OMEGA SPEEDMASTER MK40 - AN UNDERRATED CLASSIC
By: The Pilots Watch - @thepilotswatch
For as long I’ve been into watches, there’s one watch I haven’t been able to get out of my head. The history, legibility, and iconic design of the Omega Speedmaster make it one of the giants in watchmaking and it’s been said that no collection is complete without a Speedmaster.
The Speedmaster professional is as perfect as it is flawed - it’s a model that thrives on its idiosyncrasies. In a world of smartwatches and digital watches, it feels even more anachronistic than a regular mechanical watch because it’s a hand wound chronograph that beats at 3 Hz, has scant water resistance, and until the introduction of the Caliber 3861 didn’t even hack. However, it has a charm all its own for which there truly is no substitute. All this to say, the Speedmaster Professional Moonwatch is an absolutely iconic watch that carries a hefty price tag on the used market and is rapidly encroaching on Crown territory new without the grey market resale upside.
I definitely buy more watches than I need while remaining within a fairly strict fun money budget. That being said, I will buy myself a new Speedmaster Professional or First Omega in Space (my current obsession since the second it launched) to commemorate one of a few potential career and personal milestones within the next five years. However, five years is a long time to wait and my watch acquisition strategy has changed over the last 6 months or so. Getting back into watches, it was all about extracting value, maximizing resale potential, and establishing a varied collection. I skipped a large part of the “buying everything Seiko” phase of the watch enthusiasts journey and dove head on into micro brands. The design, value, and resale opportunities present in a number of micro brands are virtually unrivaled.
I absolutely love that phase of my collecting journey and there are plenty of micro brands I want to add to my collection - I still have yet to own a Lorier Olympia, a Baltic Aquascaphe Blue Gilt has been on my list for my entire journey, Wise makes some incredible 904L stainless steel dress divers, and I can always add more Zelos.
However, my Zelos collection was getting mildly out of hand. I was at 5 incredible pieces with many other watches in the box and I realized that my obsession with one admittedly fantastic brand was getting out of control and I wanted to get some more meaningful pieces.
Author's Zelos mini collection, the three center watches still in his collection
Like I’ve said, I try my best to adhere to a fairly strict watch budget. My rule is my bonus flight pay once a quarter is fun money/watch money. That ends up being around $700 a quarter that I can spend on watches. That amount of money is perfect for a higher end micro brand but more constraining when it comes to name brand pieces. So I decided that 2025 will be a year about quality over quantity. I had two pieces in mind: for the second half of the year, I’m planning on buying an early to mid 2000s Breitling Aerospace in 40mm with a blue dial. However, my collection was missing one thing that I didn’t want to wait half a decade for: a Speedmaster.
The Quest
My goal for 2025 was to find an affordable(ish) Speedmaster that could coexist with my eventual Speedmaster Professional or First Omega in Space. Not just any affordable Speedmaster: the goal was to find the coolest affordable Speedmaster that has a sense of it’s own character for under about $2000. The obvious initial choice would be to spring for a Speedmaster Automatic (more frequently known as the Speedmaster Reduced) in 39mm. It’s an easy call! The watch is almost the exact same design, comes in at my preferred size of 39mm, has an automatic movement, and is available with either Sapphire or Hessalite crystal.
Photo Credit: Worn & Wound
Here’s the rub - it’s too similar. While it encapsulates a large portion of the design of the Speedmaster professional, it doesn’t stray far enough from that design to still have a place in my collection when I do add the hand wound version. Also, servicing on the Speedmaster Reduced variants can be a pain because the movements aren’t actually purpose built chronographs. The reduced models come with an ETA 2892-A2 Base caliber with a Dubois-Depraz chronograph module bolted on top renamed by Omega the Cal 3220. This solution works but has some inelegance - the crown and chronograph pushers aren’t mounted on the same plane and the chronograph pushers lack the same satisfying feel. Also, servicing on the chronograph module can be difficult.
So, my initial idea off the table, off down the rabbit hole I dove. I fairly quickly decided that the date or day/date versions of the Speedmaster were where I should focus. They retain (for the most part) the 39mm form factor, feature highly complicated movements based on the legendary Valjoux 7750 and 7751 calibers, and have dial designs that different than the Speedmaster professional but still share some common DNA.
Narrowing a search down to a specific family however doesn’t make the search any easier. There are still a bewildering array of color and dial options available that significantly change the character of the timepiece. The most common variants fall under the broad category I’ll illustrate with this 3523.30: a stainless steel bezel, a sunburst dial in a number of colors, and a half moon pointer date hand. This piece is gorgeous, however, it doesn’t scratch my Speedmaster itch. It’s just a little bit too far from the original design and a little bit too dressy for my personal taste. It feels slightly too refined and slightly too fussy. It’s gorgeous, but it’s not the watch for me.
Ref - 3523.50 Photo Credit: The Omega Watch Page
The next choice which is honestly maybe my favorite triple date Speedmaster is the 3520.53. It has some incredibly use of color, Arabic numerals, a unique airplane date pointer, and a 24 hour subdial that’s divided into day and night. You can see exactly where some of the Omega Flight Qualified Speedster’s inspiration comes from. The FQ shares the same hour hands, borrows the airplane date hand for the chronograph seconds hand, and turns the day- night indicator on it’s side to create a simulacrum of an attitude indicator for the running seconds hand.
Ref - 3520.53 Photo Credit: The Omega Watch Page
The only problem with the 3520.53 is due to it’s uniqueness and relative rarity, it commands a significant price premium over all of the other Speedmaster Triple dates and thus fails the affordability part of my quest. I actually inquired with a dealer who somewhat specializes in triple dates about if there was any hope of sourcing one within my budget and the answer I got was, “If I could buy a dozen 3520.53’s within $1000 of that price, I’d buy them all in a heartbeat.”
