Don't miss the next drop
A 1960s Vintage Omega Ladymatic ref. 566.002 with a US Steel corporate presentation medallion applied to the silver sunburst dial, stainless steel case on a signed Omega beads-of-rice bracelet, and the cal. 681 automatic running underneath. In our opinion, this is one of the more honest small-format Omega automatics from the decade, and the surviving USS dial medallion turns it into a piece of mid-century American corporate history rather than just another nicely preserved Ladymatic.
Omega launched the Ladymatic line in 1955 as the first ladies’ automatic wristwatch the brand had ever produced, and the engineering brief was non-trivial. Fitting a self-winding rotor into a movement small enough to sit comfortably under a sub-25mm case took the manufacture years, and the 11.5-ligne automatic platform that came out of that work eventually grew into the 680 / 681 / 682 family. By the time this 566.002 left Bienne in the back half of the 1960s, the Ladymatic name was a decade old and the caliber underneath had been refined into one of the more reliable small automatics in the Swiss industry.
The caliber 681 is the date-equipped, sweep-seconds variant of that family, in production from roughly 1961 through 1971 and running at 19,800 vibrations per hour. It is a tiny movement, 17.5mm across, with a full rotor riding a copper-plated mainplate that takes on a warm rose hue with age. The rotor on the example in hand is signed OMEGA WATCH CO in the arched cursive that matches the period exactly, and the bridge work shows the patient, slightly indulgent finishing Omega still applied to ladies’ calibers at this point in the company’s history. For context, this is the same platform that powered the ladies’ Dynamic and certain small Seamasters of the same era, and the 682 chronometer-grade sibling above it is one of the only chronometer-certified small ladies’ automatics ever made.
The case is stainless steel, round, with a smooth polished bezel and a snap-on caseback that opens to the movement photograph you see in the gallery. The inner caseback is stamped, verbatim, with the Omega Watch Co. triangle logo, FAB. SUISSE, SWISS MADE, ACIER INOXYDABLE, 566.002, and the small Omega case-maker cartouche at the bottom edge. The outer back is plain brushed steel, scratched honestly across its decades of wear but never refinished, which is exactly what we want to see on a watch this size. The Omega-signed crown at 3 is original, the lugs are unpolished, and the acrylic crystal sits clean over the dial. We measure roughly 22mm across the bezel, around 27mm lug-to-lug, and an 11mm lug width that ties straight into the bracelet endlinks.
The dial is the headline. A silver sunburst with applied black baton hour markers, the classic Omega cursive logo at 12, a polished date aperture at 3, and a small applied gold USS shield at 6, the corporate mark of United States Steel, the company that ordered the watch as a service-award or recognition piece. The print across the bottom reads SWISS MADE without surrounding tritium markers, which is consistent with a no-lume dress dial from this period rather than a luminous variant. The hands are slim black batons with pointed tips, paired with a fine sweep seconds, all original to the watch, and the sunburst still flashes through the crystal at every angle. There is the faintest peppering of dial speckle visible only on macro inspection, which we read as a graceful sixty-year aging signature, not a problem to be hidden.
We have left the watch on its period-correct Omega-signed beads-of-rice bracelet in stainless steel, with the folding clasp stamped No.12 STAINLESS STEEL Ω OMEGA on the underside, exactly the kind of dressed-up but quietly engineered bracelet that suited the Ladymatic line from the factory. The bracelet fits to a 7-inch wrist and gives the package a coherent mid-century identity that a modern leather pairing would honestly undersell.
Serviced in-house at OTTUHR and backed by our 2-year mechanical warranty, this is one of those vintage Omega Ladymatic pieces where the watchmaking is solid and the provenance is the story. For the collector who values an unrepainted dial, an original signed crown, and a piece of small corporate history over a polished show piece, this US Steel 566.002 is, to us, exactly the right kind of unusual.
