Omega Speedmaster Mitsukoshi ‘Domino Dial’ Project

Omega Speedmaster Pro ‘Moonwatch’ 3570.50 with Mitsukoshi Dial

Amongst the Heuer community, there is a healthy respect for vintage Universal Geneve and Zenith chronographs. Some of them are stunning, and a few really caught my eye. I looked into them, as you do, and there were a few disappointments, namely they are fairly small, quite pricey, and very hard to find in the right condition. My thoughts turned to a white ‘panda’ dial Carrera, but again, these aren’t exactly easy to find…

Then I spotted an Omega ‘Mitsukoshi’ custom conversion online somewhere & I dug a little deeper. I loved the look of it so found myself a standard black dialed Speedmaster Pro, and sourced a handset & dial from Ofrei. The conversion was fairly straight forward, my watch guy making short work of the parts swap. Click here to see the original regular Speedmaster that I bought.

During my time with the standard model, I actually really liked it, and while I waited for the Mitsukoshi parts to arrive, I managed to grab a ’69 example as a part trade to fill the hole it would leave after the conversion.

So, what is a Mitsukoshi?  Put simply, released in 2003 it was a limited edition Speedmaster Pro of 300 released by Omega in conjunction with one of Japan’s most famous departments stores – Mitsukoshi (they have a selection of exclusive worldwide Japanese restaurants too). The watch is essentially a regular Speedy with steel handset and a ‘domino’ dial. They were available exclusively from their store(s) in Japan, although a handful collectors managed to buy internationally. It is a stunning clean design and the 300 sold out very quickly. They do become available on the second hand market now and then, but they command big bucks.

My conversion isn’t identical to a true Mitsukoshi, which has all steel hands. I opted for a slightly different hand set-up, as I thought it was more ‘vintage-esk’ in it’s look, more like the Universal Geneve’s and Zeniths I admire so much.. therefore I only had the hour and minute hands changed from painted white to steel. The central sweep chrono hand and the subdial pins remain painted white, which I think looks better.