Bulova: 1966 Accutron Astronaut. Astronaut Astronaut Astronaut Case: Stainless steel. Movement : 214 Series. Dial: Luminous painted hour markers, luminous painted dots at the half-hour markers. Hands: Luminous hour and minute hands. Bezel: Stainless steel M KKK with engraved black numerals and half-hour indices.
Good find on the Astronaut "A" ad. The "A" looks like the un-named variant in the first ad. Maybe they are pseudonyms. I'll check the Bulova Model price lists to see if the Astronaut and Astronaut "A" have the same unique production number. The name may have been changed to include the "A" shortly after the first 1963 ad Fifth linked above. Maybe this model would be the base name for 1963 production years, and then becomes the "A" by the date of your ad. What year was the "A" ad?
In reply to Good find on the Astronaut by William Smith
Thanks OT. Not too much help from the Bulova model price lists. I checked the late 1961 list, and although lots of Accutrons listed by this time, none as the Astronaut. Didn't think there would be this early. The next list is Fall 1964, and it had an Astronaut "A" listed, but didn't have a generic Astronaut. Could be that the generic became the A shortly after manufacture (between the 1961 list and phased out as such by the 1964 list), or it could have been the A all along- like you note- the first ad just didn't show the variant letter. Sure looks like the "A" now. It's also a later year of production (1966). Here's a snippet of the Fall 1964 list for Astronaut:
Wonder why the "C" cost a thousand bucks? I'm pretty sure if we researched the various model numbers (at left) for the thousand-plus models in the lists, we would see numeric patterns consistent with change in gold, diamonds, color of metal and dial, and maybe some other patterns which may give us a hint, but be otherwise near-useless at the level of ID'ing to a variant....unless we find an un-named variant astronaut ad w/ a $1000 price.
Accutron Astronaut Variant Guide .
Link: http://www.watchtalkforums.info/forums/bulova-accutron-forum/34748.htm
In reply to Accutron Astronaut Variant by peter-g
Checking on first year of Astronaut production. Yep, 1962 as I thought. Somewhere around the mid '60s the word "Bulova" was added to the dial. Sometimes early Astronauts are seen with all three words because they have either had the original movement replaced with a newer one or been re-dialed.
Sheer speculation: What would a Platinum cased version have cost at that time?
In reply to Checking on first year of by oliverb
In reply to oliverb Using the link by William Smith
In reply to Bulova did produce both 14K by oliverb
