Had a brief moment of madness earlier in the week and bought a watch. Not just any old watch mind, but a Universal Geneve, a brand I've never owned before. Despite being on the watch wagon I just couldn't resist the sheer 70's madness of this one and that beautiful dial with highly polished hands, applied indices and UG logo. The case shape is er pretty unique and a generous size with real wrist presence, it's bordering on being a door frame magnet but I kinda like its heft. The case itself bears testimony to this with a few dings, scratches and knocks but I know a man who can sort that out for me It houses a UG cal. 1-52 which is actually a Bulova tuning fork movement (their cal. 2181F) so the seconds hand sweeps oh so smoothly over the dial. I'm not entirely sure if the minute track ring was originally a deeper yellow and has faded or if it was always this colour. I suspect the latter as it's a near perfect match for the colour of the tritium in the hands and applied lume dots between the indices. Anyhow a few pics taken yesterday afternoon. My favourite feature is the dial and handset. The different finishes work extremely well together and the polished surfaces reflect light very well too, the whole dial comes to life with minimum movement of your wrist. A quick P&S snap taken yesterday morning. And a hasty wrist pic to give and idea of how it sits on my 7" wrist I wondered if anyone here could tell me more about this model and maybe find a production date. The serial number is 2,776,XXX so it's post 1967, my uneducated guess is it's from the very late 60's or early 70's. Cheers, Gary
Oh hell yea, love how in the late 60s and early 70s they had no problem going wild with case designs, reminds me very much of the Flightmaster style case Seamasters of the same era that Norm is so fond of.
Thanks Ash Not sure it bears much resemblance to a Flightmaster tbh (presumably you mean their Pilot line cases) but it's certainly distingtive. There's been a suggestion that it might be a Gerald Genta design but that's purely speculation for the time being. Cheers, Gary
Excellent....eccentric, but excellent and a great example of the genre of over-the-top period case weirdness.
Wonderful details! I am convinced that the reason top-level manufacturers stay that way is for the clever, tasteful details like lume dots inside raised hour markers, different textures, and for the UG, that delightful "U" inside the Accutron tuning fork logo. Nice!