Been on eBay a while now. Not cheap,but then not overly dear, as far as these go. Anyone see problems with it?
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/282385689402?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDXPurchases made through these links may earn this site a commission from the eBay Partner Network

 

Its not an issued unit. Extremely expensive for a civilian version.

Regards

 

No obvious problems but for being a civilian version pretty badly beaten up.
Lume has darkened quite a lot, lume in hands is either missing (central chrono hand) or has some damage (minute hand) and bezel is definitively not top. Even though I agree that given current pricing on these the price is not crazy I would wait for a better specimen and perhaps pay up a little bit IMHO.

 

Also this, even though I will never understand this: civilian version are in fact much RARER than issued ones and usually (not in this case though!) much better preserved. Then again, I am not a military watches collector, so perhaps to me the premium is too much and unjustified, whereas for a military watch collector it is reasonable.

 

I could be wrong but my understanding is that the contract with Zenith was to deliver this model only for service use, not to be sold to the public, similar to the Leonidas, Breitling, etc. For whatever reason though some units were never assigned and were sold to the public. Its a nice watch in itself but I think the real interest in this case is on the issued units. So for many, the value of the civilian models is much less.

This example its been available quite some time, which somehow explains the above, I guess.

 

The accepted version is that there were about 2500 examples consigned by Zenith to Cairelli. Cairelli had a contract with the italian army to supply these watches but the contract got cancelled after about 2000 were given and issued. Hence Cairelli was left with about 500 of them that he already paid for and hence decided to sell them directly to the civilian public himself from his shop in Rome.
Breguet, for example, also sold their famous type XX directly to the public from his shop in Place Vendome in Paris.

 

Just checked, indeed, what you just wrote seems to be the accepted version. So the civilian units are more rare but still commanding less of a premium.