From completely battered, to fully functioning watch.

Usually, I don’t buy watches on auctions, as majority of them are battered to be perfectly frank with you. However, when I say this poor little Seamaster 300M and it’s nicely fading, battle-tested bezel insert, I decided to bring it back to a similar condition from its glorious days.
When I picked this watch up from the auction house, I was stunned by the amount of work needed to be done, in order to make it wearable again. When I got back and tested it properly, I was utterly speechless. These are two photos from from the day I picked it up.
The obvious things that this watch needed rectified were scratches, dents, blemishes from throughout the whole watch (bracelet, case). I thought that was it. However, look at this weird circle at the centre of the dial. Initially, I didn’t know what could this be. It turned out it was a smudge from condensation. Hence, I knew this watch needed a full service to make sure everything is properly cleaned and dry inside. The next thing I checked was how the watch was running when tested on a time grapher machine. It was gaining about 50 seconds a day with quite low amplitude, begging for a full maintenance. However, I did not give up and instead, came up with an idea of bringing the whole watch back to its former glorious days. I wasn’t actually sure about how much the whole operation would cost me to be frank with you. The watch needed so much care and I mean ...