Breitling Premier B01 42 AB0145211G1P2: specs and what to check

Same calibre name, different sheet

This is the trap, and it is entirely avoidable if you read what the maker publishes instead of what you remember.

Breitling lists the movement here as Breitling 01 (Manufacture) — the same name it uses on the Navitimer and the Chronomat.

But the published specification is not the same:

• Jewels — 41 here; 47 on the Navitimer and Chronomat pages
• Chronograph — quarter seconds and 30 minutes here; quarter seconds, 30 minutes and 12 hours on those two

The reserve matches at approximately 70 hours, and the frequency at 28,800 v.p.h.

What a dealer does with that is simple. Do not write "Breitling 01, 47 jewels, 12-hour chronograph" from memory because that is what the calibre usually means. Copy what the reference's own page says. A buyer who counts the subdials in your photographs and finds no hour register has caught you in a factual error on the first thing they checked.

No hour counter changes how you demonstrate it

With a 30-minute totaliser and no hour register, the chronograph on this reference is for timing short intervals.

That makes the demonstration quicker and the inspection tighter. Start it, run it past the thirty-minute mark, and watch how the minute counter advances — it should step cleanly at each minute rather than drifting between marks. Then reset and confirm both hands fly back to exactly zero.

A reset that leaves the seconds hand a hair off zero is the most common chronograph fault there is, and on a watch with only two registers there is nowhere for it to hide.

Fixed bezel, push-pull crown

The bezel is fixed — nothing to turn, nothing to test beyond checking it is seated and unmarked.

The crown is non screw-locked, with two gaskets, and the case is rated 10 bars — 100 metres.

Say that combination out loud to a buyer: a hundred metres is a genuine rating for washing, rain and an accidental soaking, but the crown is push-pull, so it must be fully home before any of that is true. And warn them not to try to screw it down. People who own dive watches do this by reflex, and a stem or a case tube damaged by someone hunting for a thread that does not exist is a repair you would rather not inherit.

Check for it on inspection too: a crown that feels rough at the first push, or that will not sit flush, may already have been through this.

Cream is a colour that argues with cameras

Breitling describes the dial as cream.

Photograph it badly and it reads as white, yellow, grey or faintly green depending on your light source and your camera's automatic white balance — and a buyer who was told "white" and receives cream will assume the dial has aged.

Look at it in daylight and under artificial light yourself before you write the description. Then shoot it with a fixed white balance and a neutral grey card in one frame, so the buyer can see what your lighting was doing.

The strap is specified as curved alligator, tapering 22/18 mm to an 18 mm folding clasp, on lugs measured at 22.05 mm. Curved straps are shaped to meet the case; a straight strap substituted into curved lugs bulges and chafes. If the strap on your example is straight, it is not the original.

Case: 42 mm across, 13.6 mm thick, with cambered sapphire glareproofed on both sides and a screwed-in sapphire case back.