Tag: Bulova

Pandas!

By Joe Berk

The big photo above is shows three very real pandas.  I took it in Chengdu when Gresh and I rode across China.  It’s a little blurry because I was shooting through inch-thick super-smudgy glass.  The photo is for attention only.  This blog is about a different kind of panda.

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When I was a pup back in the 1970s, I bought a Seiko chronograph watch in the Kunsan AFB Base Exchange.  The Seiko model number was 6138-8020, and it was $67.  I could have bought a Rolex there, too, but I remember thinking who spends $300 on wristwatch?  Nope, it would be the Seiko for me.

A Seiko 6138-8020 recently advertised on Ebay for close to $2,000.

The Seiko 6138 was an automatic (i.e., self-winding) watch.  It became known as the Panda due to its two black subdials on its white face.  I liked the Seiko a lot.  I was a jogger in those days, and I used the Seiko every day to time my 3-mile runs.  Life was good but I went on to other things.  After the Army I worked in the aerospace industry, and like most engineers I went the digital route (I wore a Casio calculator watch).  When Ebay became a thing I went on a decluttering craze and the Seiko went down the road.   I got $80 for it and I thought I was pretty clever.  Then I watched the price of a 6138 go through the roof.  That may be why I collect watches now.  I’m still trying to make up for that mistake.

I’ve missed my Panda over the years, and I started looking around to see what was available.  There are several.  In my opinion, Breitling makes the best (and best looking) Panda.   Their Premier model is an awesome automatic watch, but who spends $7,299 on a watch?

Breitling’s Premier chronograph.  It’s a Holy Grail kind of a watch.

The Hamilton automatic American Classic is another great looking Panda.  That answers the mail for me, too, but it’s a little bit rich for my blood.  The Hamilton goes for $1,541.

Hamilton makes a Panda chronograph.  Nice, but a little bit pricey.

Seiko has a solar-powered Panda watch in their Prospex line that looks pretty good to me.  It’s a $700 watch.  If you shop around, you can find them for about $500.  That’s not bad, but Seiko also makes that watch with a red and blue face and a red and blue bezel (informally known as the Pepsi), and one of these days I’ll probably pull the trigger on one of those.  So, I took a pass on the Seiko Panda.

Seiko’s Prospex Panda.   This is a very good-looking watch.

Bulova recently got into the Panda shtick as well, with a set of different colors on their Lunar Pilot watch:

The Bulova Lunar Pilot Panda. Nice, and incredibly accurate.

The Bulova is $895.  It’s nice, but a few years ago I bought the black dial Bulova that emulates the watch astronaut Dave Scott wore to the moon.  With a Lunar Pilot already in the collection, I wanted something else.

I’d been thinking about this Panda thing for a couple of years now, and looking at watches from time to time on the Internet, and you know where this is going.  The Internet is insidious, and the marketing emails starting coming in.  Amazon sent one on the Orient Panda and it was $188.  Seiko and Orient are both owned by Epson (yep, the printer company), and I know Orient to be a good watch (I’ve written before about my Orient moonie automatic watch).  Here’s the Orient Panda:

The Orient Panda. I like its looks.

The Orient had great reviews on Amazon, and I liked the look.  One thing I’ve learned the hard way is that it’s hard to judge a watch’s appeal by a photo.  Some that look great in a picture are totally unappealing in person, and vice versa.  But for $188, I’m willing to take a chance.  When the watch arrives (it’s a non-US model and it’s shipping directly from Japan), I’ll let you know how it looks.  I like the metal bracelet; I may spring for a black leather (with white stitching) band (like the Breitling’s) somewhere down the road.

A few general observations on the above watches.  You may have noticed that the bezel rings are different between the Orient Panda and the others.  The Orient has equally-spaced marks that show how many seconds have elapsed when the stopwatch is activated.  All the other Panda watches have what is known as a tachymeter bezel.  The idea behind it is that you can use the tachymeter for determining rate.  If you activate the tachymeter when passing a mile marker and then stop it at the next mile marker, it will tell you your actual speed (as long as you are going faster than 60 mph).  If you are on a production line, you can activate the stop watch when starting one item and stop the watch when the item is completed.   Let’s say it takes 9 seconds to complete one item.  The stop watch’s second hand will point to how many items can be completed in an hour (in this case, 400).   The tachymeter is a cool feature but I have never used it, so the fact that it is not on the Orient is okay by me.

