15 May 2012, 23:08
Crystals of this type were done for all the "big three"; Hamilton, Pulsar, and Omega. Looking at one under high magnification now leads me to believe that the logo is not done in gold leaf. At 90X there is still not the slightest suggestion of any "thickness". I'm guessing now that this was done with some sort of "masking" process, where the lettering was left open, and the rest of the surface was covered in some removable material (this is very similar to the way printed circuit boards are made). Then, the glass was placed in a vacuum chamber, and pure gold was evaporated on it. The masking material is then removed, leaving only the gold lettering behind. The result is pretty, but has almost no durability, due to the thinness and softness of the gold. There are also laminated sapphire timescreens for the Pulsar Pulse-Time and Classic that have silver logos done in similar fashion (except the logo is on the underside of the clear sapphire top layer, and had to be done in reversed lettering, in order to read correctly; this did seem to adequately address the durability issue). These crystals are quite rare, also.