Konstantin Chaykin - Too cheeky or just right?

These pieces are all the same rare, originally sold in the casino but also at a distributor in Hong Kong, and even if they benefit from a lower popularity allow the buyer on the lookout to afford for little more expensive than a Submariner, a piece that generates a rather unique emotional discharge, and that is often only found on the creations of AHCI members or certain confidential brands shunned by the must-have collector.



Of course we could write pages on the usual like / dislike, cry genius or theft,
but as often the strongest opinions come from people who have never approached the watch in question, so apart from the general appearance and the opinion made on a bad photo or photoshop visual, a Joker that is it really???



Already you should know that Konstantin Chaykin is more than a man, he's superman disguised as a human!
No, in fact today it is a Manufacture, probably the only real high-end Russian manufacture.
When we know that the guy is not even a watchmaker at the base, that he now employs nearly 20 people, that he has opened his own watchmaking training school, we can only be admiring of his journey.



But back to our entry-level Joker, because yes it must be admitted at KC Manufacture a wristmons (as he calls them), is the cheapest entry-level model from the manufacture…and the worst is that frankly for almost 13k on order in custom frankly it's justified! ! !



Specifically, the Joker is almost entirely made in-house, the only parts that aren't are:
- the base of the caliber which is an ETA 2824 base (therefore peace of mind for future revisions)
- rubies (like almost everyone),
- sapphire crystal (also like everyone else)
- and the leather strap, spicytou! !

Everything else is produced in the Konstantin Chaykin manufactory in the Nagatinsky Zaton district of Moscow. This therefore includes:
- The box,
- the glasses,
- the crown,
- laser engraved logos,
- the dial,
- the mouth,
- moon phase plates and paint
- ocular discs,
- the nose,
- and the Joker module (61 components and 8 rubies all by itself).
It's still work, a lot of work to do all this with the attention to detail that can be seen by examining the watch closely.



So let's look at the dial, for example. It is CNC milled from a single plate of brass, it is a near perfect piece, better than the most commonly used cutting solution which is high pressure stamping could produce, and extremely close to the sharpness of the traditional hand guillochage.
Here a photo of a clown dial in progress.







We must then note the slightly domed and scintillating surfaces of the eyeballs.
It would have been quite simple to use flat, matte discs, but as with many other design elements of the watch, an extra effort of craftsmanship has been made for a very high quality overall rendering.



The discs for the moon phase display (inside the mouth) and the hour and minute "eyes" are painted by hand in a high-pressure white room inside the manufactory (but only after being handmade and then polished one by one),



The coat of paint must be so uniform and so precise in its application that only one part out of ten passes quality control in the end, this particular attention was wanted because these are the parts that we look at the most when we want to read the 'hour,

With regard to the case and the bezel, a wide brushed surface is interrupted by 10 notches:
- five with the playing card suits diamonds (♦), clubs (♣), hearts (♥) and spades (♠), and the letter J at 12 o'clock.
- five other notches are arrowheads.
The nice surprise is in the way they are executed. The wide surface of the bezel is brushed for the original version or polished polished for the casino version; the arrowhead notches are cut, smoothed, masked and then sandblasted to create variations of finishes that are both subtle but still strong enough to flatter the eye.







The suits are laser engraved for maximum precision with their matt bottoms and raised surfaces polished so they stand out from the brushed and sandblasted areas.
Last, but not least, the bottom and top edges of the bezel (the former thinner, the latter taller) are hand-polished to a brilliant, reflective shine.
Honestly, it is not easy to find such beautiful glasses on the market as the work spent on cutting, machining, masking, polishing and sanding operations takes time,








But fortunately the costs of Russian MO are lower than those practiced in Switzerland and allow to contain the budget without sacrificing the time spent.

Case dimensions
Diameter 42mm, thickness 13.7mm

Why on earth would Omega want their watch associated with a cartoon?

are you sure omega is the subject ? 😉

Thank you for posting the review!

to note when I did this review, around January 2021, the prices had not exploded yet, I even wondered how much I was going to lose on this piece if I needed to resell it, today they are exchange between 2 and 3x their list price, mainly due to the fact that the series have fewer and fewer copies, around twenty on average, and the manufacture produces around 300 watches per year at the moment.

I got a quote from them a couple of years ago before everything went downhill in the world, I think it was around 10-12k. When I last checked 1-2 years ago it was already 20-30k and that's A LOT more, sadly.

Wish I had picked one up.

you re right, i remember in 2019 it was 13k for a special custom order , now it is 30k
there is a huge demand for indie watches in this period...

did you see that the joker was again available in 2 news versions in 40mm as a watch in the catalog,

"As the Joker Classic model is limited to the number of pieces we can produce in a year (no more than 100 pieces with white and gray dials), gray and white dial Joker classic watches are currently available for order with a delivery date of the end of April 2026.
According to our website the retail price is 16,900 CHF without tax"

If I was a prestigious watchmaker, Id love to work for this brand! Would be a fun day everyday staring at those faces.

Anyway, Konstantin Chaykin is amongst the 12 wrist watch brands which have been directly exposed to the harsh radiation/ temperature outer space environment during a spacewalk!
#moonwatchuniverse #spacewalk

I appreciate the workmanship, the cleverness of the design and the humour in the artistic expression, but it would be too bloody hard to read to be really useful.
If you really need to know the time.......it's usually because your in a hurry, I gather you could train your mind to read it at a glance without having to think to much about it, but I couldn't be arsed with that!

I think you are wrong, it only takes a little time to get used to reading the time very quickly, and then in real life my phone gives me the time 95% of the time (or my PC), this is also the advantage of regulators

I can read the time as quickly as on my other watches except that I am admittedly less precise and within 1 or 2 minutes

Yeah but I still can't be arsed with it!