One metal, from the clasp to the dial. This is the Octa Lune in 18K 6N gold with a matching 6N gold bracelet and a dial in 6N gold and whitened guilloche silver, offered at 38 mm or 40 mm. What separates it from later examples is the movement: this is the brass calibre 1300, which places the hours and minutes off center and the power reserve at 7:30, with the large date at 12 and the moon phase above. The generation that followed rearranged both of those. Production of this version ran from 2004 to 2015, and the bracelet was one of six configurations offered across two case metals and three dial and strap combinations. The reference has been out of the catalog for a decade, and no current model reproduces this layout.
Six N gold is an alloy Journe uses more than any other and it is worth understanding what makes it his. The N numbering describes the copper content and therefore the warmth, and 6N sits well up that scale: distinctly pink without tipping into the orange that higher numbers produce. Building a whole watch from it, case and bracelet and dial sections together, produces something that reads as a single object rather than as parts assembled from a bin. There is no boundary anywhere for the eye to catch on, because every metal surface is the same alloy at the same finish. The whitened guilloche silver sections are the only interruption, and they are deliberately cool, which gives the dial its one point of contrast and keeps the gold from reading as a solid mass. Against all of that the blued steel hands are the third element, and on a gold dial they carry considerably more than they would on silver, since violet against pink is a stronger separation than violet against gray. A bracelet in the same alloy also has a practical consequence: gold this warm shows its scratches as bright marks rather than as dull ones, so a well-kept example looks noticeably better than a hard-worn one.
The dial layout on this generation is the thing most people get wrong about the model. With the hours and minutes off center, the Lune does not read like a conventional three-hand watch at all: the time occupies a subdial rather than the whole face, and the large date at 12 becomes the most prominent single element on the dial by a considerable margin. The moon sits in the upper half and the power reserve reads at 7:30, filling the lower left. What that arrangement does is spread four indications evenly rather than stacking them around a central axis, which is why the dial holds together at 38 mm as readily as it does at 40. The mechanics beneath are the earlier Octa in full: 5.70 mm of movement height, 223 components, an in-line lever escapement with a fifteen-tooth wheel, a free sprung balance regulated by four inertia weights, 21,600 alternations per hour, and a single barrel holding a mainspring about a meter long and good for roughly 160 hours. Automatic winding runs at 274 rotations across a day. Journe rebuilt this calibre in solid gold shortly afterward, and the reserve moved when he did. The two generations are therefore distinguishable at a glance by anybody who knows to look, which is not true of most references that span a movement change.
Eleven years is a long run and it covers a change of movement material partway through, which is the single most useful thing to know about the reference. The Octa Lune began in 2004 on the brass 1300 and continued until 2015, and across that period the manufacture moved its plates and bridges from plated brass to solid 18K rose gold. Examples from either side of the change share a name and differ underneath, and the dial gives the difference away without a caseback: an off-center time display with the reserve at 7:30 belongs to the earlier calibre. That correlation is genuinely reliable and it is the fastest identification available on this model, and it holds across both case metals and every dial variant the reference was offered in. The Lune also matters within the collection more broadly, since it was the Octa that took the moon phase and made it the family's signature complication, and the Divine and the later Automatique Lune both descend from what was worked out here. The moon itself is calculated closely enough that correction becomes a matter of years rather than months, which is the standard the manufacture has held to across every moon phase it has built since. None of these have been made in this configuration for a decade.
Buy the movement generation deliberately rather than by accident, because the two are not interchangeable and sellers rarely distinguish them. Read the dial first: off-center hours with the reserve at 7:30 is the brass calibre 1300, and anything else is not. Confirm through the caseback, where plated brass and solid rose gold are unmistakable. Then treat the bracelet as the limiting factor, since a set of matching 6N links cannot be made up after the fact: establish the link count, ask whether removed links are included, and check the clasp under load. Look along the bracelet edges for the bright scratching that gold of this warmth shows readily, and remember that a gold bracelet can be polished only so many times before the links lose their crispness. Decide between 38 mm and 40 mm on the wrist rather than on paper, since the off-center dial changes character between the two. On the movement, run the date across midnight with both discs together, advance the moon through a complete cycle, and let the reserve hand descend its full arc across several days.
