A good friend of mine grew up in East Germany in the 1980's. I am seeking a recommendation for an inexpensive watch of the era/region for a gift. He's an engineer and enjoy sports, so no dress watches. I imagine there are interesting East German watches from that period.
Thanks for the insight. I looked up Glasshutte and found this link with information on their history. Checking out eBay, the watches are on the dressier side. Any tool watches from that era?
Yes. The watches have very "industrial" looking movements: But also have a certain charm to them: And you can see where the inspiration for some of GO's modern designs come from. Cheers, Al
Keep looking. GUB was the big producer back then, and they made all sorts of watches - dressy like the one I posted above, but also more "toolish" watches like this one: I didn't take a wide shot of the display (probably should have) but that photo was taken in the watchmaking museum in Glashütte, where they covered the history of watchmaking in Germany, including the Soviet era. The specific display where the above watch was located had hundreds of Soviet era GUB watches hanging there, with a huge variety of styles to choose from, so they are out there. If you look at the watch to the right of the one I took a photo of (because it looks like the inspiration for the Senator 70's model GO has) there was a diver hanging beside this one. Cheers, Al
Just look on ebay under "Ruhla chronograph", if he is sporty you will find some nice chronos for around +/-100 €. Foto lend by german Uhrforum
back in the day, those east-german watches were pretty much like their cars ... so, even if those glashuette watches are the grandfathers of Lange & Söhne ... they are not even in the same league (or the next one) with anything coming out of Glashütte today whereas the movements per sé are not too back (think: orient / citizen qual) ... the problem is mostly in the poorly done cases (chromed not SS) which makes for poor aging. IIRC they made watches for some west german department stores like Quelle (their best models were export-only) - to get some FX into the country. It was of course bottom of the barrel ware that stayed within the country.
His watches are the G-Shock variety, with WaveCeptor and solar-powered. He likes their reliability and no-hassle aspect. Judging from people's comments above, a CCCP era east-german watch could possibly be more tortuous than nostalgic in his case. Maybe I should get him a vintage DW-5000C-1A. Thoughts?