Breitling Navitimer Cosmonaute Serie Speciale A12023

The Navitimer is Breitling's best known series, and a personal favourite here at Watch Vault. It’s is classic Breitling, and a design that has endured the test of time and still finds itself at the top of the pile in the Aeronautical derived watches.

The version we have here is the Cosmonaute, itself a pretty special subset of the Navitimer range. The story goes that Scott Carpenter, and American Astronaut, requested a special Navitimer be made with a 24 hour time scale rather than the traditional 12 hour, to easily distinguish between AM and PM in space. Breitling obliged, and in 1962 Carpenter wore a Cosmonaute into orbit, the first wrist watch to do so on an American Astronaut. Pretty cool, huh?

This particular example is known as the A12023, and while any in this series is perhaps seen as one of the more special (or speciale as it's name states) Cosmonautes made in the last few decade, this particular spec is where it's at its best. It features a stunning sunburst blue dial with almost tropical rose gold coloured sub-dials, to go along with its Tritium numerals. This gives it a very vintage vibe, which is solidified with the movement used, and the reason for the 'Speciale' moniker, a manual wind calibre 12 (based on the Lemania 1873) visible through a sapphire caseback. The tritium markers, hands and deep tropical-like sub-dials combined with this movement make it one of the coolest Navi's in the past 30 years, and were apparently only produced in around 3000 units across a 4 years run.

This particular example was first sold in 1996 and presents in excellent neo-vintage condition.The highly polished case shows some signs of regular use in the form of scuffs and swirlies, but no dings, dents or scrapes are present. Please see images for full condition details.

The dial remains tritium, and is in fantastic condition. The sub-dials are a deep, consistent colour, with just a small blemish on the running seconds counter at 9, and minute totalizer at 3.

The service history is unknown. It is winding very smoothly, and keeping COSC time at over 300 degrees of amplitude when measured dial-up on a timegrapher. Chrono starts, stops and resets as it should.

Includes outer box, inner box, warranty booklet (expired), Slide Rule, instruction booklet, document holder and Breitling leather strap.

An amazing example of one of Breitlings coolest references from the 90's.

Brand: Breitling

Model #: A12023

Style: Aviation

Case Material: Stainless Steel

Case details: 41.5mm x 13.3mm

Bracelet: Breitling 'gator on Breitling Tang Buckle, Breitling Blue Leather

Movement: Manual wind Lemania Chronograph

Dial: Blue 

Hands: Tritium

Paraphernalia: Outer box, inner box, warranty booklet (expired), Slide Rule, instruction booklet, document holder and Breitling leather strap

Grading: Excellent Neo-Vintage

Watch Vault utilises the TZ grading system. Please see below for details.