Help Identifying Vintage JLC?

[broudie]

Hi new member first post. I recently bought this watch, and have been asking around if the dial was original. Many have said that a watch of this age should have radium lume, and it looks like the dial was relumed at some point, and a "T" added to the "SWISS" at the bottom. However, what is mysterious to me is while the lume was applied pretty poorly, the "T" was pretty well done.




The closest thing that I have seen was this picture from a military watch forum, which has the strikingly similar sloppy lume and excellent but lopsided "T"




My watch has a smooth caseback and does not have "MN" markings

[zafbasha]

Apologies for the late response. I think your dial is legit. It is likely the dials were stored without radium and the luminous material was done in batches as the need arose.

When they started using tritium, they added a T (or maybe it was there to begin with) and lumed them in tritium. This all happened around 1963 or so.

[broudie]

Better late than never!

The "T" looks to be added on to the side of the "swiss" as the "swiss" is centered but "swiss T" is lopsided.

But what about the lume itself? is it common for a JLC to apply lume this sloppy?

[zafbasha]

I think it is possible yes, but it is atypical.