I’ve mentioned automatic and solar powered watches.  An automatic watch is a mechanical, self-winding watch.  For some collectors, there’s a panache associated with a mechanical watch.  I feel that way, and I have automatic watches.  The downsides of an automatic watch are that if you don’t wear them for a few days they stop and then you have to reset them, and they are less accurate (typical automatic watch accuracy is about ±25 seconds per day.  Some are better than others.  If you’re a fanatic about time, you’ll probably reset an automatic watch about once a week.  For watch geeks that’s okay.  We like playing with our watches.

Solar powered watches are essentially quartz watches that are powered by the sun instead of needing a battery.  The downside is the watch has to be in the light (either sunlight or artificial light) a little bit each day to keep running.  The upsides are that if you don’t wear a solar powered watch but keep it where the light hits it, it keeps running, and solar powered (and quartz regulated) watches are phenomenally accurate (to the tune of a few seconds per month).  I have solar powered watches that I haven’t worn for a year or more, and they accurate to within a few seconds of the time.gov website.  That’s pretty cool.

Back to that ride into Chengdu to see the real pandas…you can read all about it in Riding China.  Here’s a short video of Joe Gresh and yours truly slogging through Chengdu traffic on Zongshen RX1 motorcycles.

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The Wayback Machine: Marking Time

By Joe Berk

I’ve always been a watch guy. It probably started when my parents surprised me with a Timex when I was a kid. The thought of having my own wristwatch was heady stuff for a boy back on the east coast (or anywhere else, I imagine). To make a long story short, I’ve been a watch collector ever since. I don’t specialize, and many times I won’t keep a watch forever. If I like the way a watch looks and it’s not crazy expensive, I’ll wear it for a while, with the duration of “a while” usually determined by the time it takes for the next interesting thing to catch my eye.

The real deal: Apollo 15 Astronaut Dave Scott’s Bulova, which sold for a cool $1.625 million at auction.

I make no excuses: I like watches, and I always wonder about guys who don’t wear them. Not wearing a watch is a common thing with young guys today. When I taught in Cal Poly’s College of Engineering, one of my topics focused on how to do well in an interview. My guidance was simple. Dress sharply, be early, look the interviewer right in the eye, speak up, don’t use the word “like” incessantly when you speak, and wear a watch. A lot of kids today don’t wear watches. If they have any interest in knowing what time it is, they look at their iPhone. That’s a no go, I’d tell my students. If you don’t wear a watch, the person interviewing you will conclude you have no sense of time-based urgency. It’s what I always concluded when someone showed up not wearing a watch.

Anyway, to get to the subject of this blog, I want to tell you about the Bulova Lunar Pilot. It’s a cool piece with an interesting story that goes like this: With the advent of the Apollo lunar exploration program (the NASA endeavor to put men on the moon), the US government decided we needed an official space watch. Omega won the competition with their Speedmaster watch, and for the next 14 missions, that’s what astronauts wore.

Here’s where it gets complicated and where the story gets Internet-fuzzy. Depending on which source you believe, Astronaut Dave Scott wore a Bulova watch on the Apollo 15 mission for one of the following reasons:

He wore the Bulova watch because his Omega broke.
He wore the Bulova watch because he felt like it.
He wore the Bulova watch because Bulova was trying to replace Omega as the official NASA watch.
He wore the watch because the US government, Bulova, or other parties wanted the official watch to be something made in America.

Whatever the reason (and you can find stories supporting each of the above floating around in that most authoritative of all sources, the Internet), Dave Scott wore the Bulova on the Apollo 15 mission, and Omega went from being “the only watch worn on the moon” to “the first watch worn on the moon.” It could not have gone over well at the Omega factory.

Dave Scott’s original Bulova, the one he wore on the moon, sold at auction a few years ago. The predicted auction price was $50,000. As predictions go, it wasn’t a very good one. When the gavel came down and the dust cleared, Scott’s Bulova sold for a cool $1.3 million. Throw in the auction commission and other fees, and you’re talking about a $1.625-million wristwatch. Wowee!

Bulova, today no longer an American watch company (they were bought by Citizen a few years ago) recognized a marketing opportunity when it fell into their laps, and they re-issued an internally updated version of Scott’s watch as the Bulova Lunar Pilot, complete with a 262 kHz Accutron movement. I have no idea what a 262 kHz movement is, except that the Bulova marketing hype tells me it means it’s super accurate.

The not-so-real deal, but a hell of a deal nonetheless: The Bulova Lunar Pilot, purchased for just under $300.  Yep, as I type this, I’m wearing my Bulova.

The increased accuracy really didn’t matter to me when I saw the watch (I’m retired now and I seldom need 262 kHz accuracy when I decide I feel like going somewhere), so that’s not what prompted me to pull the trigger. I just like the way it looks, I like the swirl of stories around the original Bulova moon watch, and my Dad wore a Bulova when I was a kid.