So, with all of that out of the way, I decided the perfect object for my quest would be the Omega Speedster 3520.50, black dial, painted indices, black aluminum bezel, and an actual purpose built chronograph movement based on the legendary Valjoux caliber. The 3520.50 was produced between 1996 and 2001 with a switch from Tritium lume occurring sometime in the late 1990s. I love how Tritium lume patinas and so I narrowed down my search to a 3520.50 featuring a Tritium dial vice a Super Luminova dial because I wanted a piece that has some character already and will continue to build more character as time passes.
Ref - 3520.50 Photo Credit: The Omega Watch Page
Speedmaster aficionados in the room might note that there’s another reference that we haven’t talked about yet that’s technically “better in every way” to the 3520. When Omega retired the 3520 line in 2001, they came out with the 3220 line which features a slightly larger 40mm case, a chronometer certified Omega Caliber 3606, and a slightly updated design. This piece is slightly more refined in almost every way, applied lumed indices, steel lumed hands, and just an overall higher level of polish. My logical brain says that this is the piece to get as they can be found for almost the exact same price as the older non chronometer 3520.
However, this level of extra sophistication doesn’t appeal to my lizard brain in the same way. There’s something about the 3520 that reminds me of old analogue steam gauges in a cockpit that feels romantic in a way. The polished indices, shiny hands, and textured subdials don’t speak to my soul in the same way. Through addition, to me the 3220 lost some of the spirit of the Speedmaster Professional.
So, when the dealer I reached out to told me that he had a pair of 3520.50’s coming into stock and one of them had a Tritium dial and was serviced back in 2021, I immediately jumped at the opportunity. I sold off a Zelos and then waited eagerly by the mailbox until the piece arrived.
Photo taken by author, taken the day this piece arrived in the mail
It’s a 1999 piece with a dial that was probably produced a year or two earlier since 1998 seems to be the first year Omega started using super luminova instead of Tritium. It’s got 26 years of wear on it and has some quirks! It had clearly been worn and loved, there’s some marks on the bezel, a couple of small dings, and the bracelet hadn’t been taken off in years and I actually had to get a jeweler to Dremel cut the Spring bars for replacement because I couldn’t get the spring bars off! And with all of that, it’s perfect.
The Review
Photo by Author
Reference: Omega 3520.50.00 Price: $1800
Dimensions:
- 39mm width without crown, 41mm including crown - 13.8mm thick
- 44.5mm lug to lug, 49.9mm end link to end link
- 18mm lug width
Movement: Omega Caliber 1151. 25 Jewels.
Frequency: 4 Hz
Power Reserve: 42 Hours
Domed Sapphire Crystal with inner AR coating. (Single dome so no milky ring)
Automatic Chronograph. Day, date, month indications. 24 hour time. Hours/minutes/small seconds. 12 hour chronograph. Tachymeter Bezel.
Water Resistance: 50m if you’re bold enough to try
I’ve had this piece for several months now. It’s been up to FL280 (28,000 feet), it’s seen Mach .67, it’s seen over 400 knots groundspeed (about 460 mph), and it’s been exposed to forces of up to 6.8G’s and keeps on ticking without a hitch. I’ve used it to time workouts and runs when I forgot to charge my Garmin with zero issues and it handles that part of my life just as well as it handles setting a timer for five more minutes of TV before bath time. This piece loses exactly 10 seconds per day which I think is perfectly fine for a piece of it’s age that isn’t chronometer certified. This piece is absolutely an adventure companion although I wouldn’t recommend that any of those adventures involve water - I know it’s been serviced and gaskets have been replaced but I don’t want to find out the hard way if there are any issues! I have plenty of dive watches for water adventures!
This watch is perfect mainly because of its imperfections and quirks- its dial is fairly unbalanced and heavy on the left side and not the right. The numbers for the date get more and more squished on the left side of the dial and more spread out at the right side. There’s also just a ton of information on here and it can be initially overwhelming to try and make sense of. However, it provides all the information you might need and once you learn how to read it, all of that information is legible at a glance. I’ve gotten into the habit of starting the chronograph as my wheels go up and stopping it when they touch back down to track flight time and it’s pinpoint accurate and incredibly legible.
Conclusion
Photo by Author
This piece started as a hunt for an affordable Speedmaster that has it’s own personality. However, I’ve realized that it’s far more than that. This piece is funky, unique, oozes character, and is an absolute tool. Are these Speedmaster references ever going to skyrocket in value and be a crazy investment piece? Almost certainly not. However, in most of the videos and articles written about this watch, the conclusion is that it’s a fascinating offshoot of Omega history and a fun piece and a footnote in a collection. I think that opinion sells this piece so short. It’s a genuine tool watch in a wearable size with a highly complicated movement and a boatload and a half of character. If you’re the kind of watch enthusiast that pushes your glasses a bit further up your nose, says “It’s the caliber 321 or bust,” or poo poos the idea of an automatic Speedmaster, maybe you should look elsewhere. I love the handwound Speedmaster, I love the anachronistic nature of the handwound movement, the balance of the dial, the history in both racing, aviation, and spaceflight - it’s a perfect watch.
However, look a little deeper and there’s a watch that shares the same DNA and some kind of crazy different ideas that’s ready to share whatever non aquatic adventures you choose to throw at it. The Mk 40 maybe isn’t as legendary, but it certainly shouldn't be an afterthought!
