Posted by Through the mid and end of the 1950’s, “Mystery dials” were very popular. Mostly in the North American market but also here in Europe.
Several brands competed in this category and one of these brands was of course Jaeger-LeCoultre.
The most common of these Mystery dial watches from LeCoultre was the Galaxy, often in 14K white or yellow gold and with different diamond settings on the dial. Yes, these were men’s watches even if with today’s fashion a lot of ladies likes them!
These Mystery dials are much more common labelled LeCoultre for the North American market than Jaeger-LeCoultre for the European market. Guess these kind of watches were more popular “over there” than here in Europe.
The technical solution that Jaeger-LeCoultre choose; hands are applied on two rotating disks which turns same as normal hands. The top disk is a transparent disk on which the minute hand is applied creating the “floating hands” effect.
As mentioned, most of these watches had diamonds on the dial but there were other versions without. Here is one from 1959.
Another interesting detail on this watch is the “LeC” crown. I have observed this type of crowns on some of the 1950’s LeCoultre watches I have seen, but not on all. Still not enough data to be able to narrow down exactly which period these were in use.
Jaeger-LeCoultre was not the only brand with Mystery dials, here is a scan from 1958 showing some other examples.
Yes, the Jaeger-LeCoultre universe is both wide and deep – please join me in my journey to uncover it all!
The Blomman Watch Report 