Last month I realised I hadn’t yet spent my birthday money from a few months back. This realisation coincided nicely with a resurgent interest in those ever interesting and cheap Russian watches, of which I have blogged about several times here, here, and here and which now I track on a dedicated board at Pinterest.com.
Anyway, all this mindless cataloguing of stuff led to an inevitable purchase with those “spare” birthday funds, and yesterday the postman delivered the parcel1.
Here it is, as modelled on my twig wrist:
As you can see, the day of the week is indicated by the red dot. I have decided that the week starts on Mondays, so for me the sixth dot shows it’s Saturday. I like the large and clear numerals, and the elegant fine hands. The overall design is that of a stainless steel rectangle overlaid by a black circle - very simple and strong.
It came with all its original papers, which seem to indicate it was made in September 1992. So a long period in storage may account for its stiffness of winding. Some of the sellers on eBay also caution that watches transported by airmail may need servicing afterwards - presumably the oil evaporates in low pressure environments. And then, this morning I noticed it had lost about 10 minutes in less than 24 hours. So it may have to go in for a lube and adjustment2, even though it’s actually brand new (or in eBay’s parlance, NOS - “New Old Stock”).
Despite all this I am very pleased with it. It’s a lovely piece of engineering.
And yes, it has a lovely tick.
1 Poor postie had to come down all our steps to get me to sign for it, for which I apologised. Great service though - typically the courier drivers just dump stuff in the letter box and bail, regardless of signature requirements.
2 The next problem is that the major local watch servicing outfit refuses to handle Russian watches.
