I recently had a little visit to the City of Light. The Seine was close to bursting its banks, the museums were closed because all of the art had to be moved to the attic...



...so I had no choice but to prospect for watches.

First find: A French cased cal 133.8. Neuf de stock is french for new old stock. French cases are often avoided by collectors, lumped in with other foreign cases with much more dubious craftsmanship and gold content. But in my experience, they are high quality. They tend to have a chunkier aesthetic than the Swiss cases - they are heavy, meaty pieces, but not without elegance.

Importe de Suisse on the dial....

Fab Suisse on the movement. Zenith had a French movement factory in Besancon, but this is not one of the products.



The very stern eagle tells you the case is made in France and 18K gold.



Second is a cal 143-6 chronograph, this time in a Swiss case. The Excelsior Park-sourced chronographs, as opposed to the Martel models, tend to be decent quality (not speaking of the movement here, which I like very much - silkiest reset in the business), but pretty run of the mill models. Zenith made a special effort in this one.

Fab Suisse on the dial:
The owls tell you it is a foreign production gold case, in this instance Swiss. There is an additional Fab Suisse on the inside caseback, which is otherwise marked as normal.


Here it is with another unusual cal 143.

 

One on each end of the bumper weight - cushions the impact.

 

ah. that is a spacer for the case back

 

Oh, good heavens no. What kind of irresponsible obsessive do you take me for? I bought two. The third one I already had.