Oh, one other thing helped…a trick that has prompted me to pull the trigger on other discretionary purposes.  You know how the Internet spies on us, right?  I mean, folks complain all the time about looking at something on Amazon or whatever and then it starts showing up in their Facebook feed.   That’s not always a bad thing.  When I first looked at the Bulova Lunar Pilot it was a $600 bauble.   I wasn’t going to pay that kind of money, and I guess the spymasters/Internet marketeers figured that one out.  They and I knew it was a waiting game to see who would blink first.  Because I had looked for the watch on Amazon, I started getting emails from different retailers to buy the watch for less, and I let those roll in.  Delete, delete, delete, and then one day, an offer floated into my inbox for $299.  Hmmm.  Delete.  And sure enough, a day or two later and that $299 offer came with a coupon for $20 off and free shipping on my first order.  Ka ching!

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The Omega Speedmaster

I mentioned my Bulova Lunar Pilot watch (one we’ve done a blog on before) to one of my gun buddies, and he told me that he had the Omega version of that watch.

The Omega Speedmaster on the left, and my Bulova Lunar Pilot on the right. The Omega is a tiny bit smaller, which I prefer.
A closer shot of the Omega. It has a curved crystal, which made photographing it without glare a bit of a challenge.
The back of the Omega. It’s a classy watch.

Actually, it would be more appropriate to call mine the Bulova version of the Omega watch, as the Omega was the first in space and the Bulova came later almost accidentally.  You can read that story here.  Also, my Bulova is a reissued, modified design of the Accutron watch astronaut Dave Scott wore on his Apollo flight.  My buddy’s Omega is a faithful duplicate of the original Speedmaster worn on the Moon. The Omega is a much more expensive mechanical watch, and it is a very classy item.  The Omega Speedmaster sells for thousands of dollars; I paid $275 for my Bulova.

Ah, we’ve got a lot of good stuff coming up on the blog.  Most significantly, Uncle Joe is thinking about getting back on the Zed resurrection.  Send us your comments; we need to keep the pressure on Arjiu to make that happen.

More good blog stuff is in the works, too.  Good buddy Don wrote and asked about the .257 Weatherby No. 1.  I have that rifle back from Ruger.  The boys in New Hampshire put a nice piece of Circassian walnut on it to replace the cracked stock, and it shoots great with a load good buddy Mississippi Dave recommended.   Watch for that story soon.  I’ve got more fun in front of me sorting the Garand’s habit of throwing the first shot of each clip low left, and I’ll write about it here.  And a story requested by good buddy James on the XP100 Remington (I actually owned one of those in the 1970s chambered for the 30×223 cartridge).  And here’s another gun-related topic: We’re thinking of a postal match…you know, a match where you shoot your target and mail it to us.  If you’re interested in participating in something like that, let us know.

We’ve got a movie review coming about The Great Raid (spoiler alert…that movie was great), and a book review about A.J. Baime’s The Arsenal of Democracy (it’s the best book I’ve read this year).  There’s the always moving to the right YooHoo review (hang in there, Fred; it’s coming).  There’s more watch stuff coming, too.  I love my Gear’d Hardware watch, and I’m becoming a real fan of the Casio G-Shock watches.

There’s more motorcycle stuff in the works, too.  I’ve been dreaming about getting back to Baja again, either on one of my CSC bikes or perhaps something different.  I want to look at the Triumphs again; I’ve always loved their motorcycles.  I think I can talk CSC into letting me take a WIZ (whoa, that doesn’t sound right) for a ride.  I won’t take a WIZ to Baja (it’s an electric scooter), but it looks like it would be a hoot to ride locally.   The challenge is finding one; CSC sells them as soon as they get them in stock.  It seems everyone wants to take a WIZ.

We keep talking about making a political comment or two, but hell, no matter what we say we’d upset half our readership.  We had one guy actually bitch about one of the pop-up ads that appear on our site mentioning President Trump, and he had his shorts in a knot about that (off to your safe space, Snowflake, and that ain’t here).  For the record, we don’t control the pop-up ads (the ads appear based on the site’s content, your location, your prior website visits, and other secret stuff that goes into a supersecret algorithm that only God and Google know about).  It’s interesting but unknowable for us mere mortals, but in any event, if an ad appears talking about something that pisses you off, don’t blame us.  And if you really get upset, hell, click on the ad.  Then they have to pay.  And do you know who they pay?   It ain’t Trump!

Well, maybe all this is too controversial.  I’ll go to a safe topic and not ruffle any feathers.  Maybe something about Indian motorcycles and their lineage.  Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Marking Time

The real deal: Apollo 15 Astronaut Dave Scott’s Bulova, which sold for a cool $1.625 million at auction.

I’ve always been a watch guy. It probably started when my parents surprised me with a Timex when I was a kid. The thought of having my own wristwatch was heady stuff for a boy back on the east coast (or anywhere else, I imagine). To make a long story short, I’ve been a watch collector ever since. I don’t specialize, and many times I won’t keep a watch forever. If I like the way a watch looks and it’s not crazy expensive, I’ll wear it for a while, with the duration of “a while” usually determined by the time it takes for the next interesting thing to catch my eye.

I make no excuses: I like watches, and I always wonder about guys who don’t wear them. Not wearing a watch is a common thing with young guys today. When I taught in Cal Poly’s College of Engineering, one of my topics focused on how to do well in an interview. My guidance was simple. Dress sharply, be early, look the interviewer right in the eye, speak up, don’t use the word “like” incessantly when you speak, and wear a watch. A lot of kids today don’t wear watches. If they have any interest in knowing what time it is, they look at their iPhone. That’s a no go, I’d tell my students. If you don’t wear a watch, the person interviewing you will conclude you have no sense of time-based urgency. It’s what I always concluded when someone showed up not wearing a watch.

Anyway, to get to the subject of this blog, I want to tell you about the Bulova moon watch. It’s a cool piece with an interesting story that goes like this: With the advent of the Apollo lunar exploration program (the NASA endeavor to put men on the moon), the US government decided we needed an official space watch. Omega won the competition with their Speedmaster watch, and for the next 14 missions, that’s what astronauts wore.

Here’s where it gets complicated and where the story gets Internet-fuzzy. Depending on which source you believe, Astronaut Dave Scott wore a Bulova watch on the Apollo 15 mission for one of the following reasons:

He wore the Bulova watch because his Omega broke.
He wore the Bulova watch because he felt like it.
He wore the Bulova watch because Bulova was trying to replace Omega as the official NASA watch.
He wore the watch because the US government, Bulova, or other parties wanted the official watch to be something made in America.

Whatever the reason (and you can find stories supporting each of the above floating around in that most authoritative of all sources, the Internet), Dave Scott wore the Bulova on the Apollo 15 mission, and Omega went from being “the only watch worn on the moon” to “the first watch worn on the moon.” It could not have gone over well at the Omega factory.

Dave Scott’s original Bulova, the one he wore on the moon, sold at auction a few years ago. The predicted auction price was $50,000. As predictions go, it wasn’t a very good one. When the gavel came down and the dust cleared, Scott’s Bulova sold for a cool $1.3 million. Throw in the auction commission and other fees, and you’re talking about a $1.625-million wristwatch. Wowee!

Bulova, today no longer an American watch company (they were bought by Citizen a few years ago) recognized a marketing opportunity when it fell into their laps, and they re-issued an internally updated version of Scott’s watch as the Bulova Moonwatch, complete with a 262 kHz Accutron movement. I have no idea what a 262 kHz movement is, except that the Bulova marketing hype tells me it means it’s super accurate.

The not-so-real deal, but a hell of a deal nonetheless: The Bulova replica Moonwatch, purchased for just under $300.  Yep, as I type this, I’m wearing my Bulova.

The increased accuracy really didn’t matter to me when I saw the watch (I’m retired now and I seldom need 262 kHz accuracy when I decide I feel like going somewhere), so that’s not what prompted me to pull the trigger. I just like the way it looks, I like the swirl of stories around the original Bulova moon watch, and my Dad wore a Bulova when I was a kid.

Oh, one other thing helped…a trick that has prompted me to pull the trigger on other discretionary purposes.  You know how the Internet spies on us, right?  I mean, folks complain all the time about looking at something on Amazon or whatever and then it starts showing up in their Facebook feed.   That’s not always a bad thing.  When I first looked at the Bulova Moonwatch it was a $600 bauble.   I wasn’t going to pay that kind of money, and I guess the spymasters/Internet marketeers figured that one out.  They and I knew it was a waiting game to see who would blink first.  Because I had looked for the watch on Amazon, I started getting emails from different retailers to buy the watch for less, and I let those roll in.  Delete, delete, delete, and then one day, an offer floated into my inbox for $299.  Hmmm.  Delete.  And sure enough, a day or two later and that $299 offer came with a coupon for $20 off and free shipping on my first order.  Ka ching!