Zodiac manual wind vintage watch

I'm not really into gold watches but I found this one intriguing as Zodiac is well-known brand that survived the quartz crisis of the 1970s. This one came with a brown leather strap that made it look old and that also carried over to the wearer so I had to find a replacement for this to be more contemporary and not "pang-matanda" (for old people).

Simple watch face - the reflection from the light doesn't do justice to this watch.

Side view showing scratches from years of usage - typical for vintage watches

Side view showing the crown, which came as a surprise to me as the logo on the crown is Omega. The previous owner probably had the watch repaired/maintained and replaced the crown with that of an Omega watch.

Watch back shown after I removed the leather strap to be replaced by a nato. The spring bars are in good condition.

Close-up of the back showing the watch to be anti-magnetic, water resistant, shock resistant and Swiss made. The Zodiac brand and emblem is also visible in the photo. If you look closely, there's an engraving of a fish at the top. I haven't researched about it but I assumed it means something.

What came as a surprise when I was changing the strap was the engraving between the lugs. It is similar to the etch on my IWC stating the watch was electroplated with gold. This one states 20 microns gold-plated.

Wrist shot

This is another reliable vintage watch, which I observed to function over 43 hours on a full wind. I changed the strap on this one as the leather strap it came with made it look old ("pang-matanda"). The nato strap is appropriate and immediately made the watch "younger" and "fun". It is now "wearable" as a casual watch. This one may be powered by either a Zodiac 61A (AS 1687) or 68 (AS 1688) movement, which dates the watch to ca. 1960s. I have another Zodiac watch and its an automatic. It will be featured in a future post.

 

[4/15/2021 - I unloaded this watch back in 2019. It wasn't hard to sell even if it didn't have its original crown.]

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