip any watch out of its glass case and bring it home, it would be this one. As an added bonus, this version of the Seamaster is animated by one of the most famous movements ever made, the Caliber 321, a.k.a. the engine that powered the Speedmasters that went to the moon.From timers for soccer matches to dive pieces known as “THE BANANA” (reference 166.068), the Seamaster really does it all.These watches represent one of the best embraces of quartz by the Swiss watch industry. Rather than run from the technology by building even more prestigious and expensive mechanical watches, Omega released these futuristic-looking versions of the Seamaster in the mid-’80s. Known as the Recife, these are as rare as almost anything else in the museum. This model was only in production for a single year, 1984, and less than 1,000 are thought to have made it out of the factory. The stripped-back look is very reminiscent of Porsche Design pieces, which started concocting its signature aesthetic upon launch in the ’70s.I’m such a sucker for cloisonné dials, and there are reportedly only five of these pieces featuring Neptune. And when Omega was deciding which watch should house this handmade work of art, which model did they land on? The Seamaster.Part 7: Air, Land, and SeaDespite having already outfitted actual astronauts with the Speedmaster, Omega decided it needed an actual watch designed for pilots and launched the Flightmaster in 1969. The watch is oversized and designed to be highly legible in spite of its seven (!!) hands on the dial. The gold version was extraordinarily heavy—250 grams—and the first one ever made was delivered to King Hussein of Jordan.Part 8: Say Hello to My Little FriendsIn the ’70s and ’80s, Omega designers were apparently moved by the spirit of the times. I wasn’t expecting to find such a wide range of sparkling gold watches. Nowadays, when you buy a luxury watch at a boutique, it’s traditional to bring out a glass of champagne. With these pieces, I imagine a complimentary line of coke accompanied the purchase. The above piece, known as La Magique, was worn by Tony Montana in the movie Scarface.There was nothing Omega wouldn’t dress up in gold during the ’70s. This last example is the epically named the Megaquartz 2400. When this piece was released in 1974, Omega seemed resigned to the fact that quartz was the future of the luxury watch industry, so it spruced up the inelegant movement in a solid-gold case and stuck it with a very pretty aventurine stardust dial.A different type of watch from the ones above, but undeniably a product of the ’70s. Nowadays, these digital-display timepieces are easy to dismiss as cheap Urban Outfitters-fare, but 50 years ago, this would have seemed like an alien artifact dropped from the heavens. It’s cool to look back and see how high-end brands like Omega and Hamilton experimented with this technology.Part 9: Air, Land, and Sea SpaceThe most important object in the museum is this Speedy: the last watch worn on the moon during 1972’s Apollo 17 mission! Astronaut Eugene Cernan first wore this reference 105.003 during the 1966 Gemini IX mission and considered it a lucky charm after his ship’s successful voyage. Cernan wore the watch again during the 1969 Apollo 10 mission and, finally, walked on the moon in it two years later. The museum has preserved the watch exactly as it was upon receipt—completely scratched up and missing its bezel.There are several other extremely important space-related watches on site. The very first Omega in space, worn by astronaut Wally Schirra during the Mercury-Atlas 8 mission in 1962, is displayed in a special orb that makes it nigh-impossible to photograph. I’m nearly embarrassed to show you the image I collected of it, which is really saying something based on the quality of photos that have already appeared here.Astronaut Gordo Cooper’s Speedmaster on a mesh bracelet produced by legendary maker JB Champion. Omega needs to start offering that design as an add-on for the current Speedies.To commemorate Apollo 11’s historic moon landing, Omega produced 1,014 of these ridiculously beautiful solid-gold Speedmasters and gave them as gifts to important figures involved in the mission. This exact one was supposed to go to Richard Nixon, but presidential gift limits prevented him from accepting it.After getting the Speedy approved for NASA flight, Omega got overzealous in trying to assist its new partner. Without even being asked, the brand started testing new watches, under the codename Alaska Project, that were built to handle the extreme conditions of space exploration even better than the Speedmaster. Omega basically got friend-zoned when it presented these prototypes to NASA in the late ’60s. Thanks, but no thanks, the organization said.Omega released a Speedmaster inspired by these zany watches with tubular bezels in 2008. However, that variant didn’t go nearly far enough for my tastes—I hope one day we’ll get a version of the Speedy with a shiny red bezel that takes full advantage of the inspiration provided by this funny chapter in Omega’s history.One of the absolute coolest things I saw wasn’t a watch at all, but the order form NASA submitted to purchase its Speedmasters. Good for that Assistant Sales Manager!I asked Nick Federowicz of Ad Patina about this one. “This is definitely one of those ‘historic’ ads, especially considering how big an impact the space angle played in growing Omega and the Speedmaster following and love,” he told me. I saw some similarities to Rolex's famous “If You Were…” campaign but Federowicz found a version of this headline in a 1966 British magazine. That would predate the Crown's take on the concept.Part 10: Fun and GamesBetween its duties outfitting astronauts and James Bond, I sometimes feel that Omega’s status as the official timekeeper of the Olympics flies slightly under the radar. What I love about these watches, especially the Seamaster, is that they are just genuinely handsome pieces.Cam Wolf is GQ’s Watch Editor. He joined the magazine in 2017 after working at Racked (RIP) as the site’s (first!) (and only!) Menswear Editor and Complex in the role of Style News Editor. Shortly into his GQ tenure, he immersed himself in the world of watches and quickly fell ... Read More