New Acquisition: Vostok Troika 2416B

My new acquisition is this NOS 2004 Vostok Troika with a Vostok 2416B movement, with tags.
Here are some quick and nasty photos with my cheap point and click camera. 

Troika is a brand which may have been owned by Vostok not by itself but together with its partners, specifically a certain firm styled ChasProm of Belarus was mentioned. But the brand seems to be more or less discontinued now.

This particular series of Troika watches all have a nice (and rare for Vostok) display caseback with a view on its Vostok 2416B movement.

I have only had it since yesterday - so far so good. It IS working (it's a 2004 watch) without a service history. 

The movement as seen through its display caseback. I think it is a good-looking movement, even if undecorated. The rotor in particular is well shaped and rotates very happily and easily and also noiselessly, fun to watch actually. In fact, you can play a little game with it by trying to make it go full consecutive circles by moving you watch.

I am going to add a review later based on my use of this watch. That is, IF I use it and not just retire it straight to my watch box on account of me having too many wearable watches already. Competition for my wrist time gets real fierce.

I am attaching some more pictures below.

Volmax Watch Catalogs 2013

Mechanical alarm wristwatches - Poljot 2612 movement, Open Outer Space series.

Mechanical alarm watches -Volmax 2013


Sturmanskie watches, quartz and mechanical, series Sputnik, Arktika, Gagarin, Outer Space Pioneers, Open Outer Space, Ocean (Okeah), Traveler, Mars.

Sturmanskie by Volmax 2013 - a large and picture heavy PDF file, 45 pages.

CD Collection: Conquest by Uriah Heep 1980

In addition to my ever growing watch and clock collection, I also have a collection of 500+ CDs which I only get to listen to in my car.

About to be fed to my carnivorous CD changer is a new addition to said collection but in fact an old album - Conquest by Uriah Heep fronted by John Sloman.

I looked for it and I bought it on purpose and it is an expanded deluxe edition with some bonus tracks. I know that some won't even consider it to be a proper Heep album but I like it. 

To be honest, I have no time for the classic Heep - July Morning kind of stuff. 

I like this album and that's that. If I didn't it wouldn't have already been in my CD changer for a month. First, I listened to it on repeat, now it waits for its turn to play but it is still there and likely to stay for some time.

My favorites are Feelings and Think It Over but the whole album is very much listenable.

Feelings x 2

 Think it over x 5

Link: Alexander B. Brodnikovsky's Collection of Raketa Watches and Clocks

In this thread in Russian on Watch.ru, a Russian watch forum, you can have a good look at Alexander B. Brodnikovsky's collection of Raketa watches and clocks as it was displayed recently on the occasion of the 292nd anniversary of the Petrodvorets Watch Factory, the maker of Raketa watches. 

Alexander B. Brodnikovsky's collection is probably the largest collection of Raketa watches anywhere in the world. 

I especially recommend these posts -- where the pictures are:

Post # 10 

Post # 11 

Post # 31 

Post # 39 

Slava 2428 Day-Date Handwind

Another watch from my collection is this Slava utilizing the Slava 2428 movement in its current Russian version with 21 jewels only. It has a centrally mounted seconds hand, a day and date calendar, a quick date change pusher and only manual winding.

I have had it since January 2012, wore it for some time after I bought it, even grew to like it, then rotated it out of my wind-and-wear daily set (of about 8-9 watches) due to new arrivals competing for wrist time and retired it to rest among my "collection" pieces. It didn't cost me too much money yet was not that cheap either, I think about US$70 bought new from a Slava store here in Moscow.

It has some interesting, though simple, features both case-wise and movement-wise.

The dial is chrome-toned to match its brass chrome-plated case and has some kind of an embossed motif showing a large Cyrillic letter C (corresponds to the Latin S) which stands for Slava and some kind of a rising sun pattern. Other than that there is nothing remarkable.

One of the mildly interesting features is that it has an exhibition snap-on back which I think is a rare combination because exhibition case backs tend to be screw-on case backs. You can even see some of the rather plain and undecorated movement. In fact, you can see most of it, devoid of color as it is. Still a great but dying-out movement surviving on existing and already growing old and depleting inventories.

What you can also see through said exhibition case back is Slava's famous twin mainspring barrels - an uncommon feature, especially in cheaper watches, which allows one to easily identify Slava movements.

Link: Guide to Seiko's Main Collectible Wristwatches

An excellent Spanish watch forum thread on Seiko's main models (google-translated into English here).

With pictures, listed are Seiko watches with their own unofficial or semi-official (sometimes even official) names, not just letters and numbers, and they may even be arranged in alphabetical order, top to bottom. But official Seiko designations are also given, so you can easily find them, should you want to do so.

I find these "named" Seikos more interesting -- what with names like "monster", "tuna can", "alpinist", "alien", etc. Well worth a read and a look and in fact can be used as a reference, hence this post. I am definitely going to add some Seikos to my collection some time soon.

Ten Years After: Casio CA53W-1Z

Here is a Casio watch from my collection -- Casio CA53w-1z. This one is one of the earlier pieces in my collection and is basically an electronic calculator watch. Casio was famous for such watches in the 1980s -- the heyday of calculator watches. You can read up a bit on calculator watches in this Wikipedia entry although it makes no mention of this particular model.

I personally bought the watch on May 5, 2003, as you can see from the picture above where the date of sale is marked clearly on a battery replacement coupon (or something) which I actually haven't had to use yet but more about it a little later on in this entry. Bought on May 5, 2003 makes it two months (minus 15 days) after the start of the Second Iraq War -- just to put a time reference on it. And I even have an original receipt for it which states that it cost me the whole of RUB 680 which is about US$20+. 

I wore the watch for a couple of years (but not too often) and then it has spent another 8 years in my writing desk. I have had no occasion for the use of the calculator either. I doubt using it would have been very convenient. But on the whole I liked and still like the look of this calculator watch. This particular model is a true, if cheap, classic. Apparently it was in production since the early 1980 until very recently. And even now there are plenty NOS specimens on the Internet which you can easily find if you google its name. Interestingly the price has stayed about the same as in 2003 which suggests that plenty of them were made in their time (still being made?). 

A remarkable thing about this watch is that it is still running on the same battery I bought it with -- and that is more than 10 years already! And I assume it must have spent some time in the store before I even bought it. And, for all this time, the watch has been running with a daily alarm which I forgot how to switch off and too lazy to look up in the instructions, and was running with an hourly chime until a year or so ago when I finally turned it off. It has to be said though that this model has no backlight -- but it's a good thing as far as battery life is concerned though not so much if you want to use the watch at night.

I haven't touched this watch for the past 9 years or so and it's now running about 16 minutes fast which makes it a 1.7 minute gain per year (assuming it was set correctly at the start or didn't go a full 24 hour circle). Not a bad result anyway, I think.

However as I was getting it out of my desk, a sizable chunk of the original plastic Casio bracelet broke and came off. So it cannot be worn on wrist any more and that's that. Replacement bracelets can be found though -- but who wants to bother?

In addition to being mine, this watch is also famous for having been worn by Marty McFly in Back to Future.