I know what you mean........Mine has the do-hickey-thingy in the case back, and sits very comfortably on my wrist with my Bonclip-styled bracelet.
Local pickup from a French collector, what looks like an all-original Dodane type 21 produced in 1976/77 I think. I wanted one badly for a long time, found a good price on a great looking watch: she'll make a nice pair with the Bundy
@Darlinboy Love the CP2, on the top of my list right now. Let me know if you ever want to sell it. Here is my Mil Spec being worn today
Rcaf I'm guessing but which one. I really like that it's a vanilla dial. I'll be showing something similar in the near future. @Darlingboy... TP2 oh so nice. Are there 2 others to make an appearance? TP1 & a.car...
Holly Sh!t that's nice!!! Huge congrats on that pick up. I'm very jealous DIBS - please remember this.
My first vintage watch- was on the hunt for this for about a year, and the dealer kept dropping his price, until I couldnt resist ! Had some trouble getting this from Italy- customs held it up for a few weeks. This is a Breitling 817 CP-1 E.I. It was made for the Italian Army in no more than 1000 examples, and was given to their helicopter pilots and special forces division of the Italian Carabinieri in the 1970s. The Italian Military ordered two basic forms of this watch design- the CP-1, made by Leonidas and Breitling, measuring 39.7mm, and the CP-2 (see Darlinboy's example above!!!!) made by Zenith and Universal Geneve at 43-44 mm. I do not know exact production numbers for the others, but it seems to be generally accepted that the Zenith CP-2 is the most common, whereas the Universal Geneve is probably the rarest. Another watch in this style is the Heuer Bundeswehr, but as far as I know, it was never ordered by the Italians The tale among vintage Breitling folks is that the pilots didnt much like the watch- this was 1975, and quartz/automatic watches were all the rage- and a mechanical chrono was so passe. In addition, it came on a bracelet made by the Japanese company Speidel, and the bracelet was supposedly horribly uncomfortable. As a result, few of the watches survive today- until very recently<30 were known to exist (the expert on these watches is a gentleman who posts in may forums as Dracha- he advised me greatly about this watch) What makes this tale super interesting is that the Italian Government recently found and sold 40 of these examples at an auction- starting bid was 28,000 Euros for all, but it probably went for much much much higher, given that recent examples without box and papers have sold for $14k+ at auction. So we come to my example. It certainly isn't as nice as some of the perfect examples seen in that hodinkee story. It has probably also been relumed- the lume in the hands of this watch tended to become a warm orange shade, whereas mine has remained green. It also has a very faint glow in pitch dark (in a long exposure shot). This was supposedly done by the Italian Army itself The other flaw of this watch is that the caseback has been polished. Dracha tells me that he was offered this watch years ago, and the then owner told him that the gentleman who was given this watch by the Italian army had taken the watch to his local watchmaker, who had it buffed and the caseback polished to make it look prettier as it bore the E.I markings of the Italian army. That's why the design of the the caseback now is a circular ray of sun pattern, while the original markings had vertical striping as seen in the hodinkee article. But the internal caseback markings correlate with it's origin, and it has an Italian army number on the inside I paid much less than recent examples that have gone to auction, and this is an honest watch (though without the Speidel bracelet). It wears beautifully, and is the perfect size for me. I honestly can't believe my luck at having obtained it- it rarely comes up for sale (though that will probably change). I now need to find a good watchmaker to service it!
Oh man that's a thing of beauty. Congrats. I know the dibs line WILL be long but gotta get in with an early DIBS.
@Beepos Oh bloody hell you guys. Now a b-817...so NICE. Congrats on getting it before the story broke. I was trying last year to get a CP1 but the seller/broker was rubbish.
Honestly, got lucky as hell myself. Literally a week after I received this watch, Hodinkee featured it for the first time on their website. Since then, they've had it in two other articles, one devoted exclusively to this watch. No way in hell I could have bought it then- the price would have skyrocketed, as I bought it from a decently well known dealer