Eterna-matic 130T KonTiki – Hands – The Blomman Watch Report

Back in 1958 when the first Eterna-matic reference 130T KonTiki was introduced, it was with “Mercedes hands” similar to what we are used to see on Rolex divers watches…

The interesting thing is that if you make a search on the Internet you find very few, if any of the first KonTiki divers with “Mercedes hands”…

Most of the 130T you will find have the same hands as mine – Dauphine hands with big lume.

Eterna-matic 130T KonTiki – big lume Dauphin hands

Here is a document from 1958 “La Montre et les métiers” (Watch and trades).

The KonTiki with “Mercedes hands” and big lollipop seconds hand. Fun side note, the Rolex Submariner shown do not have the characteristic “Mercedes hands”:

Second version of hands shown in documents are more traditional Dauphine hands with only a thin line of lume and no lollipop seconds hand – like in this ad from 1959:

Some with thin lume you can observe while searching the Internet…

But still, most you will find with the same hands as mine… Big lume triangles and no lollipop on the seconds hand.

So are they replacement hands? – I would say no! A) Too many with the exact same hands B) looking at this ad from 1961 which show the exact configuration like my watch:

My take on this is – Eterna planned to use the “Mercedes hands” and possible prototypes and the very first batch used the “Mercedes hands”.

By some reason they changed their mind and went for Dauphine hands instead, but the first version had too thin lume to really work for a divers watch…

So instead they changed to the big lume Dauphine hands which is why that is the most common version of hands even if less common in documents…

Even if these documents span over three years – I suspect these changes happened quite fast. A) Due to the number of big lume hands that can be seen B) There is often a delay in documents. If existing model, often an old image is used C) My watch, based on the movement number is from 1958.