Two Panerai Ref. 3646 Vintage Up For Grabs at Christies

Going through my normal day and a nice email pops up in my inbox from Christie’s Auction for their latests watch auction that will be coming up on Novemeber 14, 2016 in Geneva. This auction will feature a number of rare watches from many manufacturers but of course the ones I am interested in are a couple vintage Panerai from the early 40’s up for grabs.

Both pieces that will be for sale are Panerai Ref. 3646, but they are two different types. The first piece is a Ref. 3646 with a Type C dial which is Circa 1943. As soon as I saw the piece and the case number, I knew I had seen this before, I just had to remember where. Then it hit me! I had read about this very piece on one of the most authoritative people on the subject of vintage Panerai and their movements, Jose Pereztroika.

Jose wrote an article about this exact Ref. 3646 Type C being sold on Chrono24 back in March. He has a complete breakdown of the history on this exact piece. Here is a little snippet of the observations.


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The case/movement/movement retaining ring/crown combination of this watch is perfect! Unfortunately the vendor failed to disclose the replacement and artificial aging of the hands. However, the big issue with this watch is the dial and the low bezel, they simpy don’t belong to this type of watch. This is probably something the owner is not aware of. If this watch remained in service after WW2 it is very much possible that the changes were made as part of maintenance or repair. It would be interesting to know the provenance and history of this watch.

The second watch in this auction is the Ref. 3646 Type B circa 1940. Unfortunately we don’t have too much information and provenance for this piece.

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The Type C dial is estimated to go between CHF 50,000 & CHF 80,000 and the Type B dial has it’s estimation at between CHF 60,000 – CHF 90,000.

Lets keep an eye out and see how they perform in the next few days especially with a lot of the vintage pieces not bringing as much as they have in the past.

 

 

 

 

 

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One comment

  1. The second watch is a 3646 Type B with case number 1010024 and ultra rare “Xa FLOTMAS No. 38” engravings. Possibly a WW2 souvenir brought home my a GI. The crown has been replaced twice but nevertheless a fantastic watch. “Strong buy”!

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