To help me avoid making a costly purchase mistake, I re-read the excellent
refrence article by Thomas Koening and Greg Steer looking for what I can learn
about the Mark XI variant that was sold to the civilian market. I noted the
following paragraph "IWC also sold genuine civilian Mk 11 watches. Two batches
of 500 pieces each have been identified from 1973 and 1983 and are
easy to distinguish from the military ones by the 7-digit case-number stamped
on the case back."
My two questions:
1. Have any civilian watches with the charcateristic 7-didgit number stamped
inside the case back been identified as having been produced in other years,
other than 1973 and 1983?
2. Have any civilian Mark XI been noted that have have movement numbers from
earlier production and case numbers from later production? In military issued
watches I understand that this is possible because MOD watchmakers were not
always meticulous about re-attaching case backs to their original cases after
they performed maintenance on the wtaches.
For dating cases and movements I used
www.moeb.ch/dyIWC/DYIWCh5/DateYourIWConline